The Rundown: Last season when Hazel shot the commission Handler in the head, we thought that was the end of her and the commission but, we were wrong. Three minutes later she was back at work and just demoted and replaced by a fish named AJ. Five tries to make amends and get his brother on board with joining up with the team but, he’s not interested in being Number One again. Number Five discovers the super 8 Frankel Footage that Hazel slid into his pocket before he died and, he uses his conspiracy friend. Vanya is searching the newspapers for a clue as to who she is since her memory is still gone. Diego and his mental ward cohort Lila swap clothes and hit the road and there seems to be a whole lot of sparks and mischief between them. Allison’s husband is arrested for her attack on the racist Mr. Mason by a couple of racist cops. Klaus is in the same jail as Allison’s husband for stealing the truck after the poker game. And, all of the academy kids have a trio of gun-toting assassins on their trails but, they don’t know it and they are all alone.

Best Scene: This episode is chocked full of great scenes, from the near misses with the siblings to Luther’s super touching reconnect with Vanya in the barn, which was a close second. But, the scene that I loved the most was watching Allison’s hubby and Klaus connect in jail and Klaus not understanding that police could hold innocent black men in jail with no charges and being righteously upset and confused about the injustice of it. It was a nice touch and metaphor for how people who aren’t of color don’t realize what happens to “others” until they meet someone affected by it.

Episode MVP: Lila. I’m sorry but, watching her play crazy and worry about her sanity was touching. Given the time and how little it took for women to get sent to the psych ward, it was refreshing to see her trying to self-correct and mentally check in with herself. She was also super charming and funny AF and played with the realness, sincerity, and beauty. I can’t wait to hear/see more of her back story because I’m sure it is just as interesting and nuanced as she is.

Overall: Episode two is an emotional rollercoaster. The characters nearly missing each other throughout the episode kept making my heart race and the touching and tender moments between Lila and Diego, Luther and Vanya, Klaus, and Allison’s husband, Allison and her husband and Vanya and the woman who saved her. It catches us up and readies us for the team meeting up and saving the world, even though it might not be worth saving. Also, that fight scene between Diego and daddy Hargreeves was fire, daddy was smooth with it and essentially pop and locked through a fight.

Best Line(s) : “You are an open book, written for very dumb children.“ – Lila to Diego.

After Vanya’s cataclysmic escape from the cage in the secret bunker under Hargreeves manor, Violin shows us a peek at Papa Hargreeve’s past on what appears to be a distant world and his appearance on earth in an attempt to start a new life after the loss of his great love. He buys an abandoned umbrella business, hence the academy name and while this flashback leaves more questions than answers, we get snapped back to the present and Vanya’s escape. As Vanya walks through the house destroying the scene of every slight she’s experienced since childhood, the house comes caving down behind her and her siblings try and escape. Ben getting more and more “real” saves Diego from a cave in and when Pogo tries to talk her down from her anger and tell her it wasn’t her sibling’s fault, Pogo admits that he knew and Vanya turns her sadness away from her siblings and kills him for his complicity but, her rampage causes an unintended causality when the house comes down Mom was still inside. Five comes back and lets the rest of the siblings know that the apocalypse is still on and Harold was just the fuse, Vanya is the bomb.

The Commission meeting with Cha-Cha and Hazel is in full swing and they find out that the message to terminate each other came from Five and not the Commission. After realizing they were all duped the Commission allows them to live, Hazel can retire with the waitress in the time period of their choosing, Cha-Cha gets a new partner and can keep her job and, all they have to do is protect Vanya and let the apocalypse go down.

Vanya heads to give the concert to end the world while the siblings gather and figure out what to do about Vanya at a bowling alley. Allison, Diego, and Klaus still want to save her but, Luther and Five want to kill her. Klaus tried again to tell his siblings about his new power but, no one believes him and think he’s just being an attention addict. While the siblings bicker, Five gets a message and realizes that the Commission tagged him and that they’ve found them and the apocalypse is still a go.

Hazel and Cha-Cha have a heart to heart and Hazel doesn’t believe that the Commission will hold up their end of the deal and that they will be double-crossed. We discover that the only nice thing the dad ever did was give her his old violin and let her learn to play and it’s ironic that that instrument is what’s going to bring about the end of the world. Back at the bowling alley, Allison makes a goodbye call to her daughter using Luther as her voice and Vanya gets off of the bus at the concert hall. Hazel still not trusting the Commission leaves Hazel for dead after causing an accident that throws her through the windshield of the car and the rest of the Academy sans Five goes toe to toe with time assassins who want to stop them from ending the apocalypse. Five goes to meet with the commissioner who’s holding the waitress hostage as leverage. After realizing the commission lured him there to kill his siblings so they couldn’t get to Vanya he jumps back to help his family and save the world.

