Gerard Way: “My life in comics”
The solo artist, My Chemical Romance frontman and writer of The Umbrella Academy, the comic on which the new Netflix hit is based, shares his memories of the comics that made him a fanboy
The first superhero I ever loved was…
“Probably Wolverine. If you give Wolverine to a teenage boy or a pre-teen, then that really is the coolest thing in the world. He plays by his own rules, he’s full of angst, he not only has this cool healing factor but he also has claws, and they kinda hurt him and make him bleed when he uses them, and he has a bad attitude… He’s the perfect teenage comic book hero!”
The first time I ever met Stan Lee was…
“Really early on in the band days, second album era. I went up to him in baggage claim at the airport and he signed my sketchbook. As soon as he saw my sketchbook, he was like, ‘I can’t get you a job kid…’ and because my tour manager was stood next to me, he was like, ‘No, he’s good, he’s in a rock band. He’s not looking to get into comics!’ And I laughed along, but really I was totally looking to get into comics!”
The first comic book that ever made me cry was…
“You know, I think it might have been The Crow. It’s so f***ing emotional.”
The first comic book shop that felt like home was…
“There was a shop in New Jersey called Metropolis that sadly isn’t there now. That place and those people completely shaped who I was to become. I didn’t have any friends when I was a freshman. I literally didn’t have any friends at all other than a few friends I saw after school. At high school there was no-one. And so I used to spend all of my time at Metropolis. I met my best friend there. I met Dana Greene who inked my first comic there. That shop gave me so much. And it wasn’t just comics; I had a friend who would make me mixtapes that introduced me to the most amazing music. It was my education, really.”
My favourite place to buy comics in 2019 is…
“I love a place called Secret Headquarters in Silverlake in LA. I discovered it when we were making ‘The Black Parade’ and we were staying at The Paramour hotel.”
The person I’ve met in comics that left me starstruck was…
“It’s [Glaswegian writer] Grant Morrison. I’d said how much his stuff had inspired me in an article about MCR in Spin magazine. Turns out Grant was a big fan of ‘The Black Parade’ and would listen to it when he was writing Batman.”
“I was so nervous about meeting him. I was in Scotland playing at The Barrowlands with MCR and I’d got up super early to meet him and his wife that afternoon. Suddenly my tour manager says, ‘He’s outside,’ and there he was in a purple suit, with an overcoat, looking like a supervillain, wearing sunglasses, in front of a sportscar that his Barbarella-esque wife Kristen is driving. We’ve been super close ever since. He’s kind of my mentor.”
Source: https://www.nme.com/music-interviews/gerard-way-life-comics-2454330
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And *SPOILERS* the following two articles deal with the finale of TUA.
I finished watching the series last night and I can say I really enjoyed it! I loved Klaus and Diego (those two are my ship, gotta admit - they're the Joker and Batman of the team pretty much) and Number Five especially. I wish we could have gotten a more direct adaptation of the book though... I kept thinking/hoping Leonard would turn into The Conductor (I loved The Conductor), I wanted to see Vanya's actual white violin costume (*laments*, though the show's transformation was still cool), I wish the characters looked more like their comic versions, etc. But I understand how difficult the source material was to adapt, which is why I was always both excited and wary whenever it was announced the comic was being developed for the screen. Pogo's CGI turned out fantastic (his death was heartbreaking). And the things they did change worked for television. The cast is more diverse, which is nice. I love the show's version of Klaus - just wish he could have been more goth. Hazel & Cha-Cha were slightly disappointing to me, tbh. I like Mary J, but really? She's a mediocre actor. She was capable in the role, but I had issues connecting with her acting. I also prefer those two characters as a solid team, like in the book... Didn't need the doughnut lady getting in the way. That side story was sweet, but probably too sweet for me. (It reminded me of the song "Dasher" though.)
Speaking of which, it was very cool hearing Gerard's songs during the show too. And seeing his name in the opening credits of every episode. I'm just so proud of him! I still remember seeing an episode of Steven's Untitled Rock Show back during the Revenge era which had Gee talking about these characters and showing off drawings for this comic he was working on... And here we are, all these years later, and that comic is now a hit tv show and a whole new generation is discovering his writing and his music and MCR and... my heart is just so full right now. Looking forward to more seasons!
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'Umbrella Academy' Creators Break Down That Destructive Season Finale
Despite playing out more as a slow-burn, moody character drama than an action-packed superhero show, The Umbrella Academy's first season wraps up on a striking cliffhanger.
Having spent nine episodes working to prevent an impending and mysterious apocalypse, the Hargreeves clan realize far too late that their own sister Vanya (Ellen Page) is the one responsible for bringing about the end of the world. Worse, it's the group's actions - specifically those of Luther (Tom Hopper) - that push Vanya over the edge into uncontrollable violence. After Vanya loses control of her newfound powers and slits sister Allison's (Emmy Raver-Lampman) throat, Luther makes the unfortunate decision to lock her up in a soundproof steel cell in the family basement; the same place where she was periodically imprisoned as a child by the siblings' abusive adoptive father. The re-triggering of past trauma is what drives her transformation into the powerful and destructive White Violin.
In the season's final moments, realizing that there is no way for them to stop the apocalypse in this timeline, The Boy (Aidan Gallagher) comes up with a way to save himself and his siblings by time traveling. As the earth burns around them, all seven siblings disappear. To where? We can only guess. Ahead, showrunner Steve Blackman and graphic novel creator Gerard Way speak with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the biggest changes from page to screen, how trauma and abuse define Vanya's journey, and what that cliffhanger means for season two.
