The Boys and Umbrella Academy finally do more with marginalized characters

Superheroes: they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. This is, at its core, the basic premise of Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys and Netflix’s The Umbrella AcademyTwo of the most controversial superhero series on TV. Although they are vastly different in their respective stories, both were able to offer a diversity of superhero teams that could be compared to the predominantly white-male Avengers from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But neither honored that diversity — until now.

Diversity wasn’t the only thing that set Umbrella Academy And The Boys2019 was a different year. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe was optimistic about superheroes in general, The BoysAnd The Umbrella AcademyThe viewers were provided with an honest and grounded perspective. R-rated superhero humor about a world that superheroes can be real and very corporate. The BoysThis darker perspective on superhero fandom was offered. In the show, Vought Industries has manufactured a drug to create superpowers, and it used this power to create The Seven, the world’s most prestigious superhero group. Homelander (Anthony Starr), an essentially white supremacist Capt. America, is the leader of The Seven. The Seven are The Deep (Chace Crocker), Starlight (Erin Moriarty), Queen Maeve(Claudia Doumit), A-Train [Jessie T. Usher], and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell).

In contrast, The Umbrella AcademyIt is not a critical of the genre but season one did explore some of the dangers of super-stardom. It focuses on the Hargreeves siblings — Viktor (known by a different name in seasons 1 and 2) (Elliot Page), Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Five (Aidan Gallagher), and Ben (Justin H. Min) — who were adopted as children by an eccentric billionaire and raised to be a superhero team.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Despite their diverse casts and more gender-balanced superhero teams — remember, the O.G. Avengers was composed of five white men and one white woman — neither The Boysnor The Umbrella AcademyThese actors truly took full advantage of all the stories offered by diversity. But diversity only makes a show. Seasons 1 and 2 were not interested in exploring the male, non-cis experience.

Season one of The Umbrella Academy didn’t really acknowledge ethnicity at all. It was evident that this was partly by design. In the graphic novel the show is based on, all the Hargreeves siblings are white, and it didn’t focus much on the ethnic identity or heritage of the heroes. Season 1 took a similar approach, never really acknowledging how the siblings’ ethnic identities might have affected them personally. This was in some ways a positive step. None of their powers were related to their ethnicity, as is a very common tendency in the fantasy/superhero genre, and the characters’ storylines were about more than just their race. It also reduced the complexity of characters and made them less humane.

For example, season 1 shows Allison as a star actress. However, the audience understands that Allison would have likely faced harassment and death threats because she is Black. Meanwhile, Diego loves to play vigilante and somehow isn’t afraid of being arrested and thrown in jail, despite being a Latinx man who carries knives. After the Hargreeves brothers traveled back to Dallas in 1960s Texas, this changed somewhat. Given the setting, it was impossible for Allison’s race not to factor into her storyline — and the show was better for it — but Ben, Diego, and newbie Lila (Ritu Arya) were still treated as somewhat ethnicity-less.

The BoysIt took a completely different approach when it came to non-white male characters. However, the results were equally disappointing. Vought explicitly shows all male non-white characters as valued by Vought because of their gender and ethnic identities, which is a dystopian setting.. It is a strange world. The BoysA-Train, as a Black male, is most valuable to The Seven. It’s a commentary on how corporations use diversity as a marketing tool, exploiting people of color to be seen as inclusive and make money. The problem is that the show’s first two seasons, on the whole, didn’t really succeed in actually treating its non-white male characters as anything other than that either.

Photo: Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix

Photo: Prime Video

One of the major themes in The Boys season 2, for example, was how Vought capitalized on feminism, manufacturing a girl power narrative for Starlight, Stormfront (Aya Cash), and Queen Maeve, three women who a) didn’t like each other very much, and b) had no autonomy or power to decide their own futures. It way into how industries package and sell girl power without actually advancing women’s rights. But this critique was dulled by the show’s insistence on still centering cis white men. It’s hard to applaud The Boys for going after faux feminism when its female characters can sometimes feel like mere plot devices, and whose only female lead of color, Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), doesn’t speak. It’s difficult to effectively critique a trope while actively supporting it.

