The second season of The Umbrella Academy follows the Hargreeves siblings as they navigate
an unfamiliar decade fraught with challenges. It's a lot to keep track of, and if you reached
the end of season two a little fuzzy on some of the details, we're here to help.
Lila is introduced as a fellow patient at the mental hospital where Diego is sent after
he attempts to kill Lee Harvey Oswald and prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
After helping Diego escape and earning his trust, we learn that she is actually a time
traveler herself. We also learn that her mother is the Handler, who adopted her after the
Commission killed her parents in 1993.
Her backstory gets even more complicated than that, though. It turns out that the Handler
ordered the murders of Lila's parents because she knew about Lila's special abilities. Lila
was born on October 1, 1989, just like all of the Hargreeves siblings, as the result
of one of the 43 mysterious pregnancies and births that we learned about at the beginning
of the series. Hargreeves adopted seven of the babies, but the other 36 remained a mystery...
until Lila. Like the Hargreeves siblings, Lila has her own unique powers; she can mimic
anyone else's power, turning their own abilities back on them like a weaponized mirror -- which
explains why the Handler wanted to claim her as her own.
When the Hargreeves clan arrive in the 1960s, they all assume the world was safe until 2019,
when Vanya would blow up the moon and annihilate all life on Earth. However, when Five arrives
in Dallas in 1963, he witnesses the last moments of his siblings' final stand against a Soviet
invasion before an arsenal of nuclear missiles wipes them all out. Obviously, this was a
different version of 1963 than the one in our history books, which leads Five to conclude
that his siblings had somehow caused the apocalypse.
Over the ten days leading up to November 25, 1963, Five and the other Hargreeves siblings
desperately attempt to piece together the events leading to doomsday. Eventually, it's
Diego who uncovers the event that leads to nuclear war -- an explosion at the FBI building
in Dallas, which is blamed on the USSR. The U.S. then attacks Soviet-backed Cuba, leading
the USSR to bomb Anchorage, Alaska, which leads to all-out war.
However, it wasn't the Soviets who caused the explosion, but Vanya. When Vanya uses
her powers to attempt to break through a police blockade, she is taken into FBI custody. After
the agents determine she must be a Russian operative, she's interrogated using electric
shocks. The shocks cause her powers to overload, and she sends out a massive energy wave, killing
the FBI agents and ultimately causing the explosion.
The first thing Vanya does upon arriving in 1963 is get hit by a car, driven by Sissy,
who subsequently brings Vanya home to her farm to recuperate. Vanya has amnesia, but
gradually begins to rediscover her powers throughout the season. In episode four, Vanya
is pushed to use her powers in a big way, when Sissy's son Harlan runs into a lake and
sinks out of sight.
Using her powers to lift the water out of the lake, Vanya is able to carry Harlan to
safety. She then uses CPR to attempt to revive him, while also unintentionally passing some
of her powers to Harlan. At first, Vanya doesn't notice anything different about Harlan, but
gradually, she begins to suspect that he's now capable of superhuman feats. Later, we
see the extent of Harlan's borrowed power when he becomes upset after accidentally killing
his father, and unleashes an energy vortex that freezes the whole farm. Eventually, Vanya
is able to get close enough to Harlan transfer his power back to herself -- or so she thinks.
The last we see of Harlan, he's making a small toy bird levitate in his hand, implying that
he still retains some of Vanya's power.
Recognizing that the Hargreeves siblings desperately want to return to their own time, the Handler
strikes a deal with Five. She says she'll give him a Commission briefcase that will
transport him and his siblings back to an apocalypse-free 2019, if Five will agree to
assassinate the Commission's board of directors.
Five agrees, although the Handler exploits a loophole in their deal that makes it impossible
for the Hargreeves clan to travel back to 2019 as planned. Once the board of directors
is gone, the Handler bypasses the chain of command and assumes control of the Commission,
then promptly reassigns all of its field agents to wage war on Five and his siblings. Vanya
kills all of the agents, and the Handler herself is killed by disgruntled field agent Axel,
who then leaves the Commission and strikes out on his own. After that, absent the Commission's
prior leadership, the remaining members of the organization vote to put mild-mannered
analyst Herb in charge. We don't know what the future of the Commission holds, but without
its previous leadership or any of its field agents, it's bound to look very different.
In their attempts to figure out what their adopted father Reginald Hargreeves has to
do with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Five and Diego head to their future-father's
umbrella factory to see what they can learn. While there, Five comes across an invitation
to a gala hosted by "Hoyt Hillenkoetter," whom helpful '60s conspiracy theorist, Elliot,
tells them is a member of the "Majestic 12." He goes on to explain,
"It's a secret committee, scientists, military, deep state. No one knows what they really
do."
"Wait, so they're government?"
"Shadow government."
Although only 11 have been identified, Five and Diego believe that Reginald Hargreeves
must be the twelfth member. Sure enough, after Kennedy is assassinated, Hargreeves meets
with the Majestic 12, who admit that they orchestrated the assassination to stop Kennedy
from prying into their organization. However, Hargreeves is upset.
"Our little Kennedy problem is solved."
"He was not to be touched. That was the deal"
When the 12 then threaten to expose Hargreeves' alien identity if he doesn't continue giving
them his advanced technology, he removes his human disguise, and presumably kills them
all.
When the Hargreeves siblings finally arrive back in 2019, they're initially relieved to
find that it's April 2, the day after the world ended in their original timeline. But
they quickly realize that doomsday isn't the only thing that's changed; the Umbrella Academy
is now the Sparrow Academy, their father and Ben are still alive, and there are a new group
of siblings living in the mansion who don't seem to recognize the original six.
What the siblings failed to take into consideration was that their presence in the 1960s would
irrevocably alter the timeline. Their actions impacted a number of people outside themselves,
such as the members of Klaus' cult, the other activists who worked with Allison, and the
FBI agents that Vanya killed. Additionally, they made contact with their father and told
him some of what the future held, which could in turn have affected his future actions.
So while doomsday never occurred, all sorts of other parts of the timeline were also changed
thanks to the Hargreeves' interference in the past, making the future they returned
to unrecognizable from the one they left.
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