‘The Umbrella Academy’: Tom Hopper and Emmy Raver-Lampman Break Down Season 3’s Darkest Moment

In a season of television that includes the literal end of the world, multiple death scenes and some light elder abuse, the darkest moment of The Umbrella Academy Season 3 takes place in Episode 5, “Kindest Cut”. Written by Elizabeth Padden and directed by Sylvian White — and spoilers past this point — a broken Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) uses her powers to attempt to coerce Luther (Tom Hopper) into sleeping with her, going as far as to kiss him against his will.

“That scene was really challenging in the best of ways,” Raver-Lampman told Decider. “Sylvain White, who was directing us in that episode, and Tom and our incredible camera crew, they were all really aware and sensitive to the subject matter.”

It stops just short of rape, but it certainly comes close, and is easily categorizable as assault. It’s a moment that was laid out on the page, but open to interpretation, something that Hopper noted “could go various different ways.”

“In the script, it was written that Allison approaches Luther, and it’s all about the physical…She’s impending on him,” Hopper continued. “Through rehearsal, we were like, it’s all about her wanting to take the power back. It’s her going, ‘No, I want to be in control of the situation again, because I’m so out of control. I need to take control of something.’ And she just stood there and said it. And she had all the power over this big guy, which is Luther.”

Over the course of the season to this point, Allison has been steadily breaking down mentally, while her powers grow physically. It all stems from a revelation in the season’s second episode, where Allison discovers the new timeline the team has traveled to doesn’t include her daughter, Claire (Coco Assad). With every attempt to return to her own timeline stymied either by the rival Sparrow Academy, or her own family in the Umbrella Academy, Allison has gotten darker and angrier at a situation that, as Hopper noted, is out of her control.

“That’s a really big turning point for Allison,” Raver-Lampman said. “That is where we really see how far she’s dipped into letting her trauma and her crumbling emotional state take over.”

The moment is particularly gutting to watch because the first two seasons of the series have played heavily on the romance between Allison and Luther. Though the other members of The Umbrella Academy have had plenty of fun teasing Luther about being in love with his “sister” (they’re not actually related, just raised together), Season 1 found Allison estranged from her husband, while unsure about a relationship with the pining Luther; and Season 2 she was married to a man in 1963 before reuniting with the rest of the team. In Season 3, Allison has left her husband in 1963, lost her daughter to timeline shenanigans, and perhaps the breaking point, Luther is now together with Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez), a member of the Sparrow Academy.

“Even when she’s not getting along with the rest of the family, even when everything is falling apart in the past few seasons, she’s always had Luther,” Raver-Lampman said. “They’ve always had this understanding and this connection that she doesn’t really have with anyone else. And so when she betrays him in this way, it’s really, really heartbreaking.”

Both actors lauded the cast and crew for allowing them a “really safe work environment on the day,” particularly given they had to rehearse and film the harrowing moment multiple times. And as it leaves things, the romance between Allison and Luther seems to be done, for good. By season’s end, Luther is married to Sloane (though she is missing after another timeline reset), and Allison has been reunited with her husband from 1963, Ray (Yusuf Gatewood), and her daughter. But it’s this moment in Episode 5 that really puts the lid on the whole thing, once and for all.

“In a way does kind of bring closure to it, because it says that it shouldn’t really be,” Hopper said. “It’s not right and it felt wrong as it happened on multiple levels. But that’s not really what they both want. It’s like a weird sort of security blanket they have which comes out in quite another weird, abusive manner from both sides.”

Raver-Lampman agreed, adding that, “I think we played the Luther and Allison romantic beat. And I also think they both found deeper, fuller, actual love. The Luther/Allison thing was never a lusty relationship. It was just this truly profound connection, but they have actually found lust and love with other people that is… that’s just different. They’ll always have a special connection, but the romance part of it is probably dead, and I think that might be Allison’s fault.”

The Umbrella Academy Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.