‘Like a second home’: Cast of ‘The Umbrella Academy’ bid adieu to Toronto ahead of final season

On a sunny day in May 2023, the end still seemed far away for “The Umbrella Academy.”

Inside a studio in Etobicoke, the main cast members (minus Justin H. Min) were shooting on a set meticulously made to look like a vacant art deco department store.

The inevitable goodbyes would come, of course — the series’ fourth and final season debuts Thursday on Netflix — but, at that moment, the actors were having fun.

Viktor Hargreeves (Elliot Page) was lying unconscious at the foot of an out-of-order escalator while his adopted siblings tried to protect him from a monster.

Ritu Arya, who plays Lila, wife to Diego Hargreeves (David Castañeda), chuckled during a shooting break about how the actors were “just looking at air” instead of a monster, to be added later via visual effects.

“And then David had to run through. They’re gonna green screen him to do a flip, and then hop onto the escalator and run up (like) a superhero.

“It’s going to look really cool after the VFX, but when you’re standing there watching it with no music, with no tension, he literally just does this kind of little hop and a little yelp, and someone throws a little debris on his leg and we’re all just laughing so hard, like, sorry, but it just looks so funny,” she said. “Yeah, we’re having a blast.”

Indeed, a small group of journalists, watching on monitors, had seen Castañeda run, yell and jump several times, a crew member crouching nearby to throw the debris (the result, in the final edit, of shelving destroyed by the irate monster).

“Did you guys catch Diego’s escalator moment?” Robert Sheehan, who plays Klaus Hargreeves, asked us later.

“In the edit that’s going to look phenomenal. But in reality it looks like what on earth is he doing?”added Tom Hopper (Luther Hargreeves).

“I feel like Chris Farley,” joked Castañeda.

Funny escalator moments aside, the cast were optimistic that the final season will deliver for fans of “The Umbrella Academy,” based on a comic-book series of the same name by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá about a dysfunctional family of superpowered stepsiblings adopted by a billionaire father who is a (literal) alien.

The brothers and one sister, who over three seasons have repeatedly saved the world from apocalypses they inadvertently caused, lost their powers at the end of Season 3.

As Season 4 begins, they’re living relatively ordinary but not necessarily happy lives, reuniting at a birthday party for one of Diego and Lila’s kids. Then Viktor is kidnapped and the fam is off on another mission. Needless to say, they get their powers back — after a fashion — and there is another apocalypse brewing. Their main antagonists this season are a cult known as the Keepers, led by husband and wife Gene and Jean Thibodeau (guest stars and real-life married couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally).

The action is packed into six episodes instead of the usual 10, which the cast seemed to find invigorating.

“Every scene you come in for, there’s so much weight to it,” said British actor Hopper. “It means something, you know, there’s no scenes that are there for no reason.”

Added American actor Aidan Gallagher (Number Five), who was just 15 when the show debuted in 2019, “I’ve had more fun this year than any other just because everything’s so tight and also, this year (is) different in a lot of ways, which breathed a lot of life into it. And Five has this really fulfilling emotional arc this year.”

Emotional arcs for all the characters have been lurking throughout the show behind the action set-pieces and world-saving hijinks.

“We’re in this kind of superhero genre, but the core of it is this deeply emotional story ultimately about these kids who had a really abusive childhood and how that’s manifested as adults, and how they’re struggling through that and finding themselves all in their own different and unique ways,” said Canadian actor Page.

”(From) where their relationships started in Season 1, and then look to now and you go, ‘Oh my god, they’ve all travelled so far individually,’” added Hopper.

They have travelled as a team as well. Over three seasons, we’ve watched the Hargreeves siblings grow from embittered near strangers into a family, a bond that’s emphasized in this final poignant season.

Bonds have formed between the actors too.

“I’m really gonna miss the people,” said British actor Arya of her fellow cast members. “I think it’s rare to do a job where you’re doing it for so long and you really love coming to work, and you love the people you’re working with, and you laugh this much and you feel this connected as a family. It’s really set a high bar.”

“It’s bittersweet,” added American actor Emmy Raver-Lampman, who plays Allison. “But I also feel really lucky to go into a fourth season knowing that it’s the end, so (you don’t) take every moment for granted and (you) enjoy the time. A lot of shows don’t get that … and you don’t get to say proper goodbyes.”

It wasn’t just cast and crew members the actors expected to miss; it was Toronto itself, where shooting has been based since “The Umbrella Academy” began.

“I loved Toronto,” said Arya. “I feel like it’s a second home … I’ve spent more time here than any other place other than the U.K.”

“It’s my preferred Canadian city,” added Raver-Lampman. “The second it starts to get warm, it’s like overnight the whole city changes and everybody’s outside.”

“Toronto in May is just heaven, especially if you’ve endured the sh—ty winter,” agreed Irish actor Sheehan.

That raises the not so enjoyable aspect of shooting in Toronto and the GTA. Every single actor, when asked to name the most challenging part of making “The Umbrella Academy,” mentioned the cold.

Filming on a back lot in Pickering last winter — standing in for the fictional town of New Grumpson, Maine — was particularly memorable.

It was “essentially just a collection of shipping containers in a field, so there’s no indoors, you know?”said Sheehan. “We were out there for two weeks.”

“And it just so happened to be some of the coldest days of the year when we were out there. So the wind chill itself was brutal,” added Hopper.

There was also a notable winter shoot outside an East York dry cleaner that lasted until 2 in the morning; fellow actor Min’s mouth was so numb he couldn’t say his first line, said Hopper.

But, all in all, that was a small inconvenience while making a show that the cast said had boosted their careers, and enabled them to grow as people and as actors.

“What a true gift it’s been,” said Page. Though the series was ending, “I can’t be sad to get to have the amount of seasons we’ve had to live with the characters. It’s something I always wanted the opportunity to do as an actor.

“We’re so fortunate that audiences responded the way they did.”

The final season of “The Umbrella Academy” debuts Thursday on Netflix.

Clarification – August 8, 2024

This article was edited from a previous version to note that although the Valley Halla Villa location is included in the list, it is not publicly accessible and can’t be visited.