After the siblings escape they arrive at the concert hall and everyone but Luther wants to try and save her but, Luther just wants Allison to distract Vanya so they can kill her. Hazel returns to save the waitress and after killing the commissioner he frees his love, who is okay with him having a past. While Vanya plays her Apocalypse Suite Allison looks at her lovingly and the boys use that moment to attack causing Vanya to use her powers to fling them across the stage. While the crowd flees and the time assassins arrive to kill them they come up with a plan to separate Vanya from her violin. Klaus is outside getting food and Ben talks him in to joining their siblings, just as Five shows up and Cha Cha comes in.

We finally get to see Klaus at full power as he projects Ben back into existence to kill all of the remaining assassins and saving the day and Diego attacks Cha Cha for killing his love but, doesn’t kill her because his ex wouldn’t have wanted that. The guys want to stop Vanya but, Allison is not on board with any attack that will hurt her sister. As Vanya reaches full White Violin status, the guy’s attack and she catches them mid-air, leaving Allison to come up behind her and shoot next to her ear so that she loses her concentration, which CAUSES THE FRIGGIN APOCALYPSE because her beam of power goes straight into the moon blowing it up!

As the siblings cradle their fallen but, alive sister, Klaus notices the moon falling and they decide the best way to save the world is to jump back in time as a family, they all link hands and bring Vanya along for the time jump ride to save their family AND the world. Hazel and his love share one last kiss as the moon falls and a blue flash have us wondering if Five took them with the Academy since everyone else was engulfed in red flames.

And, that’s where we end off in the first season of Umbrella Academy, sitting around with questions and waiting for July 31st to happen and I can’t wait especially after seeing the trailer. See you back here this weekend with my random thoughts and geek girl musings after Season 2 drops!

Umbrella Academy‘s eighth episode “Rumor” spends most of its 52 minutes focusing on Allison and Vanya, as it should. The sisters share a super tense and semi-estranged relationship and despite them not talking for years but, when it comes down to it Vanya’s safety is Allison’s ultimate concern above even her own safety. The episode starts by showing us the night that Allison used her powers on her daughter and, if I’m being honest, as a mom I wish I could get my kids to adhere to bedtime that easily. We also hear Allison’s daughter asking where Auntie Vanya was in the bedtime story, which shows that she must have talked to her daughter about her daughter fondly and a lot for her to bring that up. After the flashback the creators show us, Allison, in the car, at night, headed to Harold/Leonard’s cabin to rescue her “powerless” sister from a killer who has lied to her. But, even with the best intentions, things don’t always turn out the way you hope and can have dire consequences.

Hazel & Cha-Cha: While Hazel is on the run with his waitress love and trying to cram three years’ worth of bird watching into the two days that are left on earth, Cha-Cha who survived her initial run-in with Hazel is heading after them. After she blows up the doughnut diner she hits the road to make Hazel pay for a lot of things, mainly breaking her heart. She catches up to them and confronts (attacks) the waitress setting a trap for Hazel.

The Supernatural Learning Curve: After convincing Vanya to leave the hospital after his “attack” instead of sticking around for the police they head back to the cabin. Using a page (literally) out of Daddy Hargreeve’s playbook, Harold / Leonard takes Vanya to the woods behind the cabin and helps her control her gift. When the power scares her he consoles her and agrees to let her go back to the cabin but, when she doesn’t want to practice using the sound waves and instead desires to focus on prepping for her concert he tries to hold back his anger and decides to take another approach by sealing her into the cabin and making her think he disappeared. This unlocks memories of her childhood and being locked away by her father after an accident when she was training as a child.

The Brothers, Grim: with Allison off to save Vanya the male siblings are left to their own devices to figure out a plan. Klaus tells Luther and Five that he talked to dad and he committed suicide to bring the family back together to save the world. Luther gets confirmation from Pogo which sends him on another bender before, a recently released from jail a Diego tells him that Allison and Vanya are in danger and they need to go save them. Unfortunately, they arrive a little too late and see the aftermath of the sisters meet up.

