Season 3 of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy is right around the corner, which means all of our most pressing questions after that explosive Season 2 finale may finally be answered, starting with the most mind-boggling: Exactly what the hell is the Sparrow Academy?
Editor’s note: We will be referring to Elliot Page‘s character as Viktor, whose pronouns are he / him / his, as that is how the character now identifies.
Season 2 picks up immediately following the events of the Season 1 finale in which the Hargreeves siblings fail to stop Viktor (Elliot Page), in all his emo glory, from causing an apocalypse with his previously dormant powers. The Umbrella Academy decides their only option is to use Five’s (Aidan Gallagher) powers to time-travel out of the apocalypse. Unfortunately for the Hargreeves, Five still hasn’t quite figured out the timing when it comes to his powers, so the siblings end up not at all where they expected: Dallas, Texas in the early 1960s.
Here’s a look at what happened to each of the Hargreeves siblings, how exactly they managed to stop a second apocalypse, and finally, how they ended up back in 2019 with a very much alive Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore).
Luther (Number One)
Luther (Tom Hopper) arrives in Dallas in 1962. He builds a life by working as hired muscle for Jack Ruby (John Kapelos), the real-life gangster who would eventually kill Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated JFK. Luther fights regularly in an underground boxing ring for Ruby who pockets the cash that Luther wins after each match. He eventually runs into Viktor and learns that his family is alive and well, somewhere in Dallas. He asks Jack to find Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) for him. Unfortunately for Luther, Allison is now happily married. Luther later runs into Five and teams up with the rest of the Hargreeves siblings to stop the second impending apocalypse they have now caused due to their time jump.
Diego (Number Two)
Diego (David Castañeda) arrives in Dallas in September 1963. Unsurprisingly, Diego becomes obsessed with being the one to stop the assassination of JFK, which eventually causes him to become institutionalized. He meets Lila Pitts (Ritu Arya), a fellow patient in the mental institution, and they quickly hit it off and escape the institution together. After they break out, they meet up with Five. Five is suspicious of Lila, and rightfully so because it turns out that Lila was actually planted in the mental institution by The Handler (Kate Walsh), her adoptive mother. Even so, Lila clearly reciprocates Diego’s feelings and goes so far as to drug him and force him to work for the Commission with her. At the Commission, Diego figures out how to operate the Infinite Switchboard, a room where the Commission oversees the entire timeline. He learns that Viktor will be the cause of the apocalypse in 1963, just like he was in 2019. He manages to escape the commission and, along with his siblings, prevents Viktor from sparking the apocalypse.
Allison (Number Three)
Allison arrives in Dallas in 1961 at the height of the American Civil Rights Movement. She becomes a major player in the movement and marries Raymond Chestnut (Yusuf Gatewood), a well-known, passionate leader of the movement. Ray doesn’t know anything about Allison’s life prior to her arriving in Dallas in 1961, nor does he know about her rumoring abilities. It is not until Luther and Klaus show up, introducing themselves as Allison’s brothers, that the tension begins to rise between Allison and Ray, who suspects that Allison is keeping things from him. She confides in Ray the truth about her past, (or, should we say, future) in 2019 and her abilities as a member of the Umbrella Academy. She asks Ray to come with her back to her time, but Ray knows there is too much work he needs to do in 1963. Still, he tells her that the year he spent with her was the best year of his life.
Klaus (Number Four)
Klaus (Robert Sheehan), the first Hargreeves sibling (along with Ben) to arrive in Dallas, arrives on February 11, 1960, and becomes the leader of a spiritual hippie cult he coins Destiny’s Children. Klaus manages to stay clean for the next four years until November 1963 when he tries to convince Dave (Calem MacDonald), his former love, not to join the Army in a desperate attempt to prevent him from dying in Vietnam. Dave’s homophobic uncle bullies Dave into punching Klaus in the face, which causes Klaus to relapse. Klaus helps Diego and Allison in their attempt to prevent Viktor from blowing up the FBI building, but it is Ben (Justin H. Min), the only sibling able to break through Viktor’s shock waves, who is able to save Viktor from causing another apocalypse. Ben is unable to return with Viktor, which means that for the first time in 17 years, Klaus is alone. After losing Dave, then Ben, and then relapsing, here’s hoping that Season 3 will give our boy Klaus a break.
Number Five
Five is the last Hargreeves sibling to arrive in Dallas, on November 25, 1963, in the middle of an apocalypse. The Umbrella Academy is there fighting the Russians prior to a nuclear explosion. Right before the world ends, however, Hazel (Cameron Britton) shows up and takes him back in time to before the apocalypse and explains to him that Five and his siblings caused the apocalypse by altering the timeline. As per usual, Five is tasked with corralling his siblings and trying to explain, with utmost exasperation, that they need to band together to save the world, again. And as per usual, the Hargreeves siblings take forever to get their act together. However, Five eventually manages to get them all on board.
