RENEW THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY FOR SEASON 5!

The Umbrella Academy is a Netflix original hit which has been extremely popular ever since season one was released in 2019. Recently, Netflix announced that season four of the show will be the last season, and that it will only have six episodes as opposed to the series’ usual ten. This is extremely detrimental to many communities, such as people of colour, the LGBTQIA+ community and the neurodivergent spectrum. 

The Umbrella Academy is an extremely inclusive show with canonically LGBTQ+ people being included in the main characters such as Klaus Hargreeves who is a canonically pansexual and nonbinary person, Viktor Hargreeves who is a trans man who we saw transition in season three of the show, and more subtly Lila Pitts who is a bisexual woman (this is displayed in season three when she mentions that she has slept with many people, specifically not mentioning a gender.) There are also many people in the main characters who have not specified their sexuality who are rumoured to be in the LGBTQ+ community such as Diego Hargreeves.

This representation is so important as The Umbrella Academy so effortlessly has these characters be a certain sexuality/identify as a certain gender without ever making it their entire character arc like so many other shows do.

Along with the LGBTQ+ representation we also have POC representation in the main cast such as Allison, Diego, and Ben. In season two of the show they portrayed Allison’s storyline in such an impactful way with her being a Social Justice warrior as a black woman in 1960’s Dallas. This is so important as this arc brought so much awareness to the racial injustices throughout history and how it still lingers today. Homophobia has also been explored in season two with Klaus and Viktor as Klaus was unfortunately assaulted for being pansexual and Viktor was told that who he was “ain’t natural”. These instances, although are hard to hear and to see, are detrimental to help to bring attention to the realities that people of these communities have to face.

All of these characters also help to portray neurodivergent traits in a manner that doesn’t make a spectacle out of neurodivergent tendencies which a lot of shows tend to do. Each of the Hargreeves siblings portrays at least one neurodivergent trait each and that in itself has allowed neurodivergent people to relate to these characters and feel better about themselves as parts of who they are are being portrayed in their favourite characters.

Now, it makes no sense for Netflix to end the Umbrella Academy this early as it has been previously stated that seven seasons of the show would be ideal as it was based on the comic series written by Gerard Way. Not only is this a disrespect to Gerard but it is also an unfair ending to everyone who felt represented and seen through this show.

Netflix has been known to cancel representative shows and we can see that with a lot of their cancelled series. It also portrays so obviously with The Umbrella Academy as season three received barely any promotion from the streaming platform suspiciously just as a trans character was made canon in the series. 

The Umbrella Academy is an extremely beneficial show for everyone involved, including Netflix, this show being just as huge as the likes of Stranger Things, and even going as far to dethrone Stranger Things’ season 4 on Netflix’s number one spot despite having next to zero promotion as opposed to Stranger Things’ massive promotional scale. 

The Umbrella Academy has nothing but amazing numbers, an amazing cast and fantastical storytelling with unlimited amounts of potential, which is why I’m petitioning that against all odds we save it, or at the very least contribute to the conversation around Netflix.