Netflix’s Umbrella Academy Season 2 is just around the corner, and there are a lot of characters to keep track of
Umbrella Academy Season 1 wrapped up on a major cliffhanger–and it’s one you’ll probably want to have fresh in your memory as Season 2 kicks off on July 31. The new season picks up directly where the old one left off–with the entire Hargreeves family in the crosshairs of a full-on apocalypse, except this time the world isn’t going to end in 2019, it’s going to end in the 1960s. Talk about a tough break.
Naturally, there are plenty of moving parts to consider and keep track of in this new season, which means it’s critical for you to have at least some memory of exactly what happened in Season 1. Remember Five’s torrid love affair at the end of the world? The whole deal with The Handler? Leonard Peabody and Vanya’s awakening? What about Klaus in Vietnam, or Ben’s reveal?
Don’t panic if you’re scratching your head–like we said, there are a lot of moving parts here. And to save you from trying to fit a whole 10-episode binge into the week before Season 2’s premiere, we’ve broken down the most critical things to remember about each of the key players in Umbrella Academy’s wacky, violent, temporally displaced world. So, let’s rewind a second and bring you back up to speed.
In case it wasn’t already obvious, major spoilers from Umbrella Academy Season 1 ahead.
Luther Hargreeves (Number 1)
Luther’s whole life has been defined by his unwavering (and completely misguided) loyalty to his father who, quite frankly, treats both him and his siblings like absolute garbage. Prior to Season 1, Luther was the only Hargreeves child to stay with Reginald, who sent him on a “mission” to an isolated moon base. The mission, which, unsurprisingly, wound up to be a thinly veiled excuse to get Luther out of his hair, ended in catastrophe, nearly killing Luther but allowing Reginald a chance to test an experimental medical procedure. It saved Luther’s life but transformed his body into an ape-like monstrosity.
More isolated and repressed than ever before, Luther tailspun until Reginald was murdered and his siblings came crashing back into his life. He has an antagonistic relationship with Diego and a flirtatious (but typically doomed, for numerous reasons) relationship with Allison. The two of them can just never seem to make it work.
Luther spent nearly all of his time in Season 1 pining over Allison, trying to mediate his siblings’ petty squabbles, and otherwise grappling with the yolk of leadership around his neck.
Diego Hargreeves (Number 2)
As the official Number 2, Diego has always had an inferiority complex aimed at Luther. While Luther always seemed to win the approval of Reginald, Diego was the family’s mama’s boy, fostering a close connection to the family’s “mother,” Grace, a robot made by Reginald himself. When the Umbrella Academy was officially dissolved, Diego became a sort of Batman-like vigilante, befriending (and later sort-of dating) a police officer named Eudora Patch to get his leads.
Diego’s power allows him to telekinetically control projectiles. He’s never stopped feeling desperate for his father’s approval and never quite forgiven Luther for being the “favorite” of the family.
Diego spent the majority of Season 1 obsessively trying to investigate Reginald’s death with the help of Detective Patch, which unfortunately lands her in the crosshairs of The Commission. Patch was killed by Cha-Cha, leaving Diego with yet another death he felt the need to avenge.
Allison Hargreeves (Number 3)
Allison had the closest approximation to a successful life following the collapse of the Umbrella Academy team–but it came with a catch. Her power, the ability to mentally manipulate anyone into doing anything by giving them commands that start with “I heard a rumor…” (i.e. “I heard a rumor that you hired me for this job,” or “I heard a rumor you paid me millions of dollars,” etc.) She conned her way into a life of fame and fortune by telling rumors about herself, earning celebrity status before settling down and starting a family.
Things began to collapse in her life after Reginald’s murder when her husband eventually learned about her abilities and her on-again-off-again thing with Luther was reginited. She ended the season with a severe neck injury (her throat was slashed by Vanya’s violin bow during an outburst) that rendered her mute, and thus, unable to use her powers at all.
Klaus Hargreeves (Number 4)
Klaus’s abilities allowed (or, maybe more accurately forced) him to commune with the dead. After being traumatized repeatedly by his father’s experiments in pushing him to his limits, including locking him in mausoleums for days on end surrounded by ghosts, Klaus completely went off the rails. On his own, he became a drug addicted alcoholic, caught in a seemingly endless downward spiral, all while putting on a flamboyant, narcissistic front.
