The Umbrella Academy episode 3.01 minor spoilers are underneath!
At the start of The Umbrella Academy premiere, the Hargreeves twins were more than prepared for a fight with their Sparrow Academy counterparts, but first they needed to cut loose.
Enter “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins, which served as the soundtrack for a 2.5-minute dancing scene that we later learned was entirely occurring in Diego’s imagination. Sparrow No. 6 (also known as Jayme) has the rare power to cause people to experience hallucinations when she injects them with her blue saliva. When she hocked a loogie squarely onto Diego’s cheek, Diego experienced a dance-filled daydream.
Diego received it, so I wondered, “What would Diego dream about? The scene’s origin is described by the show’s creator, Steve Blackman, in an interview with TVLine. “And that character is somewhat of a dancer, so I figured he may lose his mind. He was going to see Footloose! To me, it just seemed appropriate.
The Umbrella Academy’s second season launched on Netflix two years ago, and this week marks the release of the third. The “Footloose” dance sequence that occurs in the first 8 minutes of the season opener is one that many fans haven’t stopped talking about since it picked up from the enormous cliffhanger that has been lingering for some time, even if there is a lot to react to in the new batch of episodes.
The actors and crew of the series told us how everything came together and how much planning went into it under highly stressful circumstances in a few exclusive interviews with ComicBook.com.
To get it right, according to the series’ creator Steve Blackmon, “was a very huge deal.” “We didn’t utilize any dance duplicates, and even though COVID was at its height“, those performers practiced ZOOM during the first sessions. They were 10 feet away and had their laptops open.
Then they entered a studio wearing a mask and shield, and when we eventually arrived on set, it was amazing because Covid had put us all in a bit of a dark place. There was laughter. The crew began to float. On set, there were five wonderful days of pure happiness.
“We rehearsed for, man, it took like at least two weeks while we were still in quarantine over Zoom to get the dance sequence started and to learn the moves,” said actor Aidan Gallagher of the film Five. “And then countless hours of breathing heavily through thick masks because it was a pandemic while trying to learn these moves in the studio,” he continued. The existence of some behind-the-scenes video documenting the creation of the dance was also confirmed by Gallagher. “That’s your preferred sequence, then. You’re going to enjoy yourself.”
Tom Hopper, who plays Luther, said it’s simpler than you may think to dance while wearing a giant ape body suit. “That (his exact dance) was such a random motion that I came up with while we were simply trying to think of new moves in the first session. It doesn’t take too much of a challenge, though.
The came from a night out with friends when I observed a girl attempting to make out with a rugby player. She performed an odd mating dance in front of him, and my friends and I all remember that dance. So I simply dumped it in. So they found it amusing when my friend saw it on the television.
Lastly, Emmy Raver-Lampman, who plays Allison, provided some insight into how much was planned and how much was improvised, saying: “Making it happen required two to two and a half months of planning, practicing, and arranging. That was undoubtedly the best part of being on this show for all of us, in my opinion. The dance itself was obviously choreographed, but there was a lot of it that was just us having fun and joking around on the day. I thought it was so crazy and absurd and outrageous, but a lot of it was.”
All three seasons of The Umbrella Academy are now streaming on Netflix.
