Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
I know you Umbrella Academy fans: you’ve already binged all of Season 2. How could you not? Season 2 is a blast and a half of kooky time travel shenanigans, starring the most dysfunctional family of superheroes to ever grace a screen. Once you pop, you can’t stop! There’s just one problem if you’ve already popped off and run out of Season 2 episodes: Umbrella Academy Season 3 probably isn’t coming out for a while. Whoops!
That’s where recommendations like this one come in. If you’re already in a time travel mood, there’s one show that works pretty darn well as a follow-up, or perhaps even a companion piece, to Umbrella Academy Season 2: that’s Hulu show is 11.22.63. The series is based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name and tracks the mission of a single man who discovers a bizarre time travel portal that connects his present with a specific date in 1960. Realizing that this is his chance to avert the assassination of President Kennedy, the guy decides to hang around in the past for three years and work towards averting one of the biggest crises in history.
The Hulu show’s premise might sound familiar to you: the Hargreeves bunch were dropped in past, months to years apart beginning in 1960; Diego decides to mount a one-man mission to save the president; the entire apocalypse hinges on JFK’s assassination, etc.
11.22.63 isn’t a new show, mind you—far from it. And if it sounds new to you, that’s because it’s (relatively) old. The series debuted in February 2016, which is almost prehistory in terms of The Streaming Age. Look at it this way: 11.22.63 came out four months before Stranger Things, in the same month that Netflix launched Fuller House, and over a year before Hulu found a major hit in The Handmaid’s Tale.
No need to call out Umbrella Academy for ripping off 11.22.63, though, as this is a very common time travel plot. Also, Stephen King’s novel came out in 2011 and Umbrella Academy: Dallas, the comic book mini-series Season 2 is based on, was published in 2008. These two ideas, and these two very different takes on the same time travel mission, can coexist and help you scratch your sudden itch for more ’60s adventures.
A word of warning: whether or not you want to watch 11.22.63 depends on where you stand on the series’ leading man, James Franco, following allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse in 2018. If that completely turns you off of 11.22.63, that’s totally fair! If you want to check it out for the plot or the rest of the cast—which includes Chris Cooper, 1917‘s George MacKay, and Letterkenny’s Sarah Gadon—go for it.
You can stream all of 11.22.63 right now on Hulu—and you can also stay in a time loop, rewatching Umbrella Academy Season 2 on repeat on Netflix.
