“The Umbrella Academy” Episode 1 Thoughts

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I’ve watched the first episode and so far I like the show. The Netflix series seems to be going for a mostly straight deconstruction of the teen superhero group and dropping a lot of the absurdist scifi elements from the comic. This isn’t a bad thing just different.

The chronology of this first episode pulls events from as far the fourth issue of the comic. So anyone looking for a one to one recreation should turn away now. It doesn’t feel out of order and until I checked the comic I thought it might have only been from the first two issues. Personally, I’m looking forward to more scenes that aren’t in the comic. While the comic is a fun read it’s a little shallow on character development. With ten episodes I hope to see more into what makes these people tick.

One large change is Vanya, the seventh child, looks to have more interactions with the rest of the Academy. On my recent reread of the first volume of the comic, which this first season seems to be based on, I noticed she barely says two sentences to Diego before she goes to SPOILER and SPOILER happens. It makes sense that if you cast Ellen Page in a role that you give her more to work with.

A welcome change is we are given brief introductions with character names for all the grown children. In the comic, names are rationed out at one or two an issue. Yes, this is realistic in regards to speech patterns but terrible when trying to keep several characters straight in your mind.

Mild spoiler: Another character(one that I have wanted to see more of) that was mostly absent from the comic appears in the first episode and might get more appearances in the rest of the series.

Rating for this first episode: 4.5/5

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