The following story contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy through season 3.
THIS IS JUST kind of the way things are now. Because there are so many shows coming out—on so many different channels, streaming services, prestige cable giants, etc.—and with such varying lengths in between seasons, it’s going to be virtually impossible for anyone to remember everything (or anything!) about even their very favorite shows.
That’s the case even for straight-forward shows like The Bear (which is kind of just about a restaurant and, well, depression), so imagine how complicated it makes things when dealing with a show like The Umbrella Academy, which centers on superpowers, time-travel, and the apocalypse.
Luckily, we’ve got you covered. Just like you, we absolutely want to watch The Umbrella Academy as it enters its fourth and final season; but also, just like you, we didn’t quite remember what the heck was going on in this show when we last left off back in 2022. As you might remember, the show’s third season dropped in a rather tough spot—in between the two broken-up parts of Stranger Things‘s epic fourth season—which, considering the likely overlap of audiences, might make season three even harder to remember.
But we’re here. We know what you need to remember, and we’re going to make it as simple and to-the-point as possible. By the time you’re done reading this story, all you’ll have to do is press play on Netflix and get started. Then, when you’re done, maybe you can check out Gerard Way’s comic book source material.
Before that, though, just a warning: this show is far too twisty-turny, and has far too much going on, to get into everything that happened in the three seasons so far. Instead, we’re going to give you a short primer of what you’ll absolutely need to know and remember, and then quickly set the scene for where things left off.
Sound good? Sounds good to us too.
Kinda Like the X-Men
The basis of The Umbrella Academy is that on October 1, 1989, 43 different women all around the world who were not pregnant previously went into labor and gave birth to children; they would all eventually develop superhuman abilities, and an eccentric billionaire named Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) was able to track down and adopt 7 of them as his children. While Reginald was always a cold, relatively cruel man, he had the seven children live in his wealthy quarters, and raised them as The Umbrella Academy, essentially a superhuman team who became famous. Imagine Reginald Hargreeves as a powerless (though he is randomly revealed as an alien for some reason), cruel version of Professor X, and The Umbrella Academy is his version of the mutants. The X-Men parallels do not stop there.
The seven kids—who are assigned numbers—were:
#1, Luther (Tom Hopper), who has super strength and stuck around doing missions for his father even as he grew up, eventually getting injured and only saved by using an experimental serum that made him half gorilla.
#2, Diego (David Castañeda), who is kind of like Batman if he had precision powers like Neo or Hawkeye to aim knives, bullets, and more.
#3, Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), who can get anyone to do anything by telling them “I heard a rumor…” before a command.
#4, Klaus (Robert Sheehan), who speaks to the dead and is eventually revealed to be virtually invincible; even after he dies, his body always regenerates. He abuses substances as a way to drown out the ghosts and dead voices he’s constantly hearing.
#5, who just goes by “Number Five” (Aidan Gallagher), is a Nightcrawler-esque teleporter who tried time-traveling as a child, and was successful and unable to return; he eventually became a time-traveling assassin, but was then plopped back into his original timeline. As a result, he’s a 60-year-old man in the body of a 13-year-old. None of his siblings remember his name, so he just goes by “Number Five.”
#6, Ben (Justin H. Min) has tentacle powers, but died during a mission when The Umbrella Academy were all younger
#7, Viktor (Eliot Page), who previously went by Vanya, at first thought he had no powers (and wrote a book about living an ordinary life in an extraordinary family), but was eventually revealed to essentially revealed to be perhaps the most powerful of all, with world-altering telekinetic powers. Imagine if Jean Grey from the X-Men’s powers had a musical tinge.
They function as a team, but where The Umbrella Academy differs is that they’re all grown up, kind of dysfunctional, and also kind of hate each other. They’re drawn together in season 1 because of Reginald’s death—the only thing that would be certain for them to reunite.
Time-Travel and the Apocalypse
Much of The Umbrella Academy involves time-traveling and the apocalypse, mainly because of Number Five and the role he got when he actually sent himself in to the future. The time travel in the show is largely conducted by having a “suitcase,” which allows people to travel through the timeline.
There’s also a constant running theme of the apocalypse, and preventing it; that’s why Number Five tried to come back in the first place. After Viktor’s powers caused the apocalypse, The Umbrella Academy, through a series of happenings, found themselves back in Dallas the ’60s in a whole plot revolving around the JFK assassination. This eventually led to another Viktor-related apocalypse, which then sent the siblings into the future.
Except for one big problem: Reginald met them and changed his mind, pulling together a different group called The Sparrow Academy. The two groups had a rivalry, and by traveling through time also caused a Grandfather Paradox—meaning the universe would eventually cease to exist because of logic—that led to a “kugelblitz” destroying everything in its path.
This is sorted by the end of season 3, though a very strange new reality forms in its aftermath (more on that below).
Weird Relationships
There’s also a lot of strange stuff going on, relationship-wise, in The Umbrella Academy. First and foremost is a romantic will-they-won’t-they thing between Allison and Luther, who have apparently had crushes on each other since they were teenagers despite being step-siblings. (Allison, in the throws of her depression during season 3, also takes advantage of Luther sexually using her “I heard a rumor…” power, which is all kinds of bad.) Hopefully Luther getting involved with Sloane, and Ray, Allison’s husband from the ’60s, puts an end to this for good. Though probably not.
Reginald (who, again, is an Alien randomly) also had a “wife” who the kids knew as “Mom,” who was also a robot. She was also possibly based on a real woman from the ’60s? And by the end of the season we’re reminded that Reginald has a different, original wife, who is possibly also an Alien. So there’s also that.
Finally, there’s Diego, who has an actually fun relationship with Lila (who, oh yes, by the way, is another of the 43 superpowered children born in 1989). Lila (Ritu Arya) is kind of an anti-hero who is sometimes against the Umbrella Academy and sometimes with. But she and Diego are romantically involved, and may or may not actually have a kid together? It’s a little hard to follow. Lila definitely tested Diego with some kid (Javon Walton) who she claimed to be their son, but wasn’t actually.
Let’s also remember that The Umbrella Academy have a monkey butler named Pogo, who is pretty great.
So where did The Umbrella Academy season 3 actually leave off?
By the end of season 3, the entire Sparrow Academy (with the exception of Sloane and the Sparrow Academy version of Ben) were killed/erased from existence, and after a whole thing with Reginald using the kids’s powers to reset the universe (and after he was murdered by Allison, who previously betrayed her siblings to help him), wound up in an entirely new timeline/reality where Reginald’s corporation owns just about everything.
The Umbrella Academy, however, no longer have powers. So that could wind up being a pretty major problem.
