Remember back before The Umbrella Academy debuted on Netflix last February, when it was an under-the-radar comic largely known being created by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance fame? It's rather silly to think about, considering just how massively popular the show became in the months after it debuted. Given the lack of a Season 2 premiere date to this point, as well as all of the recent TV production hiatuses, fans might be worried if the current coronavirus pandemic would delay Umbrella Academy's return. Thankfully, that doesn't appear to be the case.
The good news comes courtesy of showrunner Steve Blackman, who took to social media to say the show is soldiering on in the post-production phase, while also giving fans a celebratory peek at Season 2's Diego.
Quite a few Netflix shows had to temporarily pull the plug on filming current seasons as soon as COVID-19 concerns expanded around the globe, with The Witcher Season 2 getting waylaid by new star Kristof Hivju's positive diagnosis. Luckily for fans of The Umbrella Academy, Steve Blackman confirmed back in November that the show's second season had wrapped its filming, long before coronavirus reports started taking up entire news cycles. So that wasn't too much of a worry, unless any reshoots would have been necessary for one reason or another.
Still, though, The Umbrella Academy is obviously a show that needs a lengthy post-production process, from the color-corrected visuals to the digital special effects to the music and so on. It's definitely not the kind of show that could pull off the quick turnarounds that need to happen with network shows like The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. The fact that Steve Blackman is still working on editing and sound mixes for Season 2 – or at least he was less than a week ago – clearly put The Umbrella Academy in the crosshairs for projects that could get postponed due to the global outbreak.
It looks like Blackman & Co. figured out a way to keep the ball rolling on Umbrella Academy while presumably still adhering to hygiene standards. There are a lot of buttons and knobs on that mixing board, so I'm sure that Purell is constantly coming in handy by this point.
Beyond the keen confirmation that Season 2 is still plugging ahead (rather than zapping back to the past), the other noteworthy aspect of Steve Blackman's Instagram post is that new look at David Castaneda's Diego, who has experienced quite a bit of hair growth since Season 1. I'm talking both on top of his head and all over his face, too.
Though this news may hopefully confirm that The Umbrella Academy will find a way to Netflix viewers before 2020 is over, it sadly doesn't offer fans very much to go on by way of new characters or the overall narrative. Okay it doesn't offer anything to go on, but that just makes future up dates all the more exciting to wait for, right?
Steve Blackman hasn't posted to Instagram or Twitter since that message, which I'm hoping is just because he didn't want to again deal with that many people bombarding him with questions about a trailer release, and not because he and his creative team inevitably had to fully vacate Umbrella Academy's mixing stage. Considering how screwed up the theatrical movie schedule is going to be for the foreseeable future, with upcoming releases getting pushed as theater chains are closing down en masse, homebound Netflix subscribers are going to need a steady influx of new shows to binge on as we await positive news about the health crisis.
Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy will hopefully hit Netflix at some point in 2020, so stay tuned for more on that front. And head to our Winter and Spring TV schedule to see when and where all the latest new and returning shows can be found.