The Sisters, Grimmer: Allison arrives at the Jenkin’s cabin but Vanya isn’t there, she drives around to find her and discovers the hold up is because of a bar fight. When she realizes that Vanya was there she uses her fame to get the cop to let her tag along to the hospital so she can investigate further. While there she finds out that Harold/Leonard paid the guys Vanya killed & injured to attack them. Still unaware that a Vanya is behind all of the mayhem she heads back to the cabin. Things don’t go according to plan though and when Vanya doesn’t believe Allison wants to help her or that Harold/Leonard is evil it triggers another memory and Allison remembers that she rumored Vanya to forget she had powers when they were four because her dad made her and she thought she was helping her. This sends Vanya into a rage and she slits Allison’s throat. While Vanya grieves over accidentally killing her sister Harold/ Leonard drags her away from the crime scene under the pretense of saving her.

When the last episode of Umbrella Academy ended we were all in our feelings  after the day rewound and Five popped back into their end of the world meeting giving them the name “Harold Jenkins”.  The Day That Was shows Harold grows up to be Leonard and he has been obsessed with the Umbrella Academy team since he discovered that he had their birthday but, he was raised in an abusive household and had no powers. He once dressed up as a team member in a home made costume and approached Hargreeves only to be rebuffed after grabbing Allison and announcing his intentions, he is laughed at by the crowd and grows resentful and murderous, his first victim was his father and he got twelve years in prison. When he was released he stole the identity of Leonard, stole the journal Klaus discarded and used it to get revenge through Vanya. Because of the time shift, he finds out they know his real name and he takes Vanya away so, she never finds the journal or kills him and we are back at square one and the apocalypse is happening.

Allison calls Vanya to apologize and try to fix their relationship and tells her that she loves her while waiting for Diego to get Harold Jenkins’s file and she realizes that her hunches were right and Leonard is no good for her sister. Klaus still wants to get clean and this time he turns to Luther, who is super drunk and,  really wants to talk to dad and doesn’t get how Klaus’s gift works because tossing him about doesn’t really work. Klaus tries to talk Luther down from his drunkenness and gets sort of clean while taking care of his big brother because he’s been there.

Diego, Number Five and Allison head over to Leonard/Harold’s place to confront him and get him away from their sister so they can stop the apocalypse and while don’t find him or Vanya they find his creepy murder shrine devoted to the Academy making them worry more about their sister. But, Harold/Leonard is already a step ahead of them and has taken Vanya to a remote cabin to weaponize her. Number Five succumbs to some shrapnel wounds he got while blowing up the Commission HQ and Ben & Klaus head into the night to find Luther and save him from himself.

Runaways: Hazel is about to make a run for it with the waitress but, Cha-Cha has other plans because she thought that Hazel was in love with her like she was in love with him. When Hazel heads back to the motel room to tell Cha-Cha his plans he finds her notice to terminate him and sets the same trap we saw in the last episode but, this time he doesn’t kill her. He just incapacitates her and goes on the run with the waitress.

O, Brother Where Art Thou: Klaus has to be the responsible one. With Luther all about living his best life now that he is free from his father’s expectations and when Klaus and Ghost Ben track him down to a night club where Luther is the main attraction, the music and lights are blaring and drugs are flowing freely Klaus has a few flashbacks and can’t cope.  After resisting temptation and tossing the drugs that Luther was about to take Klaus falls to the floor and as he tries to retrieve them he finds himself coming face to face with and then losing Dave again. With Ben’s urging Klaus tries to save Luther from well, everything that could go wrong in a club when someone who never drank or did drugs decides to do both but, something shifts and Klaus ends up in a space between death and life.

The Gangs Not All Here: Diego isn’t wearing the Number Faux One label very well and after bringing an injured Five back to the manor for Mom to take care of him, Diego who is still a murder suspect turns himself in and sends Allison to the cabin where he thinks Leonard/Harold is keeping their sister so that she can save her and hopefully all together save the world.

I’m Ordinary and I’m OK:  Leonard/Harold takes Vanya into the middle of nowhere and tries to help her unlock her powers so he can live vicariously through her but, she has no desire to be anything but, who she is. She watched her siblings ruin their lives with their powers and she is perfectly okay being who she is, even if it is “ordinary”. The dings in Leonard/Harold’s nice guy armor are starting to become easier to see but, she thinks that he is all she has so, even though he’s throwing up red flags like sports fans throw up confetti at a parade, she stays because she thinks that he is the only person who cares for her.

Unleash The Vanya: After a night out at the local bar, a group of thugs attack Leonard/Harold and cause him to lose an eye, which means he gets the eye that Five has been searching for and Vanya is forced to go full Dark Phoenix to protect him. He still ends up in the hospital but, he’s seen what Vanya can do.

