Almost two full years after The Umbrella Academy left viewers with its bombshell season 2 cliffhanger, the series will finally return to Netflix tomorrow with a new season that finds the Hargreeves family meeting their doppelgängers in the Sparrow Academy. With this, the TV show will officially outpace its source material, since the last comic book published also ended with the Hargreeves encountering the Sparrows for the first time. The series has already made changes to the stories that inspired it. But fortunately, it’s not affecting showrunner Steve Blackman’s rapport with the comic’s creator, Gerard Way.
Blackman discussed these changes in a new interview with The Wrap ahead of tomorrow’s season premiere. Additionally, Blackman discussed his relationship with Way, who launched the original series with artist Gabriel Bá in 2007. Way previously confirmed his plans to eventually continue the series and follow up on his own cliffhanger with the Sparrows. However, it sounds like whatever he has planned will draw influence Blackman’s ideas.
“I’m trying to always be respectful of the source material,” said Blackman. “But Gerard and I got to a good place where he sort of accepts that the TV show and the graphic novel are not the same thing anymore. We’re actually sort of symbiotic where there are things in the TV show that are sort of influencing how he’s continuing the graphic novels, and clearly what he does in the graphic novels influences what we do in the TV show.”
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Additionally, Blackman teased the role that the Sparrows will play in the upcoming episodes, indicating that their introduction gives him a chance to explore the “nature vs. nurture” argument in a unique way.
“I wanted to show the difference between what could have happened to the Umbrellas had they stayed a family versus them breaking apart and not staying together,” added Blackman. “The Umbrella Academy is a family that didn’t know how to be superheroes, and the Sparrows are superheroes that didn’t know how to be a family. So that was my starting point. It’s sort of a ‘What If?’ What could the Umbrellas have been?”
The Umbrella Academy season 3 premieres on Netflix tomorrow, June 22.
How do you feel about the TV series beating its source material to the punch this year? Let us know in the comments down below!
Recommended Reading: The Umbrella Academy Vol. 3
