The Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman discusses season 3's opening surprise dance battle sequence. The Netflix superhero series is based on Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's original series of graphic novels, published by Dark Horse Comics. The Umbrella Academy season 3 debuted on the streaming service on June 22nd, after a two-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In The Umbrella Academy season 3, episode 1, "Meet the Family," the Hargreaves siblings come face to face with a vastly different world following their actions in the 1960s, when their meeting with the younger Sir Reginald Hargreaves (Colm Feore) led to him adopting a different set of empowered children. Now, in a timeline in which none of them became superheroes, tensions build between the two different sets of Hargreaves children, with the Umbrella Academy grappling with the return of Ben (Justin H. Min), Diego (David Castañeda) is hit by Jayme's (Cazzie David) hallucinogenic spit, leading to him imagining a surprising dance battle between the Umbrella and Sparrow Academies to Dean Pitchford and Kenny Loggins' "Footloose." Following season 3's release, Blackman has shared some insight into this odd sequence.
In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, Blackman revealed that he hoped to open season 3 with a memorable scene, with the showrunner having fun with what Diego's imagination might come up with. While Blackman was concerned about whether the cast would be able to perform the sequence, Blackman praised The Umbrella Academy cast for learning to perform the routine through COVID safety precautions, without the use of dance doubles. While the scene was a light-hearted moment, Blackman knew that it would have to be followed by a fight, saying:
Exclusive: "Well, we wanted to have a big bang for the opening and we had this great moment of Diego's hallucination caused by Jamie, played by Cazzie David. It was a lot of fun for me to think, "What would Diego's hallucination be?" I thought it was just absurd that he'd come up with "Footloose," so we just had great fun talking about that and I thought, "Can the actors, would they be able to do that?" To their credit, through COVID lockdown and quarantines, they learned that dance with a choreographer, they practiced it and they had no no dance doubles. That was all them, the whole time. I thought, once you get through that, which is just a hallucination, then you need the action, actually, of the real moment and we get into a big, big fist fight between superheroes."
Blackman's hopes of shocking audiences with a surprising and somewhat bizarre sequence certainly came to fruition. The dance sequence has already proved a major talking point coming out of The Umbrella Academy season 3's release. However, as the showrunner says, the light-hearted dance scene ultimately gives more weight to the fight that comes afterwards, as the Umbrella and Sparrow Academies face off in an intense battle. It's possible that unexpected scenes like this one could make their way into a potential The Umbrella Academy season 4, which Blackman says he's hopeful about, though the renewal is yet to get the official green light from Netflix.
The Umbrella Academy hasn't been short of surprising dance sequences throughout its run, with season 1 seeing the Hargreaves children dancing to Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" in their family home. What's more, season 2 saw Viktor (Elliot Page), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) dance in a salon to Sam Cooke's "Twistin the Night Away." With The Umbrella Academy season 3 receiving praise for its heartfelt but weird story, the show is continuing trends that made the series so endearing to fans in the first place, and longtime viewers will likely appreciate a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how The Umbrella Academy's latest surprising dance sequence was thought up and pulled off.