In Umbrella Academy, Diego’s ex ends up dead after trying to save Klaus, who manages to escape by crawling through a vent and he arrives in time to find her body as he searches for Klaus. “Man on the Moon” ended in the same kind of heartbreak that Diego seems to regularly happen to him, he’s lost so much this season and we haven’t even reached the halfway point by the time Episode Five starts. All of the previous episodes sadness makes it fitting that “Number Five” starts with us watching Number Five roam through the apocalyptic wasteland that he time jumped to and seeing him age and wallow in his loneliness and isolation with no one but Dolores to get him through. We also get to see how he ended up working for the “commission” and some idea of how he managed to make it back home in time to hopefully save his family, with four days and six episodes left to save the world.

Klaus is dealing with all of the voices from his yearlong backward time jump to Vietnam and all of the ghosts he brought back with him. Number Five finally comes clean with Luther and Diego about the end of the world and how his family all die trying to stop it. Diego is dealing with all of is losses and guilt that his ex-girlfriend’s death might have been because she tried to do things his way. Allison does some recon at the library to figure out what rubs her the wrong way about Leonard because sometimes you’ve got to bring receipts.

Love Is in the Air: Hazel has been spending his time at the doughnut shop and developed feelings for the waitress who gives him some hope for a normal life. Klaus is heartbroken over losing his love in Vietnam becoming overemotional when he sees his picture on the wall at the VFW. Vanya is falling for Leonard because he says all the right things and seems to know her. Diego is heartbroken and blaming himself.

Vanya Drama: This episode sees Vanya going through a lot of emotions since Leonard got rid of her meds after he killed the 1st chair so Vanya could get an audition, Vanya plays an amazing solo using her powers that were so powerful that she gets the 1st chair position. Plus, she has finally found someone who values her and she wants to keep him in her life because she feels like she belongs for once but, her sister wants to protect her because she knows something seems off about him. This causes a bit of tension between the two of them and as Allison tries to protect her sister and repair their bond, Vanya is the one pushing her away because she thinks it’s not her place. The two of them obviously care about each other and want the same thing, to feel like real sisters but, their timing seems perpetually off.

The Hazel and Cha-Cha Slide: When Klaus jumped accidentally to the past it was by using the briefcase time machine that he stole when escaping Hazel and Cha-Cha’s motel room. Because, they can’t go home without it they agree to a meet up with Luther and Five to get it back and when Klaus (and ghost Ben & Diego riding shotgun) show up in a stolen ice cream truck to rescue Five and Luther,  the time assassins think it’s a setup. Right before the bullets hit their mark, the chief time commissioner shows up, stops time, and Five strikes a deal to save his family by returning to the time commission and back to work with a promotion.  When time resumes, Five and the commissioner are gone, Cha-Cha and Hazel realize they’ve been tricked and the case is empty and, the Hargreeves’ brothers minus Number Five escape by stealing their car leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Poor Vanya spends a lot of time being the verbal dumping ground for her family, at the end of the last episode of Umbrella Academy after Diego shut their mom down, he comes downstairs to find Allison and Vanya having a heart to heart and he takes that chance to yell at Vanya for being there because she could have gotten them killed or herself killed and even though she tells him that she was just trying to help he calls her a liability and tells her to go, which she does after she senses that Allison agrees with him, she isn’t “like them”. This leads Vanya straight to stalker Leonard’s home and pushes her further towards the dark side. Oh yeah, and in the midst of all of the chaos, Klaus ends up in the trunk of Hazel and Cha-Cha’s car and they’re going to use him for leverage to get Number Five since he was the only person not at the house when they attacked.

“Man on the Moon” gives us the back story behind Luther and how he went from fully human to the part ape person we see he became at the end of the last episode. We watch him feeling and being just as isolated as Vanya and see his father still referred to him as Number One, even though all the other children were gone. We also get to watch in horror as their father injects a serum that saves his like by making him half-ape after a failed mission that almost killed him.

The Bad Guys: Cha-Cha & Hazel: have Klaus tied to chair in a hotel room and are doing what they think is torture but, he’s kind of into it so, none of their usual methods work leaving them no closer to finding out where Number Five is. Klaus doesn’t know much but, he knows Five needs to find the owner of an eye so he shares that in an attempt to buy himself a minute.