Is it safe to assume that in the final shot, the siblings successfully traveled into the past and will get another shot at stopping the apocalypse?
Steve Blackman: The truth is, we don't know where they are. We don't know what happened to them. I wanted this to really be the best of cliffhangers, in that you're like "Wait, what? What happened?" It gives us a lot of openness and legroom to tell the best story we can next year. But yes, the apocalypse is not solved. They did not save the world, which is a slight alteration of the comic. To me, it was the right Netflix cliffhanger. You really want people to go into the off-season saying, "I gotta know what happened," and that will be revealed when - hopefully - you see season two.
How much of the show's future do you have mapped out?
Gerard Way: There's eight graphic novels planned in total, and we're on the third series right now. Now that we've started up again, we're averaging about a year and a half per series for the turnaround. Steven knows what happens in all of those eight volumes; I wrote up this document for him and the writers, which explains what will happen through all of the graphic novels.
So are you planning a parallel eight-season run for the show?
Blackman: Yeah. It's wonderful to have that [outline], because it gives you a springboard. Some of it will work and some of it won't, but what's nice about it is, I know where [Gerard's] head is going. The idea is not to deviate too much, we want to stay on course with what the comics are doing, and having that plan ahead of time allows us to set some things up now for later seasons, things that you'll see and later be like, "Oh, I get that now, they did that for this reason." That's what we're thinking ahead to.
The core of the show is these siblings dealing with their traumas, and Vanya's trauma is also what ends up causing the apocalypse.
Blackman: Right, I wanted to go back to this childhood trauma. I read a lot about the effects of parents on kids, and my goal was to return her to something that was really traumatic from her childhood that would re-trigger these memories. The truth is, how much do you remember of when you were four, or three, or five? But smells and places and seeing things really do take you back to this place, and for Vanya it triggers her to remember who she really was.
Way: Vanya's transformation is different from the comic, but I know Steve wanted her transformation to be a longer process. In the book, it's a machine and it's done very quickly. That doesn't give an actor a lot of room to move in that, or develop.
Blackman: It grew out from early conversations with Ellen. She had an idea early on of how this character would slowly change over time, down to the nuances of what she would do in each episode, and that felt like it needed a more grounded transformation. It couldn't be a machine, it had to be sort of a metamorphosis of sorts, and she does a masterful job of going from this wallflower to this woman who's completely checked into who she really is. It's not a revenge story in any way, to me. It's Vanya coming into her own and realizing, "I'm not just ordinary, despite what my father has told me and my siblings have told me. I am something more than that."
I was frustrated with Vanya for not noticing the red flags with Leonard Peabody (John Magaro), her secretly evil boyfriend. But does she fall into that controlling relationship because she has a history of abuse?
Blackman: I feel the character has definitely been in an abusive type of relationship her whole life, with her father. They all have. I mean, if this was real life, the first thing someone would ask is, "How did you get these kids, Mr. Hargreeves?" I also want to remind you that Peabody has read her journal, and knows every little secret about her, so he's pressing every button. I think Vanya's very smart, I think she's very bright and I think deep down there are some red flags, but he just seems to say the right things and seems to understand her. He has a sort of playbook on her. Also, the whole show is eight days. I think if it took place over a few weeks, she would probably come to realize [the truth] a little faster. For Vanya, it's like, this guy is into me, and my family keeps telling me no one should be into me. He manipulates her in a way that I think is very, very destructive.
Luther's physicality is one of the biggest changes from the graphic novels. How did you figure out how to make that character work on screen?
Blackman: In the graphic novel, he's in a spacesuit the whole time, and I worried that would distract from people understanding the character, and people who knew nothing about the graphic novel would say, "This character isn't serious." I love that he has this boyhood innocence, and he's under dad's wing more than any of them, and he's never had a life beyond the house. So I put him in clothing in a way that still allowed us to tell this tragic backstory about how he became what he became, but it allowed him to function in a little bit more of a grounded way in the world.
Way: But he's still big! Tom Hopper is already huge, and then they put a prosthetic on him. I thought that was a big risk and I thought that was awesome. They didn't just give him a human-shaped partially ape body, they gave him this full prosthetic and he looks insane!
Blackman: Oh yeah, we did all this research, and we gave him these extra muscles and bones that only apes would have.
Cha-Cha is a man in the graphic novels, which changes the dynamic with her assassin partner Hazel. Why make that change?
Way: One of the things I really like about the whole series, and a way that it improves upon the source material, is that it is so much more diverse and inclusive. It does that on every level, and Hazel and Cha-Cha are different but it's a really good change.
Blackman: I pulled them from volume two of the comics, because they didn't exist in volume one, but they were just such great characters that I knew we had to have them. I knew I wanted Cameron Britton, and then when I heard we could get Mary J., I was like, "We have to have these two people!" I love using the two of them in a Coen Brothers kind of way, with their weird problems and the bureaucracy they deal with.
Klaus' (Robert Sheehan) backstory with Dave, the soldier he loved and lost, is another change from the comics. What inspired that addition?
Blackman: I wanted to give Klaus a love story, but in an unconventional way, and of course it's too easy for Klaus to meet someone in this time period. He has to fall in love with somebody that he can't be with from Vietnam! In volume two of the comics there's a big Vietnam sequence, so that was the inspiration. Robert Sheehan is just such a good actor, so it's great to see him play those layers and reveal that oh, [Klaus] is not just this idiot, there's layers of passion and creativity there.
