Umbrella Academy Season 3 kicks off with hilarious “Flashdance” battle

The Umbrella Academy loves a dance sequence. Previous seasons have featured the superhero team grooving to Toploader’s “Dancing in the Moonlight,” and most memorably to Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now.” And Season 3 is no different, kicking off with a dance battle to Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose.” BEWARE OF UMBRELLA ACADEMY SPOILERS AHEAD. But only from the first scene of Season 3…

The Umbrella Academy – about a disparate group of super-powered individuals raised as siblings and now tasked with saving the world – returned to screens today. With the show’s official synopsis as follows…

After putting a stop to 1963’s doomsday, the Umbrella Academy return home to the present, convinced they prevented the initial apocalypse and fixed this godforsaken timeline once and for all. But after a brief moment of celebration, they realize things aren’t exactly (okay, not at all) how they left them.

Enter the Sparrow Academy. Smart, stylish, and about as warm as a sea of icebergs, the Sparrows immediately clash with the Umbrellas in a violent face-off that turns out to be the least of everyone’s concerns.

Navigating challenges, losses, and surprises of their own – and dealing with an unidentified destructive entity wreaking havoc in the Universe (something they may have caused) – now all they need to do is convince Dad’s new and possibly better family to help them put right what their arrival made wrong. Will they find a way back to their pre-apocalyptic lives? Or is this new world about to reveal more than just a hiccup in the timeline? 

The Umbrella Academy vs The Sparrow Academy

Season 3 begins straight after Season 2 ends, with the Umbrella Academy heading back to the present day having just saved the world. BUT, there’s another team of super-powered people in their house, who call themselves The Sparrow Academy.

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The Umbrellas and the Sparrows first argue, both believing that they are Reginald’s children. Then they square up to each other.

Sparrow Jayme spits at Diego, her spittle seeping into the skin on his cheek. And then the two teams fight. Or do they?

Introducing “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins

It’s been s good year for Kenny Loggins, with music from the 1980s icon appearing in Top Gun: Maverick, and now here in The Umbrella Academy, which makes for a wonderfully bizarre scene.

As Loggins’ “Footloose” starts to play, instead of throwing punches at each other, the Academies throw dance moves.

They’re not any old dance moves, either. Instead, they’re the iconic country line moves that Kevin Bacon and Chris Penn made famous in Footloose the movie.

What is Footloose?

Hitting screens in 1984, Footloose was a musical teen drama about a town that banned dancing. Ren McCormack (played by Bacon) moves to said town and doesn’t like what he sees.

So after a game of chicken on a tractor, Ren teaches new friend Willard (played by Penn) a few country-and-western moves, then sets about encouraging all the teens in town to hit the dance-floor and get Footloose.

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The story didn’t end there however, as Footloose was the subject of a less successful remake in 2011, with that iteration starring Kenny Wyrmwald as Ren and Miles Teller as Willard.

This isn’t the first time Footloose has featured in something superhero-related either, as in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Star-Lord describes the movie thusly: “A great hero named Kevin Bacon teaches an entire city of people with sticks up their butts that dancing is the greatest thing there is.”

Why are The Umbrella Academy dancing to “Footloose”?

The dance battle turns into a dance-off with the Academies forming a circle and going one-on-one in the middle. But all is not as it seems. As the music slows. The camera closes in on Diego’s face. And we flashback to reality.

As it turns out the sequence was all in Diego’s mind, thanks to whatever hallucinogen was in Jayme’s poisonous spit.

But then the real fight is on! “No More Heroes” by The Stranglers kicks in, and the Umbrellas and Sparrows kick-off, for real this time.

Season 3 of The Umbrella Academy is now streaming on Netflix.