A rundown of everything that happened in seasons one and two of The Umbrella Academy

I wonder how many apocalypses they’ll be preventing in season three?

2 years ago

For the past two years we have gone without the dysfunctional family that is the Hargeeves. Season three of The Umbrella Academy comes out on Wednesday 22nd June, and you’ve probably been frantically trying to piece together all the apocalypses and time jumps that have taken place in the past two seasons before the latest installment drops on Netflix. So, here is a full recap of the season one and two of Umbrella Academy:

Season one

The first season of The Umbrella Academy begins with 43 women across the world giving birth at random at the exact same time in 1989, despite not having a pregnancy beforehand. We meet Reginald Hargreeves who adopts seven of the mysteriously born children and trains them to harness their supernatural abilities. The children are numbered from one to seven, and are called Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Number Five, Ben and Vanya – who form the Umbrella Academy. The group of children rise to fame and become crime fighting superheroes.

We are introduced to the children, now as adults who have all split up after growing annoyed at Reginald Hargreeves manipulation of them. They each lead different lives, Number Five is missing after teleporting wrongly, Vanya writes a book exposing the secrets of the Umbrella Academy, Klaus turns to substance abuse and is haunted by the ghost of Ben who is killed on a mission. The remainder of the Academy reunite after hearing about the death of Reginald. Number Five reappears out of the sky after being trapped in an apocalyptic future for decades, but he returns in the body of his 13-year-old self.

Number Five visits a donut shop where masked assassins, Hazel and Cha-Cha almost kill him. After escaping, he visits Vanya and tells them that the world is going to end in eight days. Vanya is the only sibling without powers and works day to day as a violinist. They take on a new student called Leonard, who soon becomes obsessed. Number Five tries to warn his other siblings and recruits Klaus to help and find the owner of an eye he finds while being trapped in the future.

Meanwhile, Allison watches surveillance footage of the Hargreeves mansion and sees their android mother poisoning Reginald, and she tells the others. Hazel and Cha-Cha investigate the crime scene in the donut shop and are told by the owner that there was a person with an umbrella tattoo on their wrist which leads them to the Umbrella Academy mansion and ends up in Klaus being kidnapped.

Hazel and Cha-Cha start torturing Klaus to get information about where Number Five is. They find out about Five’s investigation into the prosthetic eye and burn down the lab. While they are gone, Klaus is found by police detective Eudora Patch and is set free and escapes with a briefcase. Patch is then killed by Cha-Cha. Klaus discovers the briefcase is a time machine which sends him to the Vietnam War, which he fights in and falls in love with a soldier who gets killed. Once back in the present, he is traumatised.

We soon then find out why Number Five is being pursued by Hazel and Cha-Cha. During his time in the future, he meets a woman known as The Handler, played by Kate Walsh. Five begins to work for the Commission and travels through time and assassinate people to ensure the timeline of the universe goes as intended. When he finds a way to return to his siblings, he turns his back on them which makes him a target. To avoid being eliminated, Five starts working for the Commission again and finds intercepts a message to protect Harold Jenkins.

While all this is going on, Vanya and Leonard begin to date, but Allison grows suspicious. Leonard convinces Vanya to stop taking their psychiatric medication which enables them to use their superpowers. Number Five returns to the present and gets his siblings together telling them the key to prevent the apocalypse from happening is finding Harold Jenkins.

Vanya is harassed by a gang outside a bar and after they beat up Leonard, Vanya unleashes their powers and kills them gang. Leonard recovers and happens to lose his right eye. After doing some digging, Allisons finds out from a police file that Leonard is actually Harold Jenkins who had been obsessed with the Umbrella Academy since he was a child. Leonard’s father was abusive who he then killed and spent time in prison for. Allison manages to track down both Vanya and Leonard, but Vanya doesn’t want to hear anything Allison has to say. Allison admits to Vanya that Reginald told her to use her mind powers to make Vanya think they had no powers like the rest.

Just as Allison is about to use her mind powers again, Vanya cuts her throat open and Allison begins to bleed out. The rest of the Academy find her and save her left but she can no longer speak but writes a message and tells her siblings, that Vanya has powers.

Vanya soon realises that Leonard/Harold has been manipulating them and kills him. Vanya destroys the Hargreeves mansion and attends a violin recital and uses the violin as a vessel to channel their powers, with the ability to destroy the world. The concert begins and Allisson manages to creep behind Vanya and shoots a gun past Vanya’s ear which knocks them out, but just before a beam of Vanya’s energy shoots out and hits the moon.

Everything seems to be okay at first until the chunks of the moon begin to plummet into earth. Number Five suggests to the rest they jump back in time as a group to save the world, and they all agree.

Season two

Season two of The Umbrella Academy takes place almost seconds after the first season. In an attempt to save themselves, Five scatters the siblings across three different years from 1960 to 1963 in Dallas.

Luther becomes a fighter and bodyguard for a man called Jack Ruby, who is the person who killed Lee Harvey Oswald after he killed JFK. Diego is in a mental facility after he tries to prevent the JFK assassination before it had even happened. Allison is a civil rights activist and is married, Klaus is a cult leader he desperately keeps trying to escape from with Ben and Vanya works as a nanny on a farm and loses their memory.

Five is brought back in time by Hazel, 10 days before the apocalypse and he attempts to bring together his siblings to help prevent it. Again. Although with each sibling living their own lives, they slowly join forces once again, with enemies on their back. The Handler is back and is far from dead. She returns to the Commission and finds herself to no longer be in charge, but she recruits her daughter Lila Pitts to pose as Diego’s friend and to keep an eye over the Umbrella Academy.

After Five mant attempts, the Hargreeves siblings finally get together to try and stop the end of the world. During this all, Ben’s ghost helps Vanya regain her memories but by doing this Ben dies once again and achieves closure with his family.

After a failed attempt at preventing JFK’s assassination, the Umbrella Academy are labelled as terrorists and go on the run. Whilst on the run, Vanya senses distress from Harlan, the son of the woman whose farm they had been living on, after accidentally giving Harlan their powers. The Handler and Lila appear whilst this is going on, and The Handler commands an army to kill the Hargreeves.

Vanya kills the army, but the siblings begin to learn that Lila can mirror the powers of the others and managers to overpower the whole family. Diego attempts to convice Lila to join them, and The Handler uses the time to shoot and kill the siblings. Five manages to go back in turn by a few seconds and kill The Handler himself, and Lila manages to escape.

Number Five recovers a time travelling briefcase to take him and his family back to 2019 and they return home. They end up at their mansion, but things have changed drastically. Reginald Hargreeves appears to be alive much to the shock of the siblings. They then come face to face to Ben and a group of different siblings, who call themselves The Sparrow Academy.

If you fancy a rewatch binge after reading this Umbrella Academy plot recap, all episodes are streaming on Netflix. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.