Speaking of love stories: Alison and Luther. Incest or not incest?
Way: (Laughs.) I'll tell you this: When I first wrote the comic, my answer would have definitely been, "Pfft, not incest! They're not even related!" But now that I'm forty, I'm like, "Yeah, but they still grew up together. That's kind of fucked up."
Blackman: The room debates this endlessly. We ended up, obviously, on the notion that they are not biological [relations] in any way, they were taken from their homes, they didn't grow up in a typical family, they were more like recruits to a man who didn't love them. So a love story was okay and believable, even though they really only achieved a kiss on a day that never happened. They never got far along in their love story!
They do get one of the season's biggest set pieces, though: their dance to "Dancing In The Moonlight."
Way: To me, that is the biggest moment in the show, that dance between Alison and Luther.
Blackman: Oh my God, it was a nightmare to do! We hung thousands of bulbs, we couldn't lock off the whole park, so homeless people would just walk through the shots… As a side note, Ellen Page's wife [Emma Portner] choreographed that dance. I phoned her and said, "Please, can you do me a favor, can you teach these two how to dance?" So she did! It came out so great, and you can see how much the two of them like each other in real life. Emmy and Tom just loved every minute of dancing together.
There are a lot of classics on the soundtrack. How did you settle on what tracks to use in what moments?
Way: Steven had a really distinct vision of what he wanted for the music, and a lot of times he'll write those into the scripts and encourage his writers to do the same. The music and the needle drops and things like that are really Steve and the writers.
Blackman: I love music, and I knew I didn't want to just play fifteen seconds of a song, I wanted the songs to live and exist [in the show]. We said in some ways, it's like a music video, it's a full moment, and I wanted to find great songs to punctuate moments and then play them through. At the end of the first episode I put They Might Be Giants' "Istanbul" over a scene where The Boy is shooting, because I love to counterpoint violence and action with a song that just has no business being there, and yet somehow it just finds a synergy and it works. We also had a great score by Jeff Russo, who won an Emmy for Fargo and wrote all the music [for season one of Umbrella Academy]. The whole Apocalypse Suite concert is him. Music's a big part of the show, and will be in future seasons.
With big musical moments like the "I Think We're Alone Now" dance, was that song written into the script?
Blackman: Yeah, so when I did my pass of Jeremy Slater's script when I came on board, I wanted to add a moment to show that the kids are really similar, although they would never tell each other how they're all hurting inside. I just think when you go back to your room as a kid, your house when you haven't been there in years, it all comes back to you. They all think nobody's watching, but they're all doing the exact same thing, they're letting go and being free and being kids again, forgetting all the bullshit, and then you pull out to that wide shot and you see them all dancing and you realize they're not so far apart. They're all the same family, and there's a bit of innocence to all of them in that moment.
Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/umbrella-academy-season-finale-explained-gerard-way-post-mortem-interview-1186813
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The Umbrella Academy showrunner answers our burning questions about the season finale
Well, that happened.
The first season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy introduced viewers to the seven Hargreeves siblings - the superstrong Luther (Tom Hopper), the wily knife-throwing Diego (David Castaneda), the reality manipulator Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), the trippy medium Klaus (Robert Sheehan ), the time-traveling Number Five, the late Ben (Justin H. Min), and the seemingly normal Vanya (Ellen Page) - who were all adopted by the late billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) because of their unusual powers. Due to Hargreeves’ rigorous standards, the children all grew up disaffected and alienated from each other. Reunited by Hargreeves’ death and their long-lost sibling Number Five’s warnings of an impending apocalypse, the siblings were eventually able to reconcile with each other by the end of the season. They did not, however, manage to actually stop the aforementioned apocalypse. Season 1 ends with the planet in flames, a significant change from the original comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba.
EW spoke with showrunner Steve Blackman about choosing family over the world, Vanya’s season-long journey from Muggle to monster, the day that was and the day that wasn’t, and more. Check it out below.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I want to start right at the very end. As the last episode ends, it becomes apparent that they did not stop the apocalypse. The last shot is literally of the Earth being engulfed by explosions. How did you guys decide to play it that way?
STEVE BLACKMAN: Yeah, it ends horribly! What I really wanted to do was find a really good cliffhanger. I also thought it was too easy for this family to come together in eight days and save the world. It has to be trickier than that. I wanted to have an ending where they sort of came together as a family, but they didn’t achieve the greater goal of saving the world. If we get a second season, we’ll see how they’re gonna end up. These guys aren’t dead, but we don’t know what happens. I thought it told a lot about who this family was, which is they couldn’t quite get it together. Their wonderfully dysfunctional family couldn’t quite win the day. I thought that was very telling for the season.
EW: I like how the White Violin story ended up. You kept all the main beats from the Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite comic (Vanya killing Pogo, slashing Allison’s throat, playing the apocalyptic concert, etc.) but in a format unique to the show. How did you conceive her journey?
SB: I talked about it early on with Ellen. We decided we wanted to play it from start to finish. Ellen made some really creative choices and acting choices in episode 1 to show the whole metamorphosis into episode 10. Like how she goes from less to more makeup, how she starts wearing her hair down as this relationship with Leonard Peabody (John Magaro) escalates and she starts feeling more in control of her life. All the way to the endgame, where she’s overtaken by the abilities she didn’t even know she had. So it was a lot of talk with Ellen about playing a full metamorphosis in the truest sense of the word, going from light to dark or dark to light, whichever way you see it.
