The Umbrella Academy opens in 1989, where 43 random women around the world give birth,
having not shown any signs of pregnancy until going into labor. Eccentric billionaire Sir
Reginald Hargreeves adopts seven of those babies, and upon discovering they each have
their own unique superpowers, trains them and creates the superhero team known as The Umbrella
Academy. Reginald calls them each by an assigned number, based on their level of usefulness to him,
but their android mother Grace gives them actual names. There was Number One, Luther, who grows
up to be an astronaut with superstrength. After suffering critical injuries on a mission, Reginald
injected him with a serum that saved his life but gave him an ape-like torso. Number Two is Diego,
whose telekinetic abilities allow him to curve the trajectory of items like knives or bullets. Number
Three is Allison, an actress who can control other people’s minds by using the phrase “I
heard a rumor” and had also secretly developed a forbidden love with Luther. Number Four is Klaus,
a drug addict who can communicate with the dead. Number Five is nameless, as he has the ability to
jump through space and time, and was lost in the future before being given a proper name.
Number Six is Ben, who has the ability to summon otherworldly tentacles from his body.
And Number Seven is Vanya, who grows up to be a meek violinist who is alienated
from her other adoptive siblings for having no apparent powers. Unbeknownst to Vanya,
Reginald Hargreeves prescribed her pills that suppressed her powers.
As the group grew older, they began to grow apart. The death of Ben while out
on a mission further fractured the group, and eventually they disbanded and went their
separate ways. Luther was the only adopted Hargreeves child to stay loyal to his father.
In the present, the siblings return home and reunite following the death of Reginald. At home,
they are greeted by their android mother, Grace, and Reginald’s intelligent chimpanzee friend and
assistant, Pogo. Although the coroner stated Reginald’s death was due to heart failure,
the children believe he was murdered. Number Five then teleports to the present,
telling his siblings he had been lost in the future, was now 58-years old,
and had been transferred back into his 13-year old body.
Oh, and he has secretly come back to prevent an apocalyptic event that would happen in eight days.
Five’s only lead is a prosthetic eye he found in the future, knowing its owner was
responsible for the apocalypse. As he tries to uncover and stop whoever was responsible,
Five is also pursued by Agents Cha-Cha and Hazel, a pair of time traveling assassins who work for
the Commission. The Commission’s purpose was to ensure that no one messed with the timeline,
meaning if the apocalypse was supposed to happen, Five couldn’t be allowed to interfere.
Commission agents attack Five at a doughnut shop, but are all killed by the superpowered hero.
When Cha-Cha and Hazel question doughnut shop waitress Agnes, she and Hazel hit it off. Agnes
points the agents toward the Hargreeves estate, where they attack the Umbrella Academy siblings.
Ultimately, Cha-Cha and Hazel flee, but manage to kidnap Klaus in the process.
Meanwhile, Diego’s former partner and love, Detective Patch,
investigates the doughnut shop deaths, unaware of the time traveling conspiracy
she was getting involved in. She manages to track down Cha-Cha and Hazel and free Klaus,
but is murdered by Cha-Cha in the process. As Klaus escapes, he steals his captors’ briefcase,
which the hitmen use to travel through time. Klaus accidentally travels back
in time to the Vietnam War, where he meets and falls in love with a soldier named Dave.
Following Dave’s death in the war, Klaus returns to the present and destroys the briefcase.
Having been attacked by time traveling hitmen and learning of Klaus’ journey to the past,
the Hargreeves finally confront their time traveling brother for
answers. Five reveals that when he first traveled to the future as a child,
it was to an apocalyptic wasteland where most of the world’s population, including the Academy,
were killed. Five lived in the wasteland for forty years, completely alone aside from a mannequin
he named Dolores. Eventually, he was recruited by the mysterious Handler to work for the Commission,
traveling to various points in time to commit assassinations. Throughout his time working
for the Commission, he was secretly trying to uncover the origins of the apocalypse
and make his way back to his original timeline to prevent it from happening.
In the present, Five arranges for a meeting with the Handler, agreeing to work for the Commission
once again in exchange for the protection of his siblings. Back in the Commission offices,
Five intercepts orders for Cha-Cha and Hazel to protect a man named Harold Jenkins.
Five then travels back to the present, where he is successfully able to rally his siblings
together to stop the apocalypse. Klaus uses his powers to speak with the deceased Reginald,
who reveals that he orchestrated his own death in order to bring the Umbrella Academy back together.
And now that they were back together, they also had a target: the mysterious Harold Jenkins.
Meanwhile, Vanya is continuing to live her normal life. She begins teaching a new violin student,
Leonard, and the two grow close. Leonard encourages Vanya to audition for the first chair
position in her orchestra, which she succeeds in getting. Unbeknownst to Vanya, that first
chair position only became available after Leonard murdered its previous violinist. Feeling fulfilled
in her career and relationship, Vanya stops taking the pills Reginald prescribed her as a child and
begins exhibiting her own powers. Vanya had the power to control sound, using it for telekinesis,
flight, force fields, and more. Leonard and Vanya discover in Reginald’s diary that he had tried to
suppress her powers after they proved to be too dangerous, killing several nannies, which led to
Reginald creating Grace the android. When Vanya and Leonard are harassed by a group of thugs,
Vanya’s powers erupt, killing the thugs and injuring Leonard, who loses his right eye.
