This Collider opinion piece argues that Netflix's superhero-fantasy series The Umbrella Academy, first released in 2019, remains worth watching despite a final season that split its audience. The writer contends that the show's bleak, nihilistic Season 4 conclusion — in which the adoptive siblings' repeated efforts to prevent the apocalypse ultimately come to nothing — should not overshadow the strength of its earlier seasons, drawing a comparison to how Game of Thrones's poorly received ending failed to erase the rest of its run.

Based on Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's graphic novel, the series follows 43 children mysteriously born on the same day to women who showed no prior sign of pregnancy, seven of whom are adopted by eccentric billionaire Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) and develop supernatural powers. The ensemble also features Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, Robert Sheehan and Aidan Gallagher, with each season built around a different end-of-the-world scenario. The author singles out Season 2 — which sends the characters back to the 1960s, with Number Five facing a version of himself sent to assassinate JFK, Klaus as a cult leader and Allison as a civil rights activist — as the show's creative peak, praising its blend of zaniness and emotional stakes before later seasons grew more sombre.