EW: The ultimate revelation about Vanya is that she wasn’t powerless at all, she was the exact opposite. And if you come to see Hargreeves as a villainous figure due to the negative effects he’s had on his children, her opposition to him almost makes her seem heroic or sympathetic.
SB: There is more to Hargreeves, he’s not just a villain. There’s much more to this character that we’ll see if we get more seasons. But he held her back, he medicated her, told her she was nobody, and she became a self-fulfilling prophecy. She lived believing she wasn’t special, and that’s very damaging. Getting to open up like this overwhelmed her in the end.
For the graphic novel fans, I still wanted to gave her an ending that was similar to the graphic novel. The ending’s different, but similar ideas are in there so that real fans won’t feel cheated. I really wanted to get back to Apocalypse Suite, even having our composer Jeff Russo to spend a lot of time on that. The guy’s won an Emmy. He wrote that from scratch, the whole “Apocalypse Suite.” All that music you’re hearing is Jeff Russo’s score. It’s a 90-person orchestra, it’s all original music, and it’s all fit to what we’re doing. I told Jeff right away this is what I wanted to do and that he had to write a 20-minute score. That’s something I want people to know, because that’s an amazing thing Jeff Russo did. It’s a true “Apocalypse Suite.”
EW: On this track, I wanted to talk about Leonard Peabody, a.k.a Harold Jenkins, because he’s the one who sets Vanya on her path. He’s not quite a figure from the comics, though some things about him resemble the evil crazy orchestra conductor in the first volume. But I love the idea that the person manipulating the Umbrella Academy and bringing them down is their former biggest fan. Can you talk about conceiving this character and his role?
SB: First of all, John Magaro is great. I wanted to get away from the conductor, because it felt like too much of a trope. It was such a villainous character, almost with a twirling mustache. It worked in the comics, but I needed someone to psychologically manipulate Vanya as opposed to physically change her. So the idea was to give her a love interest. What was tricky about him is he’s read that journal and knows all the secrets of the family, so he approaches Vanya thinking she’s the weakest link to go after them, and so he sort of unleashes the monster without realizing it.
He does it well, I worked it out with him and Ellen early on how we’d slowly over time peel the onion on this story. He manipulates her with every single beat, but you can get it, given who Vanya is. He keeps it together almost until the end, but then his hatred spills over and he spills the beans too early. But he almost makes it with her! Once she’s in that bathtub, he’s gotten her to comply and she’ll do whatever he says.
EW: And then he ends up getting one of the most brutal deaths in the show.
SB: Oh, I love his death. That was so much fun to do. I think for the audience it’s unexpected when it happens, because usually the villain makes it to the end. I wanted to kill him in the early-middle part of an episode where you just go wait, he can’t die, he’s the bad guy! But it’s too late. Vanya has her own autonomy now, her own agency now, and she’s moving forward even without him. The mad scientist is gone now, but the monster’s there.
EW: I wanted to ask about that one episode, episode 6, that gets erased from history because of what Number Five does. I think that’s interesting because seeing events play out differently shows you various dynamics in the family, like how strangely things go when the person comforting Luther over Hargreeves’ moon lie is Klaus rather than Allison. Did you worry viewers might get frustrated by that fakeout, or do you hope you’ve built up trust with the audience by that point in the season?
SB: I want them to see it with trust, but in a world where a guy like Five exists, there’s a paradox where he can go back and reset a day. “The Day That Was” and “The Day That Wasn’t” are the two episodes. I thought it was a really beautiful way to show how each of our actions has consequences. As minor as they may seem, getting another chance and turning left instead of right or saying something different may shift the course of your life. For example, Luther and Allison will never know that kiss happened. That might be torturous to the audience, but I hope they take it for what it’s worth. It’s fun storytelling to show them this is the world that these characters live in. It was not to torture the audience. I wanted it to be something fun and whimsical so they could understand why we did it, because it’s just pure storytelling in my mind. It tells a great story about what Five is going through and then he comes back a day earlier to be able to say “we’re not gonna f- around on personal s- today, we’re going to pull together as a family and make things right.” And that changes all those moments they had together. They might be my favorite episodes. They were hard to write and break, but I’m really proud of those two episodes.
EW: I love the show’s version of Klaus going to heaven, because the black-and-white color scheme and the fact that the show’s on Netflix make it seem like he wandered into Roma for a second.
SB: [Laughs] If I didn’t colorize his shirt, he would be in Roma, wouldn’t he? That’s a good point. I did want to keep the shirt in color, which was expensive because we had to do it in every frame. But I wanted it to feel like a comic book, with a bit of color on a white background. If I didn’t do that and he ran around you’d be like, he’s in Roma!
My favorite scene in the whole show I think is where Hargreeves gives Klaus a shave. It’s just a wonderful moment where you get to talk to your dad who’s dead, and the fact that he’s giving you a shave is just so weird and creepy. By the way, I didn’t say it was heaven! So it may or may not be heaven where that happened.
EW: I really enjoyed Ben’s presence over the course of the season, culminating in the fact that we got to see his amazing powers again at the end! Plus the other siblings actually get to see his presence manifest. Was that meant to symbolize their reconciliation as a family?
SB: Yeah it was very important that we came full circle and they got to see that Ben’s still weirdly with them still. It’s why they broke up in the first place, because his death broke him apart. Now they see him at the end of the first season, and you got it that it represents their greater reconciliation. Now if only they only could achieve their final job of saving the world!
