HBO's 4-Season 'The Umbrella Academy Meets Smallville' Action Series Deserved Better

Although HBO’s four-season blend of Smallville and The Umbrella Academy never really found its footing in terms of tone, the series still deserved better than its divided online reputation. With Reacher season 5 confirmed before season 4 has even arrived and War Machine 2 going forward on Netflix after the blockbuster success of the first outing in the franchise, it is fair to say that Alan Ritchson is a superstar in 2026.

The actor has been around since the early 2000s, when he appeared as Aquaman in an episode of Smallville, but his star-making turn didn’t arrive until he took on the role of the hulking titular military veteran in Prime Video’s action thriller. Based on the Lee Child novel series of the same name, Reacher has proven a hit with critics and audiences alike, breaking viewership records while consistently earning almost perfect Rotten Tomatoes scores.

However, a few years before the series gave Ritchson his big break, the star was busy with a superhero series that mixed Smallville and The Umbrella Academy, but never received its flowers for attempting this tricky tonal blend. Running from 2018 until 2023, HBO’s Titans was a sci-fi action thriller series that brought DC’s underrated superhero team, the Teen Titans, to life in live-action. Titans focused on Dick Grayson, Nightwing, Beast Boy, Jason Todd, Starfire, Raven, Dove, Ritchson’s Hawk, among some other lesser-known heroes.

We're Not Lying, Titans Really Did Have Its Bright Spots

Arriving at a time when superhero shows were all the rage, Titans often got lost in the conversation about small-screen entries into the genre. However, the series did a surprisingly good job of blending its outlandish heroes and their larger-than-life superpowers with an unexpectedly gritty crime thriller plot. Season 1 earned a Rotten Tomatoes critical rating of 78%, with most reviewers praising the show’s dark tone and unapologetic moments of brutality.

Almost more like a superhero spin on The Legend of Vox Machina or The Mighty Nein than a standard DC series, Titans made the most of the creative freedom that HBO afforded by featuring plenty of swearing, R-rated violence, and other adult content. The show was hardly The Boys, but this was arguably a good thing. Like The Legend of Vox Machina’s adults-only fantasy story, Titans felt able to address the darker side of superhero stories without becoming too gleefully gruesome or pointlessly bleak.

Titans' Biggest Problem Was Not Picking A Lane

That said, this wasn’t always an unambiguously good thing for the show. While it can sometimes be irritating when shows like The Punisher or The Boys lean too hard into edgy nihilism, this does at least give these superhero shows a consistent feel. In contrast, Titans could often feel very serious or very silly from scene to scene, switching between very different tones within the same episode in a way that was jarring.

The Boys masterfully balanced dark humor and more serious moments of character study, and even that superhero satire had moments where its story went too far in one direction or the other. In much the same way, Titans occasionally felt as absurd and playful as The Umbrella Academy, only to then become a thunderingly self-serious, dark, brooding superhero show in the next scene. This tonal inconsistency, sadly, held the show back from true greatness.

That said, Titans still deserves better than its ignominious reputation. For a show that fared well with critics, especially in its later seasons, Titans is often mocked online as the zenith of the DCEU’s “Dark and edgy reboot” era. Although the series didn’t quite nail the balance between Smallville’s soapy melodrama and The Umbrella Academy’s more offbeat wackiness, it is still fair to say that Titans had something to offer the discerning superhero fan despite its imperfections.