Elliot Page and The Umbrella Academy

If you haven't seen the Umbrella Academy on Netflix, you should. It's a really good show if you're into comic books and super heroes. 

What is it?

The Umbrella Academy is a show on Netflix about a group of children that were all born on the same day. A man named Sir Reginald Hargreeves, went around the world to find these children because they had special abilities. Out of the 43 children born that day, Hargreeves was able to obtain 7. He raised these children to harness theirs powers and work together to save the world. 

Hargreeves is a hard man and seems very eccentric which translated into a poor father figure. The children had their disfunctions, but instead of helping them deal, Hargreeves would push them harder with training teaching them that those were just hard life moments. 

One of the character with issues stemming from childhood traumas was Vanya. Hargreeves seemed to exclude her from the rest of the children making sure to let her know she was just average compared to the rest of the children. The others would go off on missions while Vanya would stay behind. Hargreeves essentially created a world of isolation for Vanya and with no one to help her deal with her struggle she would always feel alone despite having 6 siblings. 

Dealing with being average amongst a house full of heroes and other disfunctions was a lot for Vanya and with no one to talk to she had to find her way of standing out which is why she grew up to be an extraordinary musician but her lack of confidence in her abilities kept her from making first chair. All of these issues were made very apparent in the first season, but admittedly, I was never really a big fan of Ellen Page as an actress. 

She and Kirsten Stewart never really wow'd me with any of their movie roles and that's not to say that they aren't talented in their own right, but in my opinion, I just haven't seen anything they have done that I thought I should write home to mom about it, so seeing that Page was in The Umbrella Academy didn't exactly inspire me to watch the show, but after watching the first season of the show I can see why she was the clear choice. 

Page embodies the very struggles that the Vanya character deals with which translates very well on screen and I absolutely love it. The complexity of the character and the pain Vanya feels speaks volumes because Page herself dealt with the same sort of things. 

At the end of the first season, the siblings realize that Vanya is struggling and that it must have been hard for her. They realize that for all those years she felt isolated and alone, but they find away to come together, save the world and Vanya. 

The second season saw the Vanya character lose her memory and the rest of the siblings are scattered throughout the timeline. In order to save the world in the first season, the siblings somehow travel back in time and woke up scattered across 1963-4...ish. 

Vanya finds herself with a family that has taken her in. Vanya gets close to the family and finds a special connection with the mother that grows into something romantic. This is different from the first season because in the first season Vanya's love interest is a man. This wasn't a shock to me being that the Vanya character has always felt isolated, alone, and unloved, so when she meets people who do show her those things she is missing, it's easy to understand why she would feel a romantic connection with them because we are all looking for that makes us feel special. 

At the end of the second season the siblings have to say goodbye to the lives they had in 1964 and return to their own timeline but when they get back they realize very quickly things aren't right. The image we are left with is a huge shock to fans of the show and we thought that would be the biggest surprise of the upcoming third season. 

Ellen Page is now Elliot Page

Ellen Page announced that he is Elliot Page and as far as I know he will continue to play the role of Vanya Hargreeves. Personally, I don't care what EP calls their self, honestly, but my first question about this situation is, what about Halle Berry and Scarlett Johansson? Both of these women were up for the roles of transgender men but they pulled out the project because of the backlash from trans people. I didn't understand this for the the following reasons: 

1) Isn't a transgender man a man that was once a woman? It would make perfect sense to cast a woman to play the role of a woman who then becomes a man, right? 

2) Those were some very big named celebrities willing to throw their support behind a project that would lend the trans community their voice. It would bring much needed attention to a story that people don't take enough time to hear or listen to. I mean you would think people would've praised them for being in support of the community and using their platform to help voices be heard and help people feel represented, but instead they were chastised to a point where they back out of doing the projects altogether.

Being that this is the way I see things, the implication here with Elliot Page would seem that it is okay for a transgendered man to play the role of a character that, as far as I know, is a cis gendered woman while the standard has been set that a cis gendered woman can't play the role of a transgendered man. To me this sounds like a double standard. I know people will try and say that it is different because there are trans actors/actresses out there to play these roles and for a long time it was hard for them to get roles in TV and film, but how is setting a double standard the way to solve the problem of inequality? 

I don't say this because I am against Elliot Page retaining his role on show. As I pointed out earlier, the Vanya character struggled with feeling loved and accepted so it wouldn't be a stretch for the writers to make her gender identity part of the character's struggle over the third season, but I would also understand if they wanted to move Elliot into a new role and cast someone else for the Vanya character because they want to keep Vanya as a cis gendered female and it would be hypocritical of them to not recast because the precedent that was already set in regards to the Halle Berry and Scarlett Johansson situations. 

It's a tough situation for sure because I could see how if they had said they were going to recast people would say it was transphobic of them and they should just rewrite the show. What if they don't want to do that? One thing people fail to realize about these projects is that most of them have an overall arc, especially productions that were based on books and comics. You think they make a whole season of a tv show and have no clue where they want to take the show for the next season? No, they have the show pretty much mapped out to where they can at least make it through two seasons. Obviously they'll have to write the script and build the sets but the overall story is there and it's hard to just change something you spent hours creating. There's dialog that will need to changed, character lines that need to be altered, and possibly even recasting of some characters all of which takes time and money that people wouldn't consider while they are calling for a boycott of the show because it is transphobic. 

In the end, I think it's great that they won't recast the character. I think the inner struggle adds to the depth of the character that Elliot Page brings and has already brought to the character.; It's his character. I think everyone deserves their own place in life to be happy and be who they are and it seems Elliot Page has found his place both in life and on the Umbrella Academy.