How “Umbrella Academy” created the story of Eliot Page on the Coming-Out screen

After Elliot Page came out as a trans in December 2020, Umbrella Academy Director Steve Blackman was willing to bring the actor’s transition to the screen. There was only one problem: Season 3 was already mapped out and the scripts were pretty much set. Filming was to begin in just two weeks.

Against all odds, they did it: This season, Umbrella Academy will re-introduce Page’s character with a new name, Victor Hargreaves.

To help Victor’s life, the production brought Page’s friend (and writer / journalist), Thomas Page McBee.

“Necessarily, this was an opportunity to show a transition so organic, so fundamental to the character, that it could only work in conjunction with the existing character arcs, not overshadow them,” wrote Page McBee about participation. Umbrella Academy specifically to help shape Viktor’s transition story on screen, into an essay on honorable sir from the beginning of this month.

“In this story, being trans is a context, a focus, an intensification of perspective that will only deepen the connection that millions of viewers already have with Victor and his family.”

Viktor’s come-out is, as Page McBee puts it, “economical” to execute – though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The only reversal of the plot here is that such a carefully crafted maneuver would happen on Netflix, a streamer that is increasingly considered to be anti-trans and also, very often lately, comically unable to distinguish good character development from trash.

In the beginning Umbrella Academy Season 3 – which finally premiered on Wednesday – Viktor feels the loss of Sissy Cooper (Marin Ireland), who stole his heart after hitting him with her car. “He saw me as I really am,” he once said to Hargreeves’s sister, Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman). “I’m not ready to give up.” When they break up, Allison calls Victor a “good sister,” so the camera stays in his pensive expression.

In the second episode of the season, Viktor meets Sparrow Academy member Marcus (Justin Cornwell) —one of the Hargreeves that Viktor and the gang’s stepfather, Reginald, adopt in an alternate universe in place of Viktor and his brothers. . Although Marcus bluffs as if he has the upper hand – and perhaps even thinks he does – Victor Colly calls his enemy “meat in spandex” before reminding him which of them had already finished the world. twice. (Hint: It wasn’t Marcus.)

The story goes on

Elliot Page as Viktor Hargreeves and Tom Hopper as Luther Hargreeves in “The Umbrella Academy.”

Christos Kalochoridis / Netflix

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Elliot Page as Viktor Hargreeves and Tom Hopper as Luther Hargreeves in “The Umbrella Academy.”

Christos Kalochoridis / Netflix

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