Umbrella Academy's final season will be much shorter than expected

The Hargreeves siblings in The Umbrella Academy season 3
(Image credit: Netflix)

Showrunner and executive producer Steve Blackman has confirmed that The Umbrella Academy season 4 will only consist of six episodes.

"It's true. But you're going to love them," Blackman tweeted in response to a fan in disbelief over the episode count.

Seasons 1-3 consisted of 10 episodes, each with a 40-60 minute runtime, making the fourth and final season the shortest of the bunch. It's possible that this means the final episodes will be longer in length, with shows like Stranger Things doubling up their episode runtimes to create more cinematic, movie-length episodes.

Based on the comic book series created by Gerard Way, the series centers on The Hargreeves, a dysfunctional family of adopted sibling superheroes who come together in order to solve the mystery of their father's death – and the threat of an impending apocalypse. The cast includes Elliot Page, Robert Sheehan, Aiden Gallagher, David Castaneda, Tom Hopper, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Cameron Britton, Kate Walsh, and Genesis Rodriguez.

In November, Blackman shared a photo of the script for the season 4 premiere, titled, "The Unbearable Tragedy of Getting What You Want." He captioned the image, "And so it begins...one last time."

The Umbrella Academy season 4 does not yet have a release date, though – based on the two-year gap between prior seasons – we could expect it to arrive sometime between December 2023 and June 2024.

For more, check out the best new TV shows coming your way in 2023 and beyond, or, check out our list of the best Netflix TV shows to stream right now.

Lauren Milici
Senior Writer, Tv & Film

Lauren Milici is a Senior Entertainment Writer for 12DOVE currently based in the Midwest. She previously reported on breaking news for The Independent's Indy100 and created TV and film listicles for Ranker. Her work has been published in Fandom, Nerdist, Paste Magazine, Vulture, PopSugar, Fangoria, and more.