Trailer just dropped (this was posted in the Elliot Page topic but figured it would be good to start a separate topic):
I remember liking this show, I just don’t remember much about it or what’s going on. I hope they put out a decent recap. But yeah, I’ll watch.
I tried watching the first 3 or 4 episodes of Season 1, but the plot didn’t seem to start very quickly so I lost interest. Is it worth giving it another try?
I absolutely loved the first 2 seasons…can’t wait for the third!
Season 2 is much better than season 1. You can read up on season 1 and start on season 2 without missing anything from the experience.
Very much this. I liked Season 1 but had to work to get past the weirdness. The second season was excellent.
The weirdness is what got me right away, Wait - it that a talking chimp butler? Why is that huge guy on the moon? That kid is an old man? …
But by ep2, it was apparent that there were some really well developed characters and some great storytelling behind all that weirdness.
The toughest part for me was the initial scene - the birth in the pool. Just the unexpected blood. But then, I was hooked.
I think I’d vote for S1 over S2 - mainly because I really loved Hazel. And the whole situation of those 2 as time traveling killers bitching about their employee benefits and such.
But S2 was another completely different type of ride. One of my favorite images was that guy who was basically a smoking fish in a tank for a head. 
IIRC, the very end of the final ep had something like many versions of the kids showing up - I forget - from different timelines? Looked potentially confusing - but I’ll watch!
It’s not different versions of the kids (other than Ben). It’s they went to a different timeline where Hargreeves selected a different group of kids.
Yeah, it gets telegraphed a little. The little boy (I forget his name) was floating a small sparrow figurine above his hand while they were driving to California, implying he had a remnant of Vanya’s power, which would be a potentially major change in the timeline.
“Saving the world from their own mistakes” could be used as an overly simple summary of each of these seasons.
Yeah - now I remember. I just remembered a huge number of kids showing up - which looked potentially confusing to me.
I thought this was REALLY good the way they were able to tell very moving human stories amid all the weirdness. I understand a lot of folk get that sort of thing from the superhero movies - but they just never resonated with me the same as this.
These characters have more human proportions to their emotional maturity. Their family relationships, including all the typical petty and not so petty slights among siblings are much more realistically portrayed than we are used to seeing from superheroes. Yes, they work together to save the world blah, blah, blah, but their lives are fuller and more complex in humans ways we can actually relate to. These are not the most altruistic of heroes, most of them barely able to put the fate of humanity ahead of their own problems.
Yes @Great_Antibob, they are mainly driven to correct their own mistakes, and I think more out of fear or hatred of their ‘father’ than their heroic nature.
I like your comment.
The MCU movies do slight the backgrounds and interplay so much, but in a way it is required for that format. Umbrella Academy has more time to bring this in. But it can be hit and miss. It is very hard to bring the right balance of backstory and interpersonal aspects into a story in a way that appeals to the mass audience. So far, to me personally, the mix is good. I am not clicking skip past those bits.
Looking forward to the season.
Hey guts, season 3 is out, why didn’t someone say something? I only saw episode 1, have to rewatch it to catch some details. As everyone recalls the gang comes home from 1963 and finds that instead of the Umbrella Academy their father has created the Sparrow Academy. I’m not giving away much by saying that episode 1 starts with a fight between the two groups.
Although the fight does start in a very different and typically weird way, which my wife and I (being the right age) found hilarious. Maybe a little poke at the 80s nostalgia vibe of Netflix’s other big show du jour too… 
I’m just an episode and a half in.
OB
There’s the Kenny Loggins song from the 80’s and the second “needle-drop” of a Stranglers song - this time from the 70’s (Golden Brown was in S2)
So also barely in but something more than typical weird … the preview to the series bit replays the children born to mothers pregnant just that day - 43 of them and Reginald got 6. The new series starts off with stating 16 and he got 7. (It’s the first bit so not a spoiler.)
So this isn’t just that he choose different children. The timeline perturbation hit sooner and changed how many were born??
Just keep watching. This becomes part of the storyline.
OB
Reggie got 7 in the original timeline too. Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Five, Ben, and Vanya.
I finished yesterday. Here are my initial thoughts:
I liked it, but not as much as the first two. The Sparrows were a lot of fun, and I liked that they never bothered to explain Christopher. But they got killed off too quickly.
The grandfather paradox didn’t really make sense. Five said there would be alternate versions of themselves that never grew up as Umbrellas. But if the mothers all died, it would be those alternate versions of themselves that ceased to exists, not the originals. There’s no grandfather paradox there.
Allison’s heel turn really came out of nowhere and was mostly just here being a jackass. I’m wondering if she’ll be the villain next season.
Does Five have any other name?
Five, Diego, and Klaus are the interesting characters, perhaps they are just more selfish though.
So far I’m not thrilled with season 3, except it’s still just getting started and I hope they’ve set the stage for something more exciting. It’s easy to set up the Grandfather Paradox as an excuse to do anything at all, but I’m giving the writers some credit and believe they have a real plot under there somewhere.