The third season of Netflix’s critically-acclaimed The Umbrella Academy dropped earlier this week, and, to the surprise of absolutely no one, it continues to fire on all cylinders.
But its excellence wasn’t limited to delectably absurd nuances, magnetic chemistry between the Hargreeves family members, and action sequences that go toe-to-toe with its more intimate moments in terms of quality. Season three also managed to pull off one of the rarer feats in entertainment – respectful trans representation.
When showrunner Steve Blackman found out about Elliot Page’s transition, he decided it was important to incorporate the transition of Page’s character, Vanya Hargreeves, into the show as well, thus introducing us to Viktor Hargreeves.
In an interview with ComicBook.com, Blackman revealed the crucial steps that were taken in order to handle such representation with care, which included involving Page closely in the process, as well as bringing a transgender writer onto the show’s writing team.
It was so important that Elliot was part of that story telling. So once Elliot told me that in life he was going to make this transition, there was no pressure on me to not do it or do it, but it felt important to try to do that story. So I went to GLAAD, I talked to Nick Adams at GLAAD and then I went to this wonderful trans writer named Thomas McBee and in collaboration with Elliot, we sort of worked on what that story would be and how we would do it and it was really important to us not to make it the story of the show.
He would go on to note how important it was to get trans representation right in a world that isn’t particularly kind to the community.
We just wanted to be a beautiful moment that was sensitive, that was real and you know, in a world where there’s so much, you know, anti-trans (rhetoric) that we really wanted to tell a pro-Trans story, but it was totally collaborative right through.
Indeed, any show or film looking to do right by trans representation would be wise to take a few notes out of Blackman’s page; proper portrayal of trans people in media is about as narrow as Reginald Hargreeves’ odds of redemption, and the world needs all it can get right now.
The Umbrella Academy is available to stream on Netflix.