For the last couple of weeks, you have not been able to swipe through your social media feed and not see at least one post related to Netflix newest hit show, The Umbrella Academy. We have already fed you with all the information about Season 1 here and also in our Episode Recaps.
Judging from comments and the now 37,822,891 views of the song on YouTube, it seems everyone is singing Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” and dancing the binge watch hangover away, myself included. I have been waiting for an adaptation since I purchased my copy of the graphic novels in 2008 on which it was mentioned that it had been optioned for a movie.
Now, after 10 episodes, Netflix has left us with a major cliffhanger. Considering how much they promoted the show worldwide and the fact that our favourite seven wannabe heroes are breaking every record possible, surely it is just a matter of days until Netflix officially announces Season 2. It would be fantastic for the series to continue because not only does the show leave some questions unanswered, but also the award-winning comic book by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá does not give you any hints how the story continues. Season 1 covers the events of both comic books and after years, Volume 3 will be published in August this year. However, re-reading both volumes between my second and third time watching the show, it only made more questions pop up.
Now with the series ending with the siblings travelling through time, we see them transform into their younger selves. So the burning question is: will season 2 start with them all being 13 years old again and changing how Vanya grew up? As much as I enjoyed seeing the younger students, I do not want to lose the adults for long. Or perhaps was this just a little sentimental moment from the creators to show us that this was the last time they were truly a team and family, and now they are again? If they travel back through time, only for a couple of days or even years, it for sure will be an emotional ride for all of them.
This brings me to the most chaotic assassins in the history of assassins. Did Cha-Cha survive? Where has Hazel transported himself and Agnes using The Handler’s briefcase? If and how will they be part of the show? The possibilities are endless.
Also, I would like to know why the actress who played “Kenny’s mother” appeared four times in the season. She was seen at the bank robbery, on the bus with Klaus, at the rave, and at the bowling alley. Does this have some kind of bigger meaning? Is she related to the Commission or perhaps just a gag?
As much as we want to know what will or could happen in season 2, I want to know more about the siblings also. They had to go through a lot in the one week they saw each other after 17 years of silence.
LUTHER
“He needs to answer to me for what he did. For sending me up there. I sacrificed everything for him, my entire life. I never left this house. I never had friends. And for what? For nothing.”
Luther—the loyal soldier who blindly believed in everything his father said and sacrificed everything for the greater good. No life, no friends, and as he said, he never even left the house. After realising that he was manipulated and shipped away—even if Reginald did it with having a reason—Luther lost 30 years of his life which he will never get back. We cannot blame him for getting drunk and partying his brain away in the course of a day, even if it is poor timing. What I wish for our fearless Number 1 is that he should start asking himself what he wants and make it happen, if they survive the apocalypse of course. But before he comes to this, he should also step down from his pedestal and not play that leader card anymore. Because let’s face it, Luther is kind of responsible for Vanya’s apocalyptic break down and he seems to be for Ben’s death, too. More teamwork and less dictatorship. Oh, and kiss Allison so that this time it really happened!
DIEGO
“You wanna know why I left? Why I left the Academy. Because that’s what you do when you’re 17. You move out, become your own person, grow up. At least I make my own decisions. You’ve never had to hold down a job. Pay bills.”
Tough on the outside, vulnerable on the inside. Diego definitely cares for his siblings even if he does not want to show it, but please do, because we want to see more of it. After he switched off Grace and loses Patch, he starts to show that he wants his siblings safe. We can see that the most with how he is around Klaus. In the first episode, he sees that Klaus is talking “to himself” in the backseat of his car and when he got him out of the veteran bar, he makes sure that Klaus will not get harmed. It may be covered under sarcasm but I can see through it right into his big heart. He cares deeply and someone should start caring for him as well because for me he is one of the two most broken ones of this family.
ALLISON
“I just had an advantage. I mean, from the time I was little I used to get everything I wanted. With Dad, with my career. But now, I know nothing in my life was real. So I’m starting over. I just didn’t think it would be so hard.”
We think we know about her the most—she left the Academy and started a new life as an actress, became a mum, and does not suffer from anything that Reginald did to her. However, Allison realises quickly that not much in her life ever was truly real. Using her powers to get everything she wanted does bring up the question—did the man she married even love her and did she really deserve all the roles she got? Now, that she cannot speak she finds herself in a vulnerable and helpless position. It will be interesting to see her cope with that, but I also hope that she will be able to talk again soon. Although first, she needs to have a serious conversation with Vanya and Luther.
KLAUS
“Well, for one. You spent the last ten hours beating me senseless, and you’ve learned absolutely nothing. I mean, nobody tells me shit. The truth is, I’m the one person in that house nobody will even notice is gone.”
Klaus is the one character I am craving so many answers about. Let me break it down to you:
- How exactly did he manage to come back to his time just hours after he started his time travel journey?
- Why did he not use the briefcase earlier to get out of there and take Dave with him? Klaus is too desperate to see Dave again, so how long has he been in the war alone? I have so many questions about the briefcase. How did he figure out how to use it?!
- He definitely could not get high there and he also would not be able to be drunk all the time, so how did he cope with all the ghosts he must have seen?
- What about Ben? No matter if Klaus is high or not, Ben is always around. Maybe Klaus could not let go of Ben after he died and he unknowingly conjures him. After all, they seemed to be always close.
