Netflix Just Made a Major Change to The Umbrella Academy

By Spencer Perry

Fresh off the first look and premiere date announcement for The Umbrella Academy season three, Netflix has seemingly made a major change to the series on the streaming platform. As noticed by several fans of the Dark Horse Comics adaptation, Netflix has officially updated the television rating for the series from TV-14 to TV-MA. What exactly that means remains to be seen but it already has fans very curious about the content of the new episodes and whether the violence will be upped for season three of the show. Let's break down the potential for the change below.

The official breakdown of the television ratings, known as the TV Parental Guidelines, denote that the TV-14 rating is generally regarded as "Parents Strongly Cautioned," meaning the content is for audiences 15 and older and may contain "intensely suggestive dialogue (D), strong coarse language (L), intense sexual situations (S), or intense violence (V)." TV-MA is naturally for the Mature Audience Only designation, meaning it's for "unsuitable for children under 17" and can contain "crude indecent language (L), explicit sexual activity (S), or graphic violence (V)." 

So what does this mean for The Umbrella Academy season three? It seems more likely that the series will be headed toward more explicit cursing from its characters than anything. The official landing page for the series on Netflix only mentions two things as to why it's rated TV-MA, "language, smoking." Were the series going to explore more with nudity or violence however that would be denoted as TV shows with more violence, gore, and sexual situations, specifically mention them on their pages.

The main reason that we don't know what to expect from the third season of the show is that it's leaping beyond the source material. Though season three will clearly incorporate something from Volume 3 of the graphic novels, Hotel Oblivion, the show will seemingly move ahead with the arrival of the Sparrow Academy. 

"I am very close with Gerard and Gabriel, so I pitch them the season before I do it, let them know what I'm doing," series showrunner Steve Blackman previously told ComicBook.com. "They're very kind and they're pitching me where they're going in the next volumes, and you know, the two mediums are sort of crossing over now, sometimes they're looking at something I do and say, we should put that in the graphic novel, and they're saying, well, why don't you do this in the show. We accept they're sort of different things, but we love any times we can find these crossovers. But I have a good sense of where they're going, I have an idea of where I want to go, and we're sort of working together to get to that happy place. But I don't want to get ahead of them. I love what they do. So hopefully if it times out, it never will."  

Seems like it didn't time out that way.

The Umbrella Academy will return with season three  on June 22nd.

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