Anna Daniels
We’ll assume that many of you who have deliriously binged the first season of The Umbrella Academy in the past year are keenly aware that the series is based on an award-winning series of graphic novels by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. We’re also assuming if you hadn’t read the graphic novels prior to watching the Netflix series, you may not have had a chance to catch up yet. First and foremost, know that you should really check out those books, because they’re beautifully bonkers in ways that the series simply just cannot capture; also, the show made quite a few changes in adapting the books to the screen.
That has a lot to do with the show’s more grounded approach to the story, which inevitably led to slightly different character representations throughout. While the Netflix series does render each character with serious TLC in season 1, it still doesn’t do full justice to a couple of key players. That’s particularly true of post-transformation Vanya. While her conversion to stark white and glowing in the show is quite impressive, the books see Vanya transform into a figure resembling a literal walking and talking violin complete with strings running down the front of her body.
The grounded Netflix adaption was obviously limited in how far it could take that depiction. But one peek at three streaks of blood running down Vanya’s neck in the picture included with the initial Reddit post is enough to confirm beyond a doubt that series creators Jeremy Slater and Steve Blackman were indeed paying loving homage to the source material in that bathtub scene. It also confirms that Slater and Co. are more than a little bit devoted to bringing the spirit of the books to vivid life on screen — even if they can’t always do it with quite as much visceral creative license.
Written by: Looper