Both were redeemed after two seasons of not giving non-cis white male characters the depth and character they deserve. The BoysAnd The Umbrella AcademyThey have undergone significant transformations during their third seasons. These shifts are directly related to 2020. This year saw an epidemic in the world and huge support for Black Lives Matter. Pop culture was a greater connection point between those isolated at home during lockdown. The enormity of BLM rekindled discussions about how pop culture is consumed and what media perpetuates negative stereotypes. The writers’ room of The BoysAnd The Umbrella AcademyWe listened.

While The Boys season 3 still spends a majority of its time focusing on its white male leads, it also gives more agency to MM (Laz Alonso), Black Noir, A-Train, and Kimiko — arguably four of the show’s most underserved characters to date. Black Noir finally appears without his helmet after two seasons of anonymous appearances and silent threats. We also learn his story, making his identity as Black man and his superhero alter ego inseparable. Kimiko is also given more agency, both in terms of communication — she finally gets to really converse with those around her via text messages, sign language, and music — and as a superhero. After losing her powers in a fight, she decides to take V again to regain her powers, despite declaring it the last thing she’s ever wanted.

MM’s backstory and his family life get more fleshed out, giving him a life beyond just being Butcher’s (Karl Urban) number two. A-Train struggles with a large loss in his abilities and chooses to rebrand his character as a Black superhero. He explores his African roots. His attempt to make Vought’s racist world work at first glance seems petty. Please see the following: him. The difficulty he has reconnecting with his Black identity is used as a punchline, yes, but it becomes much more than that — and could set him up for more down the line too.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Image courtesy of Netflix

The Umbrella AcademyThe third season allows the characters of Season 3 to express their individuality in small and big ways. In the first episode, for example, emo Ben and Diego start spontaneously arguing in Korean and Spanish — languages neither of them have ever really spoken on the show before. In fact, Castañeda had previously said in interviews that he didn’t think Diego would necessarily identify as Hispanic. “He was never raised in that culture,” he told PopSugar while reflecting on season 1 Diego. “I thought this guy wouldn’t even speak Spanish.” This makes a certain amount of sense, but by just giving these two actors the opportunity to use their language skills, it opens up Diego and Ben as characters. All of a sudden, they are more fleshed out, more real — specificity creates better characters and, therefore, better stories.

Viktor’s and Allison’s season 3 arcs are the perfect example. After Elliot Page’s public transition, it only made sense for his character to go through the same evolution in the season, which added a whole new layer to the character. And, instead of leaving Allison’s season 2 trauma in the past, season 3 uses it as her main motivation. This leads Allison down a dark — potentially even villainous — path, but even her biggest betrayals in season 3 point to a greater understanding that her life experience has been different than that of her siblings. It’s something that Raver-Lampman says she was “asking” the show to dive into. “That was very much a part of the conversation before we started filming,” she tells Polygon. “I think there’s a certain amount of trauma and lingering side effects from her time there [in the 1960s] that we could not ignore.”

It’s out of this exploration of trauma that, for the first time in the series, Diego and Allison, two of the non-white Hargreeves siblings, actually have a conversation about race and how it affects them. In one particularly moving scene, they have a heart to heart where they connect about how the rest of their (white) family doesn’t understand the real scope of what Allison had to live through in the ’60s. Diego brings her to a bar that is white supremacist in order to help her deal with her anger. They get into some fights and let off steam. As Raver-Lampan said, “Being the two siblings of color, I thought it was nice to have a moment where they can connect on that and really see each other for the first time in a way that they potentially never have.”

This season’s episode gives Allison and Diego a chance to be seen in a different way. Both characters have their own arcs this season completely unrelated to their ethnic identities (though Allison’s is related to the trauma of her experience in the ’60s), and that’s important, but it’s also affirming to see the show recognize that their race plays a part in their story.

The BoysAnd The Umbrella AcademyThey faced opposite challenges when they entered their third season. The BoysThe company had to be more than just satirizing the superhero genre with stereotypes or props, and expand its character of color. The Umbrella AcademyTo give context and ethnicity to the characters, it was necessary to include gender identity as well. Characters of color, LGBTQ+ characters, and female characters can’t just be used for diversity points, but they also can’t be completely separated from their identities. There’s a happy middle ground somewhere. The BoysAnd The Umbrella AcademyIt is possible that they are finally close to finding it.

The Umbrella AcademyNetflix now streams season 3 The latest episodes are now available on Netflix. The Boys Season 3 drops every Friday.