The Umbrella Academy season 4 will overtake the comics, which can be both a blessing and a curse for the final episodes of the show. Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy has been hugely successful by loosely adapting writer Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Bá’s graphic novels of the same name. Season 1 followed the comics' apocalypse storyline, season 2 followed Volume 2’s narrative in 1960s Dallas, and season 3 created its spin on the Hotel Oblivion storyline from the third volume of the graphic novels. The Umbrella Academy was renewed for a fourth and final season and will bring with it an entirely unknown story.

Season 4 of The Umbrella Academy will be written and likely in production before the publication of Volume 4 of the comics. As such, the show won’t have the source material to fall back on. Gerard Way has announced that the fourth volume of the graphic novel series will be titled The Sparrow Academy, and considering most members of the Sparrow Academy in Netflix’s adaptation have died, season 4 and Volume 4 are unlikely to have much in common. Once both versions of The Umbrella Academy 4 are released, it will be interesting to compare how each iteration of the story has been pushed forward in different directions.

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Umbrella Academy Season 4 Has More Freedom Without The Comics

Emmy Raver-Lampman as Allison Hargreeves, Elliot Page as Vanya/Viktor Hargreeves, Tom Hopper as Luther Hargreeves, Aidan Gallagher as Number Five, David Castañeda as Diego Hargreeves, Robert Sheehan as Klaus Hargreeves in The Umbrella Academy Season 3

The Umbrella Academy season 4 now has the freedom to stray away from the comics' storyline. This will undoubtedly lend the writers of the show more creative liberty, giving them the power to create their own rules and story within The Umbrella Academy’s substantial world-building. This creative freedom could provide the show with a more surprising twist ending, especially for those who have read the comics. Adaptations are often stuck using the same ending as originally imagined despite having changed numerous characters and sub-plots within their narratives, which can sometimes leave projects feeling disjointed.

This separation from the comics will also allow The Umbrella Academy season 4 to give its versions of the characters the closure that lines up with what they’ve experienced throughout the three previous seasons. Adapting anything is a hard task, and while it’s always worthwhile to make sure that the characters are recognizable from the source material, they also need to be handled in such a way that makes sense within the context of the adaptation. The Umbrella Academy season 4 can ensure that its characters, like Elliot Page's Viktor Hargreeves, get the ending they need, as opposed to the ending the characters from the comics need.

Leaving The Comics Behind Still Carries A Risk For Umbrella Academy Season 4

The Umbrella Academy season 3 ending elevator

While the creative freedom provided by the separation of source material and adaptation can provide exciting new opportunities, it might also prove risky for The Umbrella Academy season 4. Adaptations are often beloved or despised for a particular reason – audiences want to see their favorite characters and storylines come to life on screen, but they also want these adaptations to cultivate the same feeling they had when they first interacted with the original story. Sticking the landing on an adaptation can be hard if there's no more source material to lean on. Writing something entirely new for the Umbrella Academy show is very different from adapting something already written.

The need for an ending to be surprising and unexpected can ruin the underlying message and theme of a narrative overall. The most famous instance of an adaptation running out of source material is probably HBO’s Game of Thrones. Once the most popular show in the world, its reputation nowadays is maligned because the ending was too rushed and too disparate from everything that came before. Getting adaptations right can be a huge amount of pressure. Hopefully, The Umbrella Academy's final season will provide an ending that fits with its unique narrative and gives the characters the closure they need.

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