The Umbrella Academy: Ranking Every Character Worst To Best

11. Vanya

Vanya has some significant issues to overcome to be a truly interesting character beyond being the living husk for an interesting story twist. Firstly, the nature of her secret requires a clipped performance; she's supposed to be the product of her environment and the way she's nurtured - a sort of half-person that we aren't really supposed to notice that much.

That would have worked a lot better if Vanya wasn't played by Elliot Page. Perhaps as a result of the actor being so recognisable, Page is arguably too successful in making Vanya grey and the show simply forgets to seed anything in her for the big twist. It would have been far better to suggest that the character was prone to emotional outbursts as a child (before we do see it) or that there's something more to her than her surface. Even in her musical playing, there's no transformation at all.

The result is that while Vanya's an interesting character, the grand reveal feels like a bit of an ass-pull because Page has been working against it so much and it just needed a little more establishing work where we could look back in hindsight and realise that the clues were there.