During Season 1, Klaus accidentally time traveled back to the Vietnam war, where he met and fell in love with an American soldier named Dave. Dave, tragically, was killed in battle and when Klaus was returned to the present, he kept Dave’s dog tags. Now coping with post-traumatic stress, Klaus tried to get clean.
The other major reveal for Klaus in Season 1 was that Ben, his brother who had been killed on a mission during their childhood, is actually still around as a ghost that only Klaus can see and communicate with.
Five (Number 5)
Five mysteriously vanished in a time traveling experiment that left him stranded in a post apocalyptic future for decades. During that time, he lost his mind, fell in love with a mall mannequin he named Dolores, and proceeded to make a sort of life with her in his head. It was all very weird, but kind of sweet. He even brought her back to the present with him and toted her fiberglass body around, confiding in her.
It was revealed that, during his time in the future, Five joined a bureaucratic body known as The Commission, created to police time-space anomalies and preserve the passage of time. He became one of their top ranking agents, a ruthless killing machine who traveled through time snuffing out anomalies with brutal efficiency, all while grappling with the fact he was still very much not-quite-there mentally or emotionally.
When he finally managed to return to the present, he found himself trapped in his thirteen-year-old body, despite being mentally in his 50s. He attempted to rally his siblings to prevent the apocalypse he had traveled to while dodging The Commission’s assassins sent to kill him for going rogue.
Ben Hargreeves (Number 6)
Ben Hargreeves died as a child before the events of the show kicked off, but was revealed to be haunting Klaus–a major change from the comics, where he was just regular, run-of-the-mill dead.
Ben was able to possess Klaus and use some of his powers to help fight The Commission–though not much is known about how Ben’s abilities actually work. His code name is “The Horror” and he’s able to manifest various extra dimensional monsters through his skin, but thus far, at least in his ghost form, what we’ve seen have been tentacles sprouting out of his chest.
The only person Ben can directly communicate with is Klaus, who, unfortunately, is less than thrilled to play mediator between him and the rest of the siblings.
Vanya Hargreeves (Number 7)
Gaslit by her father from childhood, Vanya grew up believing she was the only Hargreeves child without special powers. The truth, however, was that Reginald determined Vanya’s abilities to be too dangerous and drugged her to keep them at bay. This led to a life of isolation for Vanya, who never officially got to be part of her brothers and sister’s childhood superhero team.
As an adult, Vanya played and taught violin and lived a mostly quiet life before a man named Leonard Peabody slowly insinuated himself into her good graces. It seemed like an innocent enough romance at first, but eventually Leonard revealed himself to be an Umbrella Academy stalker who was bent on destroying the team. His plan involved turning Vanya against her family and causing her to lose control of her powers–and he mostly succeeded, but Vanya’s mental breakdown also triggered the apocalypse (via the moon exploding), which the Hargreeves family avoided by traveling back in time.
The Other Hargreeves
The 7 Hargreeves children were raised by Reginald, their abusive adoptive father, Grace, their robotic “mother,” and Pogo, a sentient chimp who functioned like something of a nanny.
Reginald adopted the Hargreeves children after they were mysteriously born–all simultaneously, around the world on October 1, 1989, to women who were not pregnant. He trained them as the Umbrella Academy, forcing them to fight crime and develop their powers, though no one, least of all the children, really knew why or to what end.
Reginald’s death is what triggers the family reunion that kicked off the first season. Grace was killed, as much as a robot can be killed, by Diego (it was tragic, trust us) and Pogo was accidentally killed by Vanya when she lost control of her powers.
The Commission
The critical characters to remember in The Commission are The Handler, Hazel, and Cha-Cha. The latter two are time-traveling assassins who were sent to execute Five for abandoning his mission and trying to prevent the apocalypse. Hazel finished Season 1 by betraying The Commission after he fell in love with a civilian waitress in 2019, which prompted him to decide he’d rather lead a normal life than continue hopscotching through time murdering people.
The Handler, Five’s former boss, is a sociopathic ladder-climber bent on complete Commission control. She sits at the top, or very near the top, of the Commission’s bureaucratic ladder and is less concerned with actually preserving space and time than she is with garnering as much personal power as she possibly can. She ended Season 1 by taking a bullet to the head courtesy of Five–though it’s difficult to say whether or not this removes her from the equation for good, given how connected with time travel she is.