I really hope, and I think I am not alone in this, that his siblings will finally take him seriously and not just see him as the addict. Because, let’s face it, seeing dead people since birth is nothing anyone could cope with easily. Knowing how Reginald treated him, even if he knows that Klaus is capable of more, it does do bad things to a person’s mind. In episode 10, after Vanya breaks free from her prison, she goes through the bedrooms and remembers how rude her siblings have been to her. When she stops at Klaus bedroom, you clearly can see that he has a bottle of alcohol sitting next to his bed. I do not support what he is doing, but I understand the reasons why.
Besides needing all these questions answered, he is also the one who has the most potential to evolve, as a person and when it comes to his powers. Also shout out to Robert Sheehan and his incredible acting.
FIVE
Vanya: How did you get back?
Five: In the end, I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time.
Diego: That makes no sense.
Five: Well, it would if you were smarter.
Talking about perfect acting, this young man does a marvellous job playing a 13-year-old with the consciousness of a 58-year-old when he’s 16 in real life. It definitely seems as though Five is in need of a name. My Chemical Romance fans would name him Frank, after Frank Iero the former guitarist of Gerard Way’s band. Frank has no problem with that and Aidan seems to approve, seeing how he had responded to it:
OMG @FrankIero knows who I am!!!! #FanFreakingOut #mychemicalromance #UmbrellaAcademy
What do I do???
— Aidan Gallagher (@AidanRGallagher) February 23, 2019
There is also a lot we don’t know about him and what happened to him during his time working as an assassin. Five and Vanya seemed to have a close bond as kids and he also used her book to write down his equations about time travel.
As Aidan mentioned in an interview, he was the one cast member who was a fan of the graphic novels before he heard of the audition and he does take you behind the series on his YouTube channel as well.
BEN
“Klaus. Klaus. Breathe. You’re in the worst of it now. Just try and stay calm. You know what the worst part of being dead is? You’re stuck. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to change. That’s the real torture, if you gotta know. Watching your brother take for granted everything you lost and pissing it all away.”
I think we are all on the same page when it comes to Ben: how the hell did he die? Unfortunately, the graphic novels do not give you anything about his death. Being constantly around Klaus, high or not, it is fair to assume that he may be stuck in-between and could be brought back to life by Klaus? Certainly, he is the one character we know the least about and they can really give him any kind of past and potential future, as long as they consider Way’s vision.
Until then, I have a simple question. We all are freaking out that Ben punches the drugs out of Klaus, but Ben has already been holding a book in episode 2. So, is there a library in limbo or how can he just sit there holding a book and read?
Vanya refers to him as the glue that has held the family together and after his death, they started to break apart. We got a glimpse of that when Ben is talking to Klaus that he has the power within him to control his powers and that he has to help Luther. Maybe all these family needs is to be complete again.
VANYA
“Our father never missed an opportunity to remind me that I was ordinary. A hard thing for a little girl to hear. If you’re raised to believe nothing about you is special, if the benchmark is extraordinary, what do you do if you’re not?”
Besides Ben, Vanya is another character of which the graphic novels do not tell the reader much about. Therefore it is amazing to see how big of a part she has in the show. Being invisible since childhood, she obviously does not have a lot of self-confidence and that is the only explanation of how she was able to fall in love with a complete stranger in less than 7 days.
Vanya always felt lonely and not loved, blaming her father for how her siblings have treating her but what now? Besides Allison and Five, no one really had her in the picture, until Luther put her away. It seems the siblings will have a change of heart because the only way they can prevent the apocalypse from happening is by showing her love.
Side note: A little easter egg is hidden in the show is that Gerard Way wrote praise for Vanya’s book, which you can see in the first episode.
SIR REGINALD HARGREEVES
“As much as you must strive for individual greatness, and strive you must, for it won’t come to you of its own accord … you must also remember that there is no individual stronger than the collective. The ties that bind you together make you stronger than you are alone. They will make you impervious to the pain and hardship the world will thrust upon you. And believe me when I tell you, life will be hard. It will be painful. We can accomplish anything when we accept responsibility together. This is what creates trust. Together, you will stand against the reign of evil.”
Dear Papa might be dead, but I am all in for a flashback episode because I have some serious questions. In the graphic novels, Reggie is an alien and at the beginning of episode 10, we see him let some strange lights out of the jar while there are a couple of spaceships outside, which look exactly like the one in the comic. So, is he an alien in the show as well or does he come from the future to change time? He knew about the apocalypse and he was definitely older as his look gave away.
But let us come back to those lights—by any chance, were there 43 of them in this jar? Did he create those children?
We get to know Reggie as a heartless person who does not see the children as children, but more like soldiers and subjects for his experiments. So if he did not care about them, why did he gave Vanya his wife’s violin and after discovering that her powers are uncontrollable, not kill her? Maybe Klaus will be able to use his advanced powers and conjure him once more for questioning.
THE SIBLING BOND
We get introduced to these bunch of broken souls as lone wolves. Bearing in mind that they are now adults and seeing how they all have changed, for better or worse, it does not give them the feeling of comradery, in fact, they probably feel how lonely they truly are. Showrunner Steve Blackman explains it in a way I cannot agree more in his Entertainment Weekly interview:
“They think they’re so different, but in that one moment, with that one song playing, they’re all dancing. They think no one else is, but they’re all doing the same thing. Deep down, they’re all desperate for the same thing, which is acceptance and being a part of a family again. If only they could just take a minute to tell each other! But they won’t, and that’s the fun of the show, seeing if maybe one day they’ll figure it out and also possibly save the world.”
And we do see as the season continues that they slowly start to care and help each other. In the end, they act as a team again and we can only imagine what they are truly capable of working as one. After all, the message of The Umbrella Academy is, as Way says it “that we’re all screwed up and that we’ll have an easier time if we do this together”.