Ben (Number Six)
Ben arrives in Dallas with Klaus on February 11, 1960. Ben wants Klaus to return to San Francisco where one of Klaus’s devout followers, Jill, lives. Ben has fallen for Jill and convinces Klaus to temporarily let him take control of Klaus’s body, so that he can talk to her. Ben is interrupted by Diego, who is thrilled to “see” him, and Ben, Klaus, and Diego hightail it to the FBI building to stop Viktor. Ben is the only one who is able to get through the shock waves created by Viktor’s power. He jumps into Viktor’s body and finds where Viktor is hidden in his own mind and gives him the emotional support he needs to cope with his childhood trauma inflicted by their father and to escape from his mind. Ben starts to disintegrate and tells Viktor he can not go back with him but asks that Viktor hug him before he goes because it has been a long time since anyone has. Just before he disappears, he whispers something in Viktor’s ear to tell Klaus. We soon found out later that he told him to tell Klaus that he was too scared to go into the light, and it was not because of him that he missed his ticket to Heaven.
Viktor (Number Seven)
Viktor was the second to last Hargreeves sibling to arrive in Dallas, arriving in October 1963, one month after Diego. After being hit by a car immediately after his arrival, Viktor temporarily loses his memories. He is taken in by the drivers who hit him: a gem of a woman named Sissy (Marin Ireland) and her not-so-pleasant husband, Carl (Stephen Bogaert). Viktor becomes a nanny to their son Harlan (Justin Paul Kelly), who has undiagnosed autism. Viktor rediscovers his powers, allowing Five to track him down and fill him in on who he is and how he ended up in 1963. He also saves a drowning Harlan by using his powers to transfer particles of energy into his body, which creates a connection. between the two and grants Harlan abilities similar to Viktor’s. After the battle at Sissy’s farm (see below), Viktor and Sissy, who fell in love during Viktor’s stay, part ways in a heartbreaking goodbye when Viktor could not convince Sissy to take Harlan and join him in 2019, since it would risk Harlan’s safety.
What happens in the finale of Season 2?
Viktor senses through his psychic connection with Harlan that something is seriously wrong and that Harlan and Sissy need his help. After initially turning down Viktor’s plea for help, the Hargreeves siblings decide to band together and (finally!) Be there for Viktor. When the Umbrella Academy team arrives at Sissy’s farm, they find Harlan petrified, levitating inside a force field he accidentally created. Of course, this is the perfect opportunity for The Handler and Lila, armed with the entire commission, to also show up at the farm with the intention of, according to The Handler, murdering the suspects responsible for killing JFK and the Commission’s entire Board of Directors. Unsurprisingly, The Handler also has every intention of sinking her claws into Harlan, just like she did previously with Lila. Meanwhile, Lila, who does not yet realize that The Handler is responsible for giving the kill order against her parents, is hellbent on murdering Five for carrying out the order.
The Hargreeves siblings face off against the commission and Lila, who (plot twist!) Can do everything the Hargreeves can do. Her powers allow her to mirror the powers of the Umbrella Academy members, who quickly piece together that Lila is like them: another child born on October 1, 1989, gifted with supernatural abilities.
The Hargreeves siblings try to convince Lila that they are her real family and that The Handler is just using her for her powers. Diego pleads with her to let them be her family when The Handler strolls into the barn and shoots all the Hargreeves dead, except for Five, who is just barely conscious, but enough to travel back in time a few seconds. Five disarms The Handler before she can shoot when the Swede, the assassin whom The Handler sent after Five, bursts into the barn and kills The Handler. Lila grabs the case and teleports out of the barn before the Hargreeves can stop her.
Viktor manages to take back (or so he thinks) the powers he accidentally gave Harlan when he brought him back to life. For the time being, Harlan appears to be back to normal… until we see Harlan sitting in the back seat of Sissy’s car, levitating a small wooden sparrow on his hand, wearing a distinctly sinister smile on his face. File that in the list of future problems for the Hargreeves siblings.
Having narrowly saved the day, the Hargreeves make the jump back to the year 2019 using one of the briefcases left behind after the final showdown between the Umbrella Academy and the commission. They arrive back at the Umbrella Academy mansion on April 2, 2019, one day after the apocalypse. For a moment, it looks like things are finally back to normal for the Hargreeves. They start to celebrate when they notice there is a painting of Ben above the mantle, not Five. They are then stunned when they are greeted by none other than their dead father Reginald Hargreeves, who is suddenly very much alive.
Reginald says he knew they’d show up eventually, which we can assume means that Reginald remembers them from their encounter in 1963. When the Hargreeves call the mansion their home, Reginald corrects them and says, “Home? This isn’t your home This is the Sparrow Academy. ” Five individuals and a strange floating cube appear at the top of the stairs, followed by Ben – but not the Ben that we have come to know. This Ben has an edgy haircut and a scar over his face and what seems like a pretty bad attitude. He looks at the Hargreeves with disgust and says, “Dad, who the hell are these assholes?”
It looks like the Hargreeves siblings aren’t in the clear after all.