Meanwhile, the other Hargreeves children discover that Harold Jenkins was in fact
Leonard. Leonard had been born on that same day in 1989 via a normal pregnancy, but his mother died
during childbirth. Leonard grew up to idolize the Umbrella Academy and went to Reginald in the hopes
of joining them. Reginald rejected Leonard, telling him he wasn’t special. And so, years
later, a bitter Leonard inserted himself into Vanya’s life with the goal to manipulate her into
discovering her powers and using them against her siblings. Allison manages to find Vanya and tries
to warn her about Leonard’s true motives, but when Vanya asks about her past, Allison confesses to
using her rumor abilities to make Vanya forget that she ever had powers. Enraged, Vanya slits
Allison’s throat and escapes with Leonard. Vanya is racked with guilt over what she did to Allison,
and upon discovering that Leonard had in fact been manipulating her, she kills him in a fit of rage.
The other Hargreeves siblings arrive and save Allison, although she has lost the ability to
speak. When Five discovers that Leonard was killed, he realizes that Leonard was the owner
of the prosthetic eye. With Leonard now dead, Five presumed this meant the apocalypse had been
prevented. Vanya returns home to apologize for attacking Allison, and an angry Luther
locks her in an isolation chamber. Feeling betrayed and heartbroken by her siblings,
Vanya uses her powers to break out of the chamber. Vanya begins destroying the Hargreeves mansion,
remembering all of the times she was made to feel lesser than her siblings. Pogo tries to calm her
down, but Vanya kills him for his complicity in suppressing her powers. As the mansion collapses,
Grace is killed, but Klaus is able to physically manifest his deceased brother Ben,
who helps his siblings escape. Five then realizes that he was
wrong about Leonard being the cause of the apocalypse, and that it was actually Vanya.
With Vanya being the source of the apocalypse, the Handler assigns Cha-Cha and Hazel to protect her.
Hazel has become disillusioned with his life as a hitman and turns on Cha-Cha,
then shoots the Handler so that he and Agnes can run off to be together.
Meanwhile, the Hargreeves arrive at Vanya’s violin concert to confront her. While the brothers think
the only way to stop her is to kill her, Allison thinks Vanya can still be reasoned with. As the
brothers attack Vanya, she uses her powers to stop them and drain their energy. While Vanya
is distracted, Allison takes the opportunity to hold her at gunpoint. Instead of shooting Vanya,
she fires her gun next to Vanya’s ear. This breaks Vanya’s hold on her siblings,
causing her to collapse as a beam of energy erupts from her and destroys the moon. Fragments from
the moon begin to fall to the earth, causing the apocalypse. Five proposes that he uses his powers
to teleport all of his siblings with him to the past so that they could once again attempt to
stop the apocalypse. As the world is destroyed, Hazel and Agnes use a briefcase to get to safety,
Cha-Cha is killed, and the Umbrella Academy, Vanya included, are teleported to the past.
In season 2 of The Umbrella Academy, we learn that Five’s plan to time travel his siblings
back in time in order to prevent the apocalypse doesn’t quite go as planned. The Hargreeves
children are randomly teleported to different points in time between 1960 and 1963. Klaus is
transported to 1960, where he becomes the leader of a spiritual cult, using his powers to keep
his deceased brother Ben at his side. Allison is transported to 1961, where she regains her voice,
joins the civil rights movement, and marries an activist named Raymond. Luther is transported to
1962 where he becomes an underground fighter and bodyguard for the gangster Jack Ruby.
Diego is transported to September 1963, where he is locked up in a mental hospital after trying to
warn the world of President John F. Kennedy’s imminent assassination. Vanya is transported
to October 1963, where she is hit by a car and loses her memories. She’s taken in by the family
who hit her, Sissy and Carl Cooper, alongside their young son Harlan. And then there’s Five,
who is transported to November 25, 1963 where everything has devolved into pure chaos.
The world is mere minutes from a nuclear doomsday and Five’s siblings are all there,
fighting Soviet soldiers. An elderly Hazel arrives to warn Five that this was another apocalypse that
the Academy would need to stop, but before he can explain more, three assassins known as the Swedes
kill him. Five manages to teleport back in time ten days, giving him a very short
amount of time to reunite his siblings and figure out how to prevent a new apocalypse.
But reuniting the Hargreeves siblings was much easier said than done. Vanya,
still suffering from amnesia, is content living her new life with the Cooper family. She and Sissy
enter into a secret love affair, while Vanya also grows close and protective over the young Harlan.
When Harlan nearly drowns in a lake, Vanya saves his life. While giving the boy CPR, some of
Vanya’s powers somehow transfer over to Harlan, giving him powers of his own. The Hargreeves
siblings try to remind Vanya of who she is, but she decides to stay with the Coopers instead.