Source: https://ew.com/tv/2019/02/20/umbrella-academy-showrunner-burning-questions-season-finale/
The first superhero I ever loved was…
“Probably Wolverine. If you give Wolverine to a teenage boy or a pre-teen, then that really is the coolest thing in the world. He plays by his own rules, he’s full of angst, he not only has this cool healing factor but he also has claws, and they kinda hurt him and make him bleed when he uses them, and he has a bad attitude… He’s the perfect teenage comic book hero!”
The first time I ever met Stan Lee was…
“Really early on in the band days, second album era. I went up to him in baggage claim at the airport and he signed my sketchbook. As soon as he saw my sketchbook, he was like, ‘I can’t get you a job kid…’ and because my tour manager was stood next to me, he was like, ‘No, he’s good, he’s in a rock band. He’s not looking to get into comics!’ And I laughed along, but really I was totally looking to get into comics!”
The first comic book that ever made me cry was…
“You know, I think it might have been The Crow. It’s so f***ing emotional.”
The first comic book shop that felt like home was…
“There was a shop in New Jersey called Metropolis that sadly isn’t there now. That place and those people completely shaped who I was to become. I didn’t have any friends when I was a freshman. I literally didn’t have any friends at all other than a few friends I saw after school. At high school there was no-one. And so I used to spend all of my time at Metropolis. I met my best friend there. I met Dana Greene who inked my first comic there. That shop gave me so much. And it wasn’t just comics; I had a friend who would make me mixtapes that introduced me to the most amazing music. It was my education, really.”
My favourite place to buy comics in 2019 is…
“I love a place called Secret Headquarters in Silverlake in LA. I discovered it when we were making ‘The Black Parade’ and we were staying at The Paramour hotel.”
The person I’ve met in comics that left me starstruck was…
“It’s [Glaswegian writer] Grant Morrison. I’d said how much his stuff had inspired me in an article about MCR in Spin magazine. Turns out Grant was a big fan of ‘The Black Parade’ and would listen to it when he was writing Batman.”
“I was so nervous about meeting him. I was in Scotland playing at The Barrowlands with MCR and I’d got up super early to meet him and his wife that afternoon. Suddenly my tour manager says, ‘He’s outside,’ and there he was in a purple suit, with an overcoat, looking like a supervillain, wearing sunglasses, in front of a sportscar that his Barbarella-esque wife Kristen is driving. We’ve been super close ever since. He’s kind of my mentor.”
Source: https://www.nme.com/music-interviews/gerard-way-life-comics-2454330
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And *SPOILERS* the following two articles deal with the finale of TUA.
I finished watching the series last night and I can say I really enjoyed it! I loved Klaus and Diego (those two are my ship, gotta admit - they're the Joker and Batman of the team pretty much) and Number Five especially. I wish we could have gotten a more direct adaptation of the book though... I kept thinking/hoping Leonard would turn into The Conductor (I loved The Conductor), I wanted to see Vanya's actual white violin costume (*laments*, though the show's transformation was still cool), I wish the characters looked more like their comic versions, etc. But I understand how difficult the source material was to adapt, which is why I was always both excited and wary whenever it was announced the comic was being developed for the screen. Pogo's CGI turned out fantastic (his death was heartbreaking). And the things they did change worked for television. The cast is more diverse, which is nice. I love the show's version of Klaus - just wish he could have been more goth. Hazel & Cha-Cha were slightly disappointing to me, tbh. I like Mary J, but really? She's a mediocre actor. She was capable in the role, but I had issues connecting with her acting. I also prefer those two characters as a solid team, like in the book... Didn't need the doughnut lady getting in the way. That side story was sweet, but probably too sweet for me. (It reminded me of the song "Dasher" though.)
Speaking of which, it was very cool hearing Gerard's songs during the show too. And seeing his name in the opening credits of every episode. I'm just so proud of him! I still remember seeing an episode of Steven's Untitled Rock Show back during the Revenge era which had Gee talking about these characters and showing off drawings for this comic he was working on... And here we are, all these years later, and that comic is now a hit tv show and a whole new generation is discovering his writing and his music and MCR and... my heart is just so full right now. Looking forward to more seasons!
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'Umbrella Academy' Creators Break Down That Destructive Season Finale
Despite playing out more as a slow-burn, moody character drama than an action-packed superhero show, The Umbrella Academy's first season wraps up on a striking cliffhanger.
Having spent nine episodes working to prevent an impending and mysterious apocalypse, the Hargreeves clan realize far too late that their own sister Vanya (Ellen Page) is the one responsible for bringing about the end of the world. Worse, it's the group's actions - specifically those of Luther (Tom Hopper) - that push Vanya over the edge into uncontrollable violence. After Vanya loses control of her newfound powers and slits sister Allison's (Emmy Raver-Lampman) throat, Luther makes the unfortunate decision to lock her up in a soundproof steel cell in the family basement; the same place where she was periodically imprisoned as a child by the siblings' abusive adoptive father. The re-triggering of past trauma is what drives her transformation into the powerful and destructive White Violin.
In the season's final moments, realizing that there is no way for them to stop the apocalypse in this timeline, The Boy (Aidan Gallagher) comes up with a way to save himself and his siblings by time traveling. As the earth burns around them, all seven siblings disappear. To where? We can only guess. Ahead, showrunner Steve Blackman and graphic novel creator Gerard Way speak with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the biggest changes from page to screen, how trauma and abuse define Vanya's journey, and what that cliffhanger means for season two.
