The Umbrella Academy is over on Netflix, but the comics continue

The fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy has dropped on Netflix, and whatever you think about it, I'd like to extend congratulations to the cast and crew who poured their blood, sweat and tears into the show these past several years. If nothing else, there was nothing else quite like The Umbrella Academy on TV.

According to showrunner Steve Blackman, the show was always going to end with season 4. “When I started this thing, I sort of knew four seasons of the show,” he told the Hollywood Reporter back in 2022. “I have nothing passed that in my brain, but I’ve sort of kept to a trajectory. So, I have a really good sense of what season four would be, and it should be just as bonkers as the other seasons—what a challenge these superheroes, this family has being powerless.”

However, The Umbrella Academy comics by Gerard Way on which the Netflix show is based are still ongoing. According to Style Caster, Way has alluded to there being eight or nine volumes before the story of the superpowered Hargreeves siblings wrap up. Only four volumes have been released thus far.

The Netflix show ended in a way that's pretty definitive, but there's no guarantee that Way will follow that path with the comics. "[T]here’s no graphic novel for what we would call season four and while our series is coming to a close, Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba are actually working on their next volume, and they have a pretty good roadmap of where the story is going for many years to come,” Blackman told The Mirror. “That said, we have deviated from their version and, in a wonderful way, they’re making changes based on what we’re doing in the TV series. So, we’re symbiotic in some ways. But there are major elements—like The Cleanse and The Jennifer Incident—that are entirely from Gerard and Gabriel.”

So while it's doubtful that the comics will end in exactly the same way as the show did, some elements may migrate their way over to the page. According to Blackman, Way was very generous during the run of the show when they wanted to change things. When all is said and done, we're probably looking at two different versions of the same basic story.

All four seasons of The Umbrella Academy are available to stream on Netflix now.

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