Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy” has been renewed for a fourth and final concluding season, the streamer announced Thursday morning.
“I’m so excited that the incredibly loyal fans of ‘The Umbrella Academy’ will be able to experience the fitting end to the Hargreeves siblings’ journey we began five years ago. But before we get to that conclusion, we’ve got an amazing story ahead for Season 4, one that will have fans on the edge of their seats until the final minutes,” showrunner and executive producer Steve Blackman said in a statement.
Cast members Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher, Justin H. Min, Ritu Arya and Colm Feore will all return for Season 4.
Executive Producers returning for the final season with Blackman are Jesse McKeown, Mike Richardson, Keith Goldberg, Scott Stuber and Beau Bauman; and Co-Executive Producers Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá.
“I think inevitably if we got a Season 4, it’s going towards an endgame,” Blackman previously told TheWrap. “I think at a certain point, I’m not sure where we’d go after Season 4. We have to be careful. My plan for next year is not to continually tread on the same ground we have before. It’s a challenge to come up with a new way to subvert this storyline, and I think we have an idea how to do that. But I think if we got to Season 4, it would be a great ending for the run of the show. I’m not saying I couldn’t do more, but you know, I think that would be very satisfying for the audience, four seasons.”
As for the story of the final season, Blackman told us, “I want to pose to the viewer and the fan, ‘Would they be happier without their powers?’ I mean, all they do is complain about being who they are. So will Victor, will Diego be happy without it or will they feel like they’re missing an appendage? Will the world not be right for them anymore without powers? Can they be ‘normal’?”
Blackman also added that while the universe is now reset, “how it is reset and the ways it will be reset is a place we’re going to be going to hopefully in Season 4,” so there’s a lot of story left to tell and many plot threads from Season 3 waiting to be picked up.
In addition to greenlighting the final season of the show, Netflix has extended its creative partnership with Blackman, whose next projects, under his Irish Cowboy production banner, are to develop “Horizon Zero Dawn” and “Orbital.”
‘“Horizon Zero Dawn’ and ‘Orbital’ are elevated, event-level projects grounded in characters that fans will love and relate to, which are hallmarks of Irish Cowboy productions,” Blackman said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be working with Netflix and all of our partners on developing these ground-breaking stories.”
“Horizon Zero Dawn” is “an epic sci-fi adventure series set a thousand years in the future, in a strange and beautiful world full of primitive tribes and high-tech machines, all built on the bones of the ‘Old Ones’ – the ruins of our present-day United States,” per a logline from Netflix. “The disaster that destroyed our world is long forgotten, but when these formerly peaceful machines mysteriously turn into dangerous hunters of all life, a young outcast named Aloy discovers that the only chance to save her world is to fight to uncover what happened to ours.”
Blackman is an executive producer on “Horizon Zero Dawn” with co-showrunner and co-creator along with Michelle Lovretta, and Abbey Morris is an EP; Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan of PlayStation Productions; Jan-Bart van Beek and Ben McCaw of Guerrilla; and Roy Lee of Vertigo; and Matthew Ball.
The series is based on the PlayStation Studios video game created by Guerrilla. The project is being done In association with Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions.
“Orbital” is “a thriller event series set on the International Space Station,” per Neftlix. It is an original concept by writers David and Keith Lynch, who will co-create the series with Steve Blackman. They will also direct an episode.
Executive producers for “Orbital” are Blackman, Abbey Morris, The Lynch Brothers, Dan Lin, Nick Reynolds, and Jonathan Eirich. Co-Executive Producers are Ed Barratt and Richard Wylie.
