The first season of the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy ended with its dysfunctional family unit’s failure to stop Ellen Page’s character Vanya Hargreeves (a.k.a. The White Violin) from blowing up the moon and destroying all life on earth.
So how do you top that at the start of the second season, which debuts on Friday? With another earth-ending apocalypse, of course. This time, the end of the world is in 1963, which the time-traveling superpowered siblings now have to prevent while trapped in Dallas in the days leading up to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
As fans of the show — based on the comics by My Chemical Romance co-founder Gerard Way and illustrator Gabriel Ba — now know, it doesn’t do anything by halves. And the team of Luthor, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Ben, Vanya and Number Five have to dodge the shady machinations of The Commission while also taking part in the civil rights movement, the early days of the LGBTQ community finding its voice, and trying to change the course of history on that fateful day in Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
For Page’s Vanya, the first season was spent learning that she was special, and the most powerful member of the family, effectively gaslighted by her adopted father Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) into thinking she was not destined to change the world.
In season two, although stuck in the past with a case of amnesia, it’s a fresh start for Vanya, who gains control of her power and finds an opportunity to enjoy a new life.
“Shooting this season was extremely fulfilling,” says the Nova Scotia-born actor during a Zoom session with the Netflix series’ creator, showrunner Steve Blackman. “To do such an extreme arc last season was really fun and enjoyable, and at the end of it we saw her release a lot of repressed emotion and trauma, and it doesn’t work out so well for the world because she does blow up the moon.
“But now we find a Vanya that’s different in many ways. She’s able to connect to her emotions, she’s able to connect to other people in a real way for the first time, and because of that she does have more control of her powers and we see that element develop more and more over the course of the new season.
“She just continues to really connect to who she really is for the first time in her life.”
Watching season two of The Umbrella Academy now, with its doomsday scenario and strong themes of social protest, human rights and abuses of authority, it’s hard to believe how prescient its narrative has become since it was filmed last summer and fall.
As imaginative as they are, no one on its creative team could have predicted the world we find ourselves in as we watch the show a year later.
“If you’d told me six months ago that we’d be deep in this global pandemic, seeing this amount of suffering, I couldn’t have imagined it,” says Blackman, with the pink animal mask worn by time-hopping assassin Cha-Cha sitting next to his desk. “It changes the perspective of everything, the things we complained about before and now we’re in this position where the world has changed dramatically.
“We ended production just before American Thanksgiving, so we didn’t have to deal with COVID-19 then, but we did have to deal with it in relation to post-production, and had to come up with some very creative solutions, just like everyone else did.
“It’s lucky we got the show done in time, but it’s been crazy to see how much has changed since we wrapped (filming).”
Super powers meet civil rights
Over the course of season two, we see Emmy Raver-Lampman’s persuasive Allison (a.k.a. The Rumour) married to a civil rights leader and taking part in a sit-down protest at a whites-only lunch counter in Dallas in 1963, while Page’s Vanya develops a relationship with Sissy, a neglected housewife, while caring for her autistic son Harlan. This does not go over well with Sissy’s controlling husband Carl.
Page feels that by framing issues of civil rights and fighting homophobia in this past setting serves to emphasize why movements like Black Lives Matter are important, and how deeply entrenched systemic racism and other forms of hate have become over decades.
“As we’re seeing in regards to the degree of police brutality and also just a society that’s so profoundly not equal,” she says. We’re seeing disproportionately marginalized people dying of COVID ... and I’m going into that space, but that’s why in so many ways that certain issues tackled (on the show) in terms of civil rights and the LGBTQ experience in the 1960s are still very relevant.”
The turbulent side of the 1960s
The 1960s are often portrayed with a nostalgic glow, with heightened memories of J.F.K.’s Camelot, the British Invasion and the Summer of Love, but season two of The Umbrella Academy avoids falling into that trap. While each of its characters has to come to terms with their role in trying to make the world a better place, Blackman is more interested in portraying this season’s setting as a time of change that also paved the way for greater change yet to come.
“Steve and I talked about the storyline a lot, he’s an incredibly collaborative person to work with, and what we wanted to do was show Vanya falling in love for the first time, and all the beauty and joy of that,” says Page. “But yes, we also wanted to reflect the obstacles of the time.
“Being LGBTQ was illegal, it was considered a mental illness until 1973, so we wanted to reflect those issues in a story that’s also incredibly beautiful. I’m grateful for that representation in a show of this reach and magnitude.”
Although the full resumption of any kind of production remains up in the air, Blackman says he has ideas for a season three of The Umbrella Academy, should Netflix decide to renew it.
And Page has some irons in the fire, thinking about which potential project will follow her Nova Scotia-shot documentary about environmental racism, There’s Something in the Water, but she says it’s still too early to tell what will come next.
“It’s so interesting talking about work and different projects right now. We’d be absolutely delighted to shoot a season three, so I’m definitely hoping for that. And I have another film that I’ve signed on for, but it’s one of those strange things where you don’t know when anything is going to get made.
“So I’m trying to work on my own ideas and trying to stay creative.”
