'The Umbrella Academy' Season 1 Recap: Everything that happened on the thrilling show leading up to Season 2
Netflix's popular superhero dramedy 'The Umbrella Academy' is all set to release Season 2 but are you all read up on Season 1? Don't worry, in case you don't remember everything that happened in the show's thrilling first season, we've got you covered with this recap.
Our story begins in 1989 when 43 women around the world simultaneously give birth, despite showing no signs of pregnancy prior to each birth. Eccentric billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) attempts to collect as many of these infants as he can. He finds and adopts seven of them and raises them as part of his own superhero team, The Umbrella Academy.
Unfortunately, one of them, Ben Hargreeves / Number Six / The Horror (Justin H Min), dies and that combined with years of ill-treatment causes the Academy to disband. Cut to the present day when Reginald Hargreeves dies under mysterious circumstances, causing his estranged children to gather at the family home for the funeral.
To the surprise of everyone present, Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), one of the siblings who had disappeared into the future years earlier, returns with a warning that the apocalypse was coming. Unfortunately, the Hargreeves siblings aren't the tight-knit team they used to be and tensions quickly arise. Vanya Hargreeves / Number Seven (Ellen Page), who is a violinist and the only one in the family without powers, meets a man named Leonard Peabody (John Magaro) and slowly falls for him.
What Vanya doesn't know is that Leonard is actually a villain who is out to destroy the Academy at all costs. Meanwhile, Five is being hunted by two hit-men called Hazel (Cameron Britton) and Cha-Cha (Mary J Blige) who are working for Five's former employers the Commission and have been tasked with ensuring the apocalypse happens.
When Allison Hargreeves / Number Three / The Rumor (Emmy Raver-Lampman) discovers a tape that suggests that the team's robot mother Grace (Jordan Claire Robbins) poisoned their father, an argument breaks out between the members of the team. During the commotion, Hazel and Cha-Cha attack their home and escape with Klaus Hargreeves / Number Four / The Seance (Robert Sheehan) as their prisoner.
In the aftermath of the incident, Diego Hargreeves / Number Two / The Kraken (David Castañeda) discovers that his beloved mom Grace has become damaged over the years and is forced to shut her down. Five chases down a lead involving a prosthetic eye that hasn't been manufactured yet while Klaus starts to sober up while being tortured by Hazel and Cha-Cha.
Diego's former love interest Detective Eudora Patch (Ashley Madekwe) tracks Klaus down and frees him but unfortunately gets killed in the process. Klaus then uses a stolen time-traveling briefcase to travel back in time to the Vietnam War where he falls in love with an American soldier before eventually seeing the soldier die and returning to the present heavily traumatized.
While that's going on, Leonard kills the first chair at the orchestra where Vanya works (without her knowledge, of course). Allison finds out about Vanya's growing relationship with Leonard and grows suspicious, enraging Vanya who stops taking the pills her father had insisted she take throughout her life. Surprise surprise, it turns out Vanya had powers all long and the pills were suppressing them. There's a whole bit of time-travel mess while Five goes back to work for the Commission only to betray them and return with the name of the man who will cause the apocalypse: Harold Jenkins.
Harold Jenkins is the real name of Leonard Peabody and he's a man who was born through a normal pregnancy on the same day as the Hargreeves siblings. It turns out he really wanted to be a superhero and when he realized he couldn't, he became a murderer instead. Allison discovers the truth about Leonard and goes off to find Vanya while Luther Hargreeves / Number One / Spaceboy (Tom Hopper) is dealing with a lot of guilt and disappointment.
Luther heads to a rave and lets off some steam while Klaus, who followed him there, gets knocked out and meets god, who happens to be a little girl, and his deceased father, who tells him he has the potential to be so much more. Vanya slowly starts to remember suppressed memories of her powers and is confronted by Allison, who reveals that she used her mind-control abilities to convince Vanya she's ordinary. Infuriated by the betrayal, Vanya slits Allison's throat and leaves with Leonard.
Just as Leonard appears to have won, Vanya discovers his manipulation and kills him before returning to the house, where Luther incapacitates her and locks her in a special cell. Pushed over the edge by her brother's actions, Vanya unleashes her dark side and destroys the mansion, killing the family's chimp butler Pogo (Adam Godley).
Vanya heads to her performance and starts unleashing her powers, slowly building up to the destruction of her world. Her siblings manage to get through to her and she releases the energy into space but it still blows up the moon and causes the apocalypse. With moments left before they all die, Five takes his siblings on one last desperate jump back in time, ending the story of the season.
'The Umbrella Academy' Season 2 will arrive on Netflix on July 31.