The Umbrella Academy season 1, episode 6 review: The Day That Wasn’t
The Umbrella Academy continues its strange trip in episode six with “The Day That Wasn’t.” Spoilers ahead.
Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy continued its unusual, slow-paced televised novel of family dysfunction with episode six, titled “The Day That Wasn’t,”
In the last episode, “Number Five,” Klaus (Robert Sheehan) and Diego (David Castaneda) look for revenge on assassins Hazel (Cameron Britton) and Cha Cha (Mary J Blige) for killing Diego’s friend Detective Patch.
Meanwhile, Luther (Tom Hopper) and Five (Adam Gallagher) search for the missing briefcase, and Five makes a deal to save his siblings in the face of the coming apocalypse.
Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) becomes increasingly suspicious (and rightly so) of Vanya’s (Ellen Page) boyfriend Leonard Peabody (John Magaro), while Pogo (Adam Godley) and a revived Grace/Mom (Jordan Claire Robbins) share a secret from the children.
Lockets say a thousand words
Luther calls a family meeting to deal with the impending apocalypse that predictably goes sideways almost immediately, since no one particularly wants to re-form the Umbrella Academy as a unit, now that Sir Reginald (Colm Feore) is gone.
Convinced that his time on the moon was key to preventing the apocalypse’s destruction, he’s crushed to realize that it was only an elaborate self-esteem exercise following his near-death accident and recovery. To cheer him up, Allison takes him on a date, finishing an interrupted time as teenagers inside a cardboard-box fort in the greenhouse. Then make plans to head to LA to spend time with her daughter before everything falls apart.
While interesting to see a bit of normality from their adolescence, and even considering that they’re both adopted, seeing siblings with a crush on each other is kind of unpleasant.
Brotherly love can be awkward
Klaus is determined to get sober and clean before the end of the world, which Diego finds a little strange but worth helping with. They spend most of the episode bonding as we learn more about Klaus’s time fighting in the Vietnam War, where he fell in love with a fellow soldier named Dave.
Diego runs into Mom and is taken aback by her lack of being dead, for one thing, as he killed her in “Extra Ordinary,” but even more by the huge progress in her mental health, as she responds very normally, and even wants to go to the nearby park.
Isn’t Pleasantville wonderful because troublemakers are pre-emptively murdered?
More from TV
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episodes 1 and 2 review: Aftermath
- The 9 best (and 8 worst) Arrowverse characters
- 10 things nobody wants to admit about The Walking Dead
- Harley Quinn renewed for a fifth season on Max (and it’s well-deserved)
- The Walking Dead: Every TWD spinoff show coming in 2024 and beyond
Five begins his new job at the assassin corporation/time cop bureau The Commission, given a tour of their facility by the Handler (Kate Walsh). He then is assigned to the calamities department, overseeing the Hindenburg explosion as his first case. After he attempts to send conflicting order to Hazel and Cha Cha, for them to terminate each other, the Handler discovers his activities and a fight ensues.
This time assassin business is either incredibly clever or the most head-scratching part of this series. Though considering the comics were co-written by Gabriel Ba, co-author the bizarre and thought-provoking graphic novel Daytripper, it should maybe be expected.
Where things currently stand
Vanya was excluded from the family meeting like always, as she seemed to have nothing to contribute, while Leonard stole a figurine from a knickknack case. While venting on their way back to his house, she causes a huge rainstorm and warps lightpoles, seemingly providing a clue that she’s to blame for Five’s apocalypse. At his house, she discovers Sir Reginald’s notebook and starts flicking through the pages, learning about his role in the suppression of her powers.
In the park, Grace is about to tell Diego about what she and Pogo had been hiding.
Next. What (and who) is the Umbrella Academy?. dark
Five blows up the Handler with her own grenade and destroys the Commission’s Briefcase Room (allowing for time-traveling abilities) before escaping to the present. Well, sort of.
His escape rewound time back to that morning, undoing the events and revelations of the episode and providing an explanation for the episode’s title. This is cheating by the screenwriters, and at the same time you have to applaud the cleverness of this cliffhanger.