The Umbrella Academy is a new Netflix TV show about a dysfunctional family of superheroes who come together after the death of their father to save the world. Created by Jeremy Slater, the show is based off a comic book of the same name written by the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, Gerard Way, and artist Gabriel Bá.

The family consists of seven siblings. Each with their own special power and superhero alias, except for Vanya (Ellen Page), she was born ordinary, unlike her siblings. When the siblings were first adopted they were given numbers instead of names. Their father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore), wasn’t very caring and he built the children a robotic mom named Grace (Jordan Claire Robbins). She gave them each names, except for Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) who ran away before everyone was given a name.

The show takes place when all of the siblings are adults and are no longer run around playing superhero like they were forced to during childhood by their adoptive father. Luther (Tom Hopper) lives alone on the moon, sent to help the Earth if a disaster ever strikes, Alison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) is a movie star, Diego (David Castañeda) is a vigilante. Klaus (Robert Sheehan) is a raging drug addict, Number Five is still missing up until halfway through the first episode, and Vanya is a violinist. The estranged siblings come together for their father’s funeral and later together try and stop the apocalypse.

When I first heard about the show, I thought that the mix of superheroes and the apocalypse was a reach. Two very different themes with typically very different outcomes made me nervous to start watching the show. The show managed surpassed my expectations and proved that a dysfunctional family of childhood superheroes in their 30s trying to stop the world from ending could make an interesting plot. The show tells the viewers that we are all messed and it’s okay to be messed up and the season ending is something that viewers would never expect, comic book fan or not.

The cast includes many talented actors and much of the show is truthful to the comics. All the actors did amazing in their roles. Sheehan and Hopper both have strong accents, Sheehan is Irish and Hopper is British, and both did an amazing job changing their accents to be American. Sheehan also did a great job with his unique role, Klaus the drug addict who can talk to the dead. He was so funny and really did a good job of showcasing Klaus’s addiction. Gallagher, a fifteen year old, did such a good job in his role as a 58-year-old man. I was convinced that he really was an old man. I could not find one bad thing to say about any of the actors and how they played their roles.

Even with the strange plot, the show is very easy to relate to. My personal favorite characters are Five and Klaus. Klaus is the most relatable character in the show being the sibling often left behind and ignored or thought of as not valuable. Five is also relatable in that he seems to hate his siblings, but would do anything to help them. Every character in the show has something viewers can relate to, which makes this one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

The soundtrack to the show is phenomenal. Featuring strange songs like Istanbul by They Might Be Giants and Blood Like Lemonade by Morcheeba, but all the songs perfectly match the scenes they were played for.

The only problem I found with the show is that some things from the comics that would have been easy to fit into the show were gone. Such as Diego’s ability to breathe underwater or the Fact that Five can only time travel. In the comics, Hazel (Cameron Britton) and Cha-Cha (Mary J. Blige), who are time-traveling assassins had very different personalities. As a comic book fan, some of these aspects annoyed me.

Everything about this show from the actors to the plot makes it hard to look away. I could only find a few things that annoyed me, but all in all it is a great show. With ten, hour-long episodes it makes it perfect to binge watch, and watch over again.

Rating: 9/10