Why Umbrella Academy Season 3 Gave Allison Such a Dark Character Arc

The Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman explains what inspired Allison's dark character arc in the latest season of the Netflix series.

Why Umbrella Academy Season 3 Gave Allison Such a Dark Character Arc

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy season 3.

The Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman explains why season 3 gave Allison such a dark character arc. The television show, based on Gerard Way’s popular comic series of the same name, premiered on Netflix back in 2019 and centers around the Hargreeves’, a dysfunctional family of adopted superpowered siblings. They navigate issues of time travel and their father’s mysterious past in an attempt to save the world from a seemingly inescapable global apocalypse. Emmy Raver-Lampman stars as Allison, aka Number 3, an actress with the ability to control minds and alter reality.

Over the course of The Umbrella Academy‘s first two seasons, audiences watched as Allison avoided death and the loss of her voice, experienced cruel forms of racial injustice in the 1960s, and faced the harsh reality about how she had been using her powers and the effects they had. In The Umbrella Academy season 3, she deals with the culmination of all her traumas and the realization that the things she loves the most, including her young daughter Claire, are constantly getting taken away from her. As the plot progresses, Allison becomes more dark, and what results this season is that her character, who once stopped using her powers and had been described as the most level-headed Hargreeves, makes some particularly shocking decisions.

In a recent interview with Tudum, Blackman reveals why Allison was given such a dark character arc in The Umbrella Academy season 3. When asked what inspired it, the showrunner says that it was not anger, but that after the events of the past, Allison suffers from PTSD. He adds that the pain of losing her daughter in the new timeline is “incredible” and that she just wants to find a way to get Claire back. Read Blackman’s quote regarding Allison’s arc below:

“It’s a dark arc, but it’s not driven by anger. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) is thrown into the Jim Crow South in Season 2, in 1963, where there’s out-and-out racism against people of color. She has no voice for the first year, literally. Physically, her throat is cut. Then when she gains back her voice in year two of her time in Dallas, no one’s listening because she’s a woman of color. So she’s trying to gain back her voice metaphorically now in Season 3, trying to be heard.
“The problem is, she’s suffering from PTSD from her time there. She’s in incredible pain from making the decision to leave [her husband], Ray Chestnut [Yusuf Gatewood], and the hope is that she finds her daughter, Claire [Coco Assad]. Claire does not exist in this timeline, so she’s lost everything and she’s coming apart at the seams. I thought Emmy did a beautiful job of showing the layers of that emotion. She’s trying to show a tough outer skin, but the audience sees that she’s emotionally just devastated and becoming more and more desperate to figure out a way to have her daughter back.”

Despite her dark character arc and some severely questionable decisions, Allison appears to get Claire back in The Umbrella Academy season 3 finale. However, it is unclear as to what her fate actually is, since she did not enter the universe reset with the rest of her family. Instead, audiences saw her arrive back at her Beverly Hills home, and while Five’s tourniquet was gone and his arm was restored, Allison’s bandage was still wrapped around hers. It begs the question of what exactly is real and what her role in a potential The Umbrella Academy season 4 would be if her siblings seek to fix the timeline again.

While many fans expressed disappointment with Allison’s arc, some of her actions are justifiable, and the show does allude to her breaking point several times this season. Assuming Allison isn’t dead, there is still a lot of room for her character development, especially if she decides to do right by her siblings. Allison’s story may continue if The Umbrella Academy returns for more episodes, and only then will her future become clear.