Klaus reunites with his long lost love Dave and tries to prevent him from going to war,
which Klaus knows will lead to his death.
Ultimately, Dave joins the army and a depressed Klaus returns to his siblings.
While locked up in the mental hospital, Diego befriends a fellow patient named
Lila who helps him escape. As Diego tries to stop the JFK assassination
and prevent the upcoming apocalypse alongside Five, he and Lila develop romantic feelings
for each other. Unfortunately, Diego is unaware that Lila worked for the Commission
and was actually the secret adopted daughter of the Handler, who was still very much alive. The
Handler instructs Lila to remain close to Diego and protect Five at all costs.
As the siblings begin to come together to prevent the apocalypse, they also run
into the past version of their late adoptive father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves. They discover
that Reginald was a member of the Majestic 12, a secretive shadow government that controlled the
United States who were somehow involved in JFK’s assassination. Believing that saving JFK was the
key to preventing the apocalypse, the Academy make it their mission to stop their father.
The Handler arrives to make a different deal to the Academy. She had been demoted in the
Commission following her failures in season one, so if Five agreed to assassinate the Commission’s
board, she would give them a briefcase to travel back to a non-apocalyptic 2019.
Five agrees to the deal, killing the Board and making the Handler head of the Commission.
Unfortunately, Five only had 90 minutes to gather his siblings together to time travel.
While Allison and Raymond attempt to reach the others, they are confronted by the Swedes.
Allison uses her powers to defeat them and flee with her husband. Things don’t work
out quite as well for Vanya. She convinces Sissy to take Harlan and leave Carl behind,
traveling with her to the future. But Carl calls the police who show up and apprehend Vanya.
With Vanya under arrest, the briefcase’s timer runs out and the Academy were stuck in the past.
Because Vanya can speak Russian, the 1960s police officers believe that she must have
ties with the KGB and turn her over to the FBI where she is drugged and interrogated.
This torture makes Vanya start to remember her past and lose control of her powers.
Meanwhile, Lila kidnaps Diego and takes him to the Commission, trying to convince
him to join so that they could continue to be together. While at the Commission headquarters,
Diego is saved by a kindly analyst named Herb, who shows him the cause of the apocalypse. Vanya will
destroy an FBI building and in turn, JFK will be saved. The Soviets will be blamed for the attack,
leading to World War III. Herb helps Diego escape in order to stop Vanya and save the world.
Diego reunites with the Academy, who race to stop Vanya. With her powers out of control,
none of the siblings are able to reach Vanya, except the ghostly Ben, who enters her mind.
Ben manages to calm Vanya, preventing her from exploding the FBI building, which in turn stops
the apocalypse. Having saved the world, Ben’s spirit finally enters the afterlife.
Because Vanya’s explosion was prevented, historical events happen as they should,
resulting in JFK’s assassination. Reginald visits Majestic 12, revealing that not only had he not
been a part of the assassination plans, but he had also been trying to stop it. Furious,
he reveals himself to be an interdimensional being and kills the other Majestic 12 members.
Vanya senses that Harlan is in trouble, and her siblings, finally united, travel with her to the
Cooper farm to investigate. As a scared Harlan loses control of his powers, Vanya helps calm him
down. Unfortunately, that’s when the Handler arrives, with Lila and an army of Commission
agents by her side. Vanya uses her powers to kill all of the Commission agents, but the Handler and
Lila survive. It’s then revealed that Lila was another superpowered baby born on October 1, 1989,
and her superpowers allowed her to mirror the powers of others. Lila fights the Academy,
using their own powers against them. Unbeknownst to Lila, the Handler had ordered for her parents
to be killed so that the Handler could adopt her and manipulate her into using her powers.
And now, the Handler wanted to take Harlan to add another superpowered weapon to her arsenal. The
Academy manages to show Lila that the Handler was just manipulating her and offers to take her in
and love her as a member of the Hargreeves family. But that moment of revelation is
abruptly ended when the Handler arrives and shoots everyone dead. Before succumbing to his injuries,
Five manages to travel back in time by a few minutes to save his siblings.
And that’s when the last surviving Swede, Axel, arrives and murders the Handler,
blaming her for setting in motion the events that killed his brothers.
In the aftermath, Herb, the newly appointed head of the Commission,
arrives with a briefcase to give to the Academy, which would allow them to travel back to 2019.
Lila decides to take her own briefcase and run, leaving Diego heartbroken. Raymond stays behind
to continue his fight for the civil rights movement. And Vanya and Sissy end their
relationship, as Vanya’s life in the Academy was too dangerous to involve a young child.
And so, the Umbrella Academy return to 2019,
having successfully prevented the apocalypse. As they enter their childhood home, the siblings
realize that they might be in 2019, but it wasn’t their 2019. A still-alive Reginald greets them,
but reveals that in this timeline he adopted a different set of superpowered children and
formed a group known as the Sparrow Academy. As the Umbrella Academy look up at the Sparrows,
they only recognize one familiar face: the very much alive Ben, who has no idea who they are.