Is it safe to assume that in the final shot, the siblings successfully traveled into the past and will get another shot at stopping the apocalypse?
Steve Blackman: The truth is, we don't know where they are. We don't know what happened to them. I wanted this to really be the best of cliffhangers, in that you're like "Wait, what? What happened?" It gives us a lot of openness and legroom to tell the best story we can next year. But yes, the apocalypse is not solved. They did not save the world, which is a slight alteration of the comic. To me, it was the right Netflix cliffhanger. You really want people to go into the off-season saying, "I gotta know what happened," and that will be revealed when - hopefully - you see season two.
How much of the show's future do you have mapped out?
Gerard Way: There's eight graphic novels planned in total, and we're on the third series right now. Now that we've started up again, we're averaging about a year and a half per series for the turnaround. Steven knows what happens in all of those eight volumes; I wrote up this document for him and the writers, which explains what will happen through all of the graphic novels.
So are you planning a parallel eight-season run for the show?
Blackman: Yeah. It's wonderful to have that [outline], because it gives you a springboard. Some of it will work and some of it won't, but what's nice about it is, I know where [Gerard's] head is going. The idea is not to deviate too much, we want to stay on course with what the comics are doing, and having that plan ahead of time allows us to set some things up now for later seasons, things that you'll see and later be like, "Oh, I get that now, they did that for this reason." That's what we're thinking ahead to.
The core of the show is these siblings dealing with their traumas, and Vanya's trauma is also what ends up causing the apocalypse.
Blackman: Right, I wanted to go back to this childhood trauma. I read a lot about the effects of parents on kids, and my goal was to return her to something that was really traumatic from her childhood that would re-trigger these memories. The truth is, how much do you remember of when you were four, or three, or five? But smells and places and seeing things really do take you back to this place, and for Vanya it triggers her to remember who she really was.
Way: Vanya's transformation is different from the comic, but I know Steve wanted her transformation to be a longer process. In the book, it's a machine and it's done very quickly. That doesn't give an actor a lot of room to move in that, or develop.
Blackman: It grew out from early conversations with Ellen. She had an idea early on of how this character would slowly change over time, down to the nuances of what she would do in each episode, and that felt like it needed a more grounded transformation. It couldn't be a machine, it had to be sort of a metamorphosis of sorts, and she does a masterful job of going from this wallflower to this woman who's completely checked into who she really is. It's not a revenge story in any way, to me. It's Vanya coming into her own and realizing, "I'm not just ordinary, despite what my father has told me and my siblings have told me. I am something more than that."
I was frustrated with Vanya for not noticing the red flags with Leonard Peabody (John Magaro), her secretly evil boyfriend. But does she fall into that controlling relationship because she has a history of abuse?
Blackman: I feel the character has definitely been in an abusive type of relationship her whole life, with her father. They all have. I mean, if this was real life, the first thing someone would ask is, "How did you get these kids, Mr. Hargreeves?" I also want to remind you that Peabody has read her journal, and knows every little secret about her, so he's pressing every button. I think Vanya's very smart, I think she's very bright and I think deep down there are some red flags, but he just seems to say the right things and seems to understand her. He has a sort of playbook on her. Also, the whole show is eight days. I think if it took place over a few weeks, she would probably come to realize [the truth] a little faster. For Vanya, it's like, this guy is into me, and my family keeps telling me no one should be into me. He manipulates her in a way that I think is very, very destructive.
Luther's physicality is one of the biggest changes from the graphic novels. How did you figure out how to make that character work on screen?
Blackman: In the graphic novel, he's in a spacesuit the whole time, and I worried that would distract from people understanding the character, and people who knew nothing about the graphic novel would say, "This character isn't serious." I love that he has this boyhood innocence, and he's under dad's wing more than any of them, and he's never had a life beyond the house. So I put him in clothing in a way that still allowed us to tell this tragic backstory about how he became what he became, but it allowed him to function in a little bit more of a grounded way in the world.
Way: But he's still big! Tom Hopper is already huge, and then they put a prosthetic on him. I thought that was a big risk and I thought that was awesome. They didn't just give him a human-shaped partially ape body, they gave him this full prosthetic and he looks insane!
Blackman: Oh yeah, we did all this research, and we gave him these extra muscles and bones that only apes would have.
Cha-Cha is a man in the graphic novels, which changes the dynamic with her assassin partner Hazel. Why make that change?
Way: One of the things I really like about the whole series, and a way that it improves upon the source material, is that it is so much more diverse and inclusive. It does that on every level, and Hazel and Cha-Cha are different but it's a really good change.
Blackman: I pulled them from volume two of the comics, because they didn't exist in volume one, but they were just such great characters that I knew we had to have them. I knew I wanted Cameron Britton, and then when I heard we could get Mary J., I was like, "We have to have these two people!" I love using the two of them in a Coen Brothers kind of way, with their weird problems and the bureaucracy they deal with.
Klaus' (Robert Sheehan) backstory with Dave, the soldier he loved and lost, is another change from the comics. What inspired that addition?
Blackman: I wanted to give Klaus a love story, but in an unconventional way, and of course it's too easy for Klaus to meet someone in this time period. He has to fall in love with somebody that he can't be with from Vietnam! In volume two of the comics there's a big Vietnam sequence, so that was the inspiration. Robert Sheehan is just such a good actor, so it's great to see him play those layers and reveal that oh, [Klaus] is not just this idiot, there's layers of passion and creativity there.
Speaking of love stories: Alison and Luther. Incest or not incest?
