The Umbrella Academy has always been personal for David Castañeda. For the better half a decade, the actor has starred as Diego Hargreeves in the series that became one of Netflix’s most-streamed shows in 2019.
Based on the Dark Horse comic series by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, and created by Steve Blackman and Jeremy Slater, Umbrella Academy follows an endearingly dysfunctional sextet of adopted siblings, each with their own superpowers, all on a mission to save the world from imminent apocalypse. Season four, released Thursday, is the show’s final installment. As Castañeda now looks back on the body of work, he can’t help but feel like he’s looking back at himself.
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“When I started season one, I was highly insecure and really trying to prove myself,” Castañeda says. Still early in his career, no one his family had ever worked in entertainment. “I really walked in the dark, figuring it out by myself.”
In season one, Castañeda’s Diego had a similar chip on his shoulder. Gutted by the abandonment of his wily and mysterious father (played by Colm Feore) and armed with an ability to manipulate thrown objects and knives, he filled the void with a vigilante saviorism that no one really asked for. He took himself way too seriously, he wouldn’t ask for help and he pushed back against all criticism.
“It [was] more so about, ‘I’m only doing this because this is what my dad told me not to do,'” Castañeda says.
It wasn’t necessarily the specifics that Castañeda related to, but the attitude. “When I was in my mid-to-late 20s, I thought I knew everything because I was deeply afraid of not knowing anything,” he says. Now 34, “I don’t know anything, and I’m ok with that. It opens up to a curiosity and to understanding other things, and being surprised.”
He adds, “I think Diego had sort of the same issues.”
In season four, the Umbrella Academy siblings have lost their powers as a result of a last-ditch effort to save the universe in season three. Stagnating without any sense of exceptionalism, they’ve settled into sluggish patterns of failed domesticity. Diego and Lila (Ritu Arya) are married, and share a child. He’s trying to be a normal dad and a husband, and he’s failing.
From Castañeda’s perspective, Diego has latched onto this idea that “being a family man prevents him from achieving his greater good. His idea of what it is to be a man and a father and a husband doesn’t come from a very natural state of being.”
Again, things got personal for Castañeda. “A lot of men that I know are married, some are very successful, some are not,” he says. As he prepared for season four, the actor started thinking about “who I am, how I represent myself as a partner, as a man who searches for intimacy with someone else. Diego tends to be withheld on his potential, and he places it on other people that are close to him, like a sort of resentment of feeling responsibility.”
At the same time, Castañeda had done some growing up himself since season one. “I didn’t have that chip [on my shoulder],” he says, so he was able “to make fun of myself and not take myself as seriously, and in that process, enjoy it much, much more.”
The result meant a different preparatory process for season four. “I was able to apply a different way of working where it wasn’t just script analysis, but it was more so dreamwork,” he says. “Tapping into the subconscious of my own self.”
He also continued to learn from those around him. Nick Offerman and real-life wife Megan Mullally joined this season’s cast as Gene and Jean, the married and murderous leaders of a clandestine association who predict an upcoming reckoning. Yet, despite their bloody tactics, Castañeda was endeared by the new characters.
“Gene and Jean had a relationship that felt so healthy, even though they were doing really messy things,” he says. It’s true – despite a rather maniacal way of life, their love for one another seems to come much more naturally than Diego and Lila’s ever does. “Whenever I had an opportunity to be around them, it was almost looking at two relationship counselors,” Castañeda says.
Plus, he adds, Offerman and Mullally were a delight — made even better by the revelation that the duo requested to join the show after becoming ardent fans. “That was amazing,” Castañeda says.
Outside of his personal journey, anticipation for Umbrella Academy‘s season four release hit an unfortunate bump in the road earlier this summer, when a Rolling Stone report accused showrunner Blackman of fostering a hostile workplace on set. Blackman’s representative later told THR the claims were “entirely untrue.”
“I don’t know much,” Castañeda says when asked about the back and forth. “What I do know is my own experience. He’s been phenomenal. I can only speak from a singular experience with myself, and who he’s been with me. Since 2018, he’s been nothing short of just a really caring mentor.”
Now closing Umbrella Academy‘s doors, Castañeda feels in part like a student who’s just finished his last final exam. At the show’s junket two days after this interview, he compared the series’ four seasons to the four years of high school: “Freshman, sophomore, junior senior,” he said. “It’s time to graduate.”
And what’s he graduating to? Ballerina, the John Wick franchise flic that will hit theaters in 2025. “It’s a dream come true,” Castañeda says. “I had a meeting with [producer Chad Stahelski], and honestly, I was waiting for him to stop talking to say, ‘Yes. Yes!”
Umbrella Academy season four is now streaming on Netflix.