What in the World Is Going On With Diego: Heartbroken by having to put his mom down and shows up at his exes house looking for comfort and help with his vendetta. She tells him that he has to do things the right way and walks away. He also keeps picking fights with Luther who is the living embodiment of their dead tyrannical dad, they eventually get some sort of closure but, there is still a lot for them to work through before this family can come back together, although them coming across a drunken Five who is still on his apocalyptic rant, they can’t tell if he’s being serious or not.

Sister, Sister: Ever since he showed up on the scene we have all had an icky feeling from Leonard but, Allison gets the ultimate creeper vibe from him when she comes over to apologize and finds him inside her apartment while she’s at rehearsal. Allison tries to warn her sister off but, with their past, Vanya sees it as more of the same, her siblings making her feel small.

The Final Countdown: Number Five is in the wind with no idea that his family was attacked and that the bad guys know who he is and where they are so, he’s still out trying to find out who owns the eye. After he holds the prosthetics exec at knifepoint he gets a location that leads him to the very place that Hazel and Cha Cha are dancing in as they destroy it, thanks to the eye tip they got from Klaus leaving him no closer to finding out how the world ends and how to stop it.

Best Moment: Klaus and Ben have a lot of heart to hearts in this show but, the one they have whole Klaus is trapped in the closet afraid for his life, feeling helpless and alone is a beautiful one. Ben helps Klaus use his gift to save his life in this situation and for the future and it is touching and pure and is the first step at the family coming together as one.

This episode of Umbrella Academy focuses a bit more on Vanya and shows us how five years ago Vanya sees a comic book adaptation of her family and their adventures, feeling left out and invisible she sits down to pen her autobiography about her life as the only ordinary member of the family. We see how her family reacts to her book before we jump back to the present time and see her running late to rehearsal practice where again she feels invisible when she apologizes and the conductor tells her he didn’t notice she wasn’t there. After a brutal convo with the first chair, who tells her to quit playing music because she’s not good enough to be great, Vanya slips further into her self doubt making her easy prey for the super shady and stalker Leonard, who she decides to go see because she had no one else to talk to.

The Murder Mystery: Luther and Allison, going off the videotape try and question their mom but, she doesn’t remember much about the night he died but, they believe she glitched, snapped, and killed him.  Diego believes that if she killed him she had a reason and goes out of his way to protect her.

Number Five is Alive: Number Five sneaks out again after mending his bruises from his last fight at the department store and comes across Klaus looking for the contents of their dad’s box in the dumpster behind their house. Hazel and Cha Cha keep trying to capture the wily Number Five and even after an assault on Hargreeves Manor they can’t seem to best him, so they kidnap Klaus to draw him out BUT, no one except Ben notices that he’s gone.

The Apocalypse, Sweet: Number Five is stalking the building where the eye of the person responsible for the end of the world is made, with the to half of Dolores riding shotgun in the plumbing van he stole.

Family Trouble: Allison bumps into Vanya and Leonard while looking for her to invite her to come to the house for a family meeting about Mom. Allison apologizes for the things that she said to her at the house and she tries to let her know that she wants to be a better sister. At the family meeting, Diego tells the rest of the family that he tossed his dad’s monocle because he knew that if Luther found it with Mom he would have done exactly what he did, lose his crap. The family is having a hard time trying to decide if they should turn their mom off or let her “live” and the vote can’t finish because Number Five is the tiebreaker and he’s not there. We also see how mom took care of them and helped Diego get over his stutter and made him feel loved in stark contrast to their father who often belittled or ignored him,  he tries to have a heart to heart with her but, he can see that her programming is deteriorating much like a human with dementia, which makes it more tragic when she gets shot up in the showdown and Diego has the heart-wrenching task of shutting her down.

Side Story: Hazel and Cha-Cha question the waitress at the Doughnut shop and you can see the start of a little spark between Hazel and the waitress. The waitress remembers the kid’s tattoo and draws it out for them, allowing them to figure out who Number Five is and where they might be able to find him.

Most Memorable Scene: The fight scenes in this show are intense and super fun and in this episode, the finale fight scene is the most memorable. Watching Hazel and Cha-Cha show up at the house to find Five and instead come across a family of superheroes who take them on before forcing them to retreat is pretty damn fly. Watching the bullets fly is as they try to defend each other and protect “powerless” Vanya when she shows up mid-fight or, seeing the bullets graze past their mom as she knits and ultimately “killing” her, or post-bath Klaus unaware of the mayhem dancing around in his towel while they fight through the house. This scene is beautifully shot and full of so much nuance and emotion it wasn’t just pretty but, story propelling.