Way: (Laughs.) I'll tell you this: When I first wrote the comic, my answer would have definitely been, "Pfft, not incest! They're not even related!" But now that I'm forty, I'm like, "Yeah, but they still grew up together. That's kind of fucked up."
Blackman: The room debates this endlessly. We ended up, obviously, on the notion that they are not biological [relations] in any way, they were taken from their homes, they didn't grow up in a typical family, they were more like recruits to a man who didn't love them. So a love story was okay and believable, even though they really only achieved a kiss on a day that never happened. They never got far along in their love story!
They do get one of the season's biggest set pieces, though: their dance to "Dancing In The Moonlight."
Way: To me, that is the biggest moment in the show, that dance between Alison and Luther.
Blackman: Oh my God, it was a nightmare to do! We hung thousands of bulbs, we couldn't lock off the whole park, so homeless people would just walk through the shots… As a side note, Ellen Page's wife [Emma Portner] choreographed that dance. I phoned her and said, "Please, can you do me a favor, can you teach these two how to dance?" So she did! It came out so great, and you can see how much the two of them like each other in real life. Emmy and Tom just loved every minute of dancing together.
There are a lot of classics on the soundtrack. How did you settle on what tracks to use in what moments?
Way: Steven had a really distinct vision of what he wanted for the music, and a lot of times he'll write those into the scripts and encourage his writers to do the same. The music and the needle drops and things like that are really Steve and the writers.
Blackman: I love music, and I knew I didn't want to just play fifteen seconds of a song, I wanted the songs to live and exist [in the show]. We said in some ways, it's like a music video, it's a full moment, and I wanted to find great songs to punctuate moments and then play them through. At the end of the first episode I put They Might Be Giants' "Istanbul" over a scene where The Boy is shooting, because I love to counterpoint violence and action with a song that just has no business being there, and yet somehow it just finds a synergy and it works. We also had a great score by Jeff Russo, who won an Emmy for Fargo and wrote all the music [for season one of Umbrella Academy]. The whole Apocalypse Suite concert is him. Music's a big part of the show, and will be in future seasons.
With big musical moments like the "I Think We're Alone Now" dance, was that song written into the script?
Blackman: Yeah, so when I did my pass of Jeremy Slater's script when I came on board, I wanted to add a moment to show that the kids are really similar, although they would never tell each other how they're all hurting inside. I just think when you go back to your room as a kid, your house when you haven't been there in years, it all comes back to you. They all think nobody's watching, but they're all doing the exact same thing, they're letting go and being free and being kids again, forgetting all the bullshit, and then you pull out to that wide shot and you see them all dancing and you realize they're not so far apart. They're all the same family, and there's a bit of innocence to all of them in that moment.
Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/umbrella-academy-season-finale-explained-gerard-way-post-mortem-interview-1186813
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The Umbrella Academy showrunner answers our burning questions about the season finale
Well, that happened.
The first season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy introduced viewers to the seven Hargreeves siblings - the superstrong Luther (Tom Hopper), the wily knife-throwing Diego (David Castaneda), the reality manipulator Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), the trippy medium Klaus (Robert Sheehan ), the time-traveling Number Five, the late Ben (Justin H. Min), and the seemingly normal Vanya (Ellen Page) - who were all adopted by the late billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) because of their unusual powers. Due to Hargreeves’ rigorous standards, the children all grew up disaffected and alienated from each other. Reunited by Hargreeves’ death and their long-lost sibling Number Five’s warnings of an impending apocalypse, the siblings were eventually able to reconcile with each other by the end of the season. They did not, however, manage to actually stop the aforementioned apocalypse. Season 1 ends with the planet in flames, a significant change from the original comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba.
EW spoke with showrunner Steve Blackman about choosing family over the world, Vanya’s season-long journey from Muggle to monster, the day that was and the day that wasn’t, and more. Check it out below.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I want to start right at the very end. As the last episode ends, it becomes apparent that they did not stop the apocalypse. The last shot is literally of the Earth being engulfed by explosions. How did you guys decide to play it that way?
STEVE BLACKMAN: Yeah, it ends horribly! What I really wanted to do was find a really good cliffhanger. I also thought it was too easy for this family to come together in eight days and save the world. It has to be trickier than that. I wanted to have an ending where they sort of came together as a family, but they didn’t achieve the greater goal of saving the world. If we get a second season, we’ll see how they’re gonna end up. These guys aren’t dead, but we don’t know what happens. I thought it told a lot about who this family was, which is they couldn’t quite get it together. Their wonderfully dysfunctional family couldn’t quite win the day. I thought that was very telling for the season.
EW: I like how the White Violin story ended up. You kept all the main beats from the Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite comic (Vanya killing Pogo, slashing Allison’s throat, playing the apocalyptic concert, etc.) but in a format unique to the show. How did you conceive her journey?
SB: I talked about it early on with Ellen. We decided we wanted to play it from start to finish. Ellen made some really creative choices and acting choices in episode 1 to show the whole metamorphosis into episode 10. Like how she goes from less to more makeup, how she starts wearing her hair down as this relationship with Leonard Peabody (John Magaro) escalates and she starts feeling more in control of her life. All the way to the endgame, where she’s overtaken by the abilities she didn’t even know she had. So it was a lot of talk with Ellen about playing a full metamorphosis in the truest sense of the word, going from light to dark or dark to light, whichever way you see it.
