Warning: Contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy season 3.
One thing that’s been made clear by The Umbrella Academy season 3 is that the show needs to stop blaming Viktor for every apocalypse the characters deal with. While every season of The Umbrella Academy has had a story wildly different than the one before it, each one has revolved around an apocalypse that somehow circles back to Viktor. The show’s managed to get a lot of mileage out of it, but at the same time, it’s begun to set a bad precedent.
In The Umbrella Academy season 3 it’s revealed that, once again, Viktor is responsible for the apocalypse. After Viktor accidentally gave Harlan powers in season 2, he grew up having little to no control over his powers, and when Sissy died, he was so distraught that he completely lost control and accidentally killed the mothers of all of the of the Umbrella Academy before they could give birth to them. This created the grandfather paradox that birthed the kugelblitz that started slowly destroying the entire universe, and while the show focuses on Harlan killing everyone's mothers, since Viktor was the one who gave him his powers it’s technically Viktor’s fault, which makes it the third time in a row that Viktor has been at fault for an apocalypse.
This, of course, is the biggest problem The Umbrella Academy is currently facing: its inability to have anyone other than Elliot Page's Viktor cause the apocalypse. With Viktor being responsible for the apocalypse in every season so far, there’s an inherent sense of repetitiveness that drags the show down further than need be. Even if the stories surrounding the apocalypses have all been different, it still creates a clear formula for the show that’s become more than overdone at this point, and it even hurts Viktor and everyone else’s characters.
In addition to Viktor being responsible for the apocalypse, another plotline that each season of The Umbrella Academy has repeated in some way is the Hargreeves—including Viktor, himself—having to question if Viktor is just a burden on the family and the world as a whole because of said ties to the apocalypse. While Viktor’s character arc in The Umbrella Academy does revolve primarily around him and his family accepting that he isn’t a burden on anyone, the fact that they all have to keep going through those motions makes it seem like no one has grown throughout the show in regards to Viktor. That lack of progression ends up being tiresome after season 3 and three years and it only hurts the show, especially when people other than Viktor have been allowed to have their character development stick.
All in all, the biggest thing The Umbrella Academy needs to do right now is to stop making Viktor responsible for every apocalypse. The show has done it three times in a row now, and not only is it repetitive, but the stories surrounding it have all caused Viktor’s character development to be far too stagnant for this point in time. With everyone losing their powers and Sir Reginald Hargreeves seemingly being set up as the main antagonist, The Umbrella Academy season 4 will likely have a completely different storyline, and if that is the case, then Viktor and the show as a whole would most certainly benefit from it.