EW: The ultimate revelation about Vanya is that she wasn’t powerless at all, she was the exact opposite. And if you come to see Hargreeves as a villainous figure due to the negative effects he’s had on his children, her opposition to him almost makes her seem heroic or sympathetic.
SB: There is more to Hargreeves, he’s not just a villain. There’s much more to this character that we’ll see if we get more seasons. But he held her back, he medicated her, told her she was nobody, and she became a self-fulfilling prophecy. She lived believing she wasn’t special, and that’s very damaging. Getting to open up like this overwhelmed her in the end.
For the graphic novel fans, I still wanted to gave her an ending that was similar to the graphic novel. The ending’s different, but similar ideas are in there so that real fans won’t feel cheated. I really wanted to get back to Apocalypse Suite, even having our composer Jeff Russo to spend a lot of time on that. The guy’s won an Emmy. He wrote that from scratch, the whole “Apocalypse Suite.” All that music you’re hearing is Jeff Russo’s score. It’s a 90-person orchestra, it’s all original music, and it’s all fit to what we’re doing. I told Jeff right away this is what I wanted to do and that he had to write a 20-minute score. That’s something I want people to know, because that’s an amazing thing Jeff Russo did. It’s a true “Apocalypse Suite.”
EW: On this track, I wanted to talk about Leonard Peabody, a.k.a Harold Jenkins, because he’s the one who sets Vanya on her path. He’s not quite a figure from the comics, though some things about him resemble the evil crazy orchestra conductor in the first volume. But I love the idea that the person manipulating the Umbrella Academy and bringing them down is their former biggest fan. Can you talk about conceiving this character and his role?
SB: First of all, John Magaro is great. I wanted to get away from the conductor, because it felt like too much of a trope. It was such a villainous character, almost with a twirling mustache. It worked in the comics, but I needed someone to psychologically manipulate Vanya as opposed to physically change her. So the idea was to give her a love interest. What was tricky about him is he’s read that journal and knows all the secrets of the family, so he approaches Vanya thinking she’s the weakest link to go after them, and so he sort of unleashes the monster without realizing it.
He does it well, I worked it out with him and Ellen early on how we’d slowly over time peel the onion on this story. He manipulates her with every single beat, but you can get it, given who Vanya is. He keeps it together almost until the end, but then his hatred spills over and he spills the beans too early. But he almost makes it with her! Once she’s in that bathtub, he’s gotten her to comply and she’ll do whatever he says.
EW: And then he ends up getting one of the most brutal deaths in the show.
SB: Oh, I love his death. That was so much fun to do. I think for the audience it’s unexpected when it happens, because usually the villain makes it to the end. I wanted to kill him in the early-middle part of an episode where you just go wait, he can’t die, he’s the bad guy! But it’s too late. Vanya has her own autonomy now, her own agency now, and she’s moving forward even without him. The mad scientist is gone now, but the monster’s there.
EW: I wanted to ask about that one episode, episode 6, that gets erased from history because of what Number Five does. I think that’s interesting because seeing events play out differently shows you various dynamics in the family, like how strangely things go when the person comforting Luther over Hargreeves’ moon lie is Klaus rather than Allison. Did you worry viewers might get frustrated by that fakeout, or do you hope you’ve built up trust with the audience by that point in the season?
SB: I want them to see it with trust, but in a world where a guy like Five exists, there’s a paradox where he can go back and reset a day. “The Day That Was” and “The Day That Wasn’t” are the two episodes. I thought it was a really beautiful way to show how each of our actions has consequences. As minor as they may seem, getting another chance and turning left instead of right or saying something different may shift the course of your life. For example, Luther and Allison will never know that kiss happened. That might be torturous to the audience, but I hope they take it for what it’s worth. It’s fun storytelling to show them this is the world that these characters live in. It was not to torture the audience. I wanted it to be something fun and whimsical so they could understand why we did it, because it’s just pure storytelling in my mind. It tells a great story about what Five is going through and then he comes back a day earlier to be able to say “we’re not gonna f- around on personal s- today, we’re going to pull together as a family and make things right.” And that changes all those moments they had together. They might be my favorite episodes. They were hard to write and break, but I’m really proud of those two episodes.
EW: I love the show’s version of Klaus going to heaven, because the black-and-white color scheme and the fact that the show’s on Netflix make it seem like he wandered into Roma for a second.
SB: [Laughs] If I didn’t colorize his shirt, he would be in Roma, wouldn’t he? That’s a good point. I did want to keep the shirt in color, which was expensive because we had to do it in every frame. But I wanted it to feel like a comic book, with a bit of color on a white background. If I didn’t do that and he ran around you’d be like, he’s in Roma!
My favorite scene in the whole show I think is where Hargreeves gives Klaus a shave. It’s just a wonderful moment where you get to talk to your dad who’s dead, and the fact that he’s giving you a shave is just so weird and creepy. By the way, I didn’t say it was heaven! So it may or may not be heaven where that happened.
EW: I really enjoyed Ben’s presence over the course of the season, culminating in the fact that we got to see his amazing powers again at the end! Plus the other siblings actually get to see his presence manifest. Was that meant to symbolize their reconciliation as a family?
SB: Yeah it was very important that we came full circle and they got to see that Ben’s still weirdly with them still. It’s why they broke up in the first place, because his death broke him apart. Now they see him at the end of the first season, and you got it that it represents their greater reconciliation. Now if only they only could achieve their final job of saving the world!
Source: https://ew.com/tv/2019/02/20/umbrella-academy-showrunner-burning-questions-season-finale/