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.

At the end of the last episode of Umbrella Academy, Diego threw his father’s monocle into the river, getting rid of a key piece of evidence in his father’s death and Number Five showed up in Vanya’s apartment surprising her when she came home. He told her about the end of the human race, the date the world ends, and that all of them will die along with the rest of humanity in eight days, setting up the whole arc of Season One. “Run Boy Run” expands on this, giving us more flashbacks and character insights, further drawing us into this fantastic universe that the Umbrella Academy has created.

The episode opens with Number Five arguing with his father over breakfast over his desire to time travel and storming off after being forbidden to talk about time jumping again, it also shows how he jumped too far in the future and he finds himself alone in the apocalyptic wasteland that the planet has become, and all out of juice so he can’t return home. It’s kind of sweet that the first person he calls for is Vanya, the person whose help he seeks out and, the one who left him his favorite sandwich every night because she believed he was going to come home.

We are finally introduced to Agents Hazel and  Cha-Cha as they arrive at a seedy motel under the cover of night. They become one of the Academy’s biggest nemeses this season as they try and capture Number Five to stop him from preventing the apocalypse.  The Academy’s other nemeses show up in this episode too but, his designs on the team are more stan like than truly nefarious and he uses Vanya to get there. While the agent duo seems super close and friendly, we can sense that Hazel is growing tired with his occupation and Cha-Cha is all about the job which you can tell is going to lead to something pretty interesting.

Diego shows up at the Griddy’s while to cops are investigating the crime with no idea that his brother is involved in the massacre.  As Diego talks over the crime scene with his former lover and lead investigator on the case, Hazel and Cha-Cha check out the crime scene from the sidelines.  Luther and Allison reconnect and sow the seeds for one of the most adorable and sad love stories of the season. Klaus is dealing with his own demons in the form of all of the ghosts who keep coming to him for help and we finally meet their brother Ben who really wants Klaus to detox, since he’s not too keen on the only person who can see him being incoherent half the time. We also discover that the box that Klaus stole from his dad’s office and threw away may have been more important than any of the kids knew because Pogo asks him about its contents despite that not being the only thing that he took but, the only thing Pogo is worried about.

Vanya wakes up to find Number Five gone. He’s gone to find the owner of the eye he found at the center of the explosion that ends the world and when he can’t get answers from the company that makes them on his own he enlists the help of Klaus who pulls a full Fight Club in the eye-makers offices that gives Number Five a dead end because the eye hasn’t been made yet. Diego’s ex finally uncuffs him with a warning and he overhears that the fingerprints found at the scene from the missing person on the scene, were from a cold case from the 1930s.

Hazel and Cha-Cha are torturing the guy from the diner because they think he’s Number Five but, after he starts crying they check the pic they have, realize it’s the wrong guy and track down the real Number Five at the store where he is visiting his future girlfriend, a mannequin named Dolores. Allison is still dealing with her ex-husband and custody issues and when Vanya tries to console her sister her words get misconstrued causing another rift between them when Allison unloads her frustrations on her making her feel small & unloved again.

Vanya heads home after the verbal assault from her sister and meets her newest violin student, Leonard, who seems shady AF and a little too into Vanya and her family. Diego and Luther have a chat about their father’s murder and how Diego had an alibi for the night their dad died. Back at the house Pogo shows Allison a secret room that their father used to record the siblings when they were younger, watching the videos shows Allison some memories from her childhood and shows her just how much Vanya’s isolation wasn’t all her fault, causing her to regret and reconsider their earlier interaction. Allison also sees their mother on the night of their father’s death and when he returns from his meet up with Diego she shares her discovery with Luther as a bruised and saddened Number Five returns home from his fight with Cha-Cha and Hazel.

Over a year ago Netflix graced us with the Umbrella Academy series and it immediately became a hit. Great characters, a compelling story, enough of a deviation to keep us comic fans on our toes but, close enough to the source material to keep us happy and,  the soundtrack was a whole bop. The show mixed amazing music, with flawless acting, a story that even with all of its twists and turns was easy to follow and, some killer action scenes. In case you haven’t had a chance to binge this truly binge-worthy series (or you just don’t have time to rewatch it before season two starts and need a recap), I rewatched the whole thing so, that I could let you in on everything you need to know before Season two drops this Friday.

The Umbrella Academy Family (and their powers) 

Number 1 Luthor aka Spaceboy – Superstrength and kind of indestructible.

Number 2 Diego aka The Kraken – Knife Throwing. Combat Fighter.

Number 3 Allison aka The Rumor – Vocal manipulation. She can get you to do anything by saying “I heard a rumor…”

Number 4 Klaus aka The Seance – Can talk to the dead… and soooooo much more.

Number 5 aka The Boy– he can travel through space and time. He also still looks 13 , even though he’s mentally in his 50s.

Number 6 Ben aka The Horror – He’s essentially a bunch of monsters in a people suit and can release the monsters at any time to attack.

Vanya aka Number 7  – Can manipulate sound waves to cataclysmic ends , making her the most .

Side Characters:

Cha-Cha and Hazel – Agents from the time bureau on the hunt for Number Five to stop him from stopping the end of the world and keep the timeline intact.

The Episode

In the premiere episode we get (most of) the backstory, we find out where the kids came from, their superhero origins, and what they’re up to as adults. Klaus is fresh out of rehab, Vanya is trying to get to first chair with her violin, Allison is a movie star, Diego is a vigilante, Number Five is still missing after 16 years (four months and fourteen days), Ben is dead and Luther is part ape and in space. They have been estranged for years and are brought back to their family home, monkey butler, and robot mom because their dad is dead. Luther believes that the death wasn’t natural and wants to investigate but, the rest of the siblings don’t have the same warm and fuzzy or dutiful feelings that he has.

We learn that Vanya is the only powerless one in a family of extraordinary siblings and as a result has spent most of her life feeling isolated and like an outsider. She wrote a book about her family and what it was like for her but, its publication has led to her being further estranged from her family.  With all the kids back in their old house we see the ghosts of their memories of an unhappy and stress filled childhood. We learn that Allison has a daughter and an ex-husband who gained custody of her child because she used her power on her. As the kids gather to figure out what to do about their dad’s arrangements, Luther wants to figure out what happens to their father and he thinks that one of the remaining four siblings is responsible for his death.

We get to see the siblings as tweens on their first mission and get a glimpse of their powers in action for their formal introduction to the world and Vanya looking on, sad that she can’t be a part of the team, while her father reiterates, coldly, that there is nothing special about her and she can’t be. Back in the present Klaus tries to communicate with their father while super drunk and high, knocks over the urn with his ashes and as the siblings retreat to their rooms Luther puts on a record & plays Tiffany’s  “I Think We’re Alone Now” and although they are in different spaces, emotionally, physically and mentally they all dance along in their isolation and it is for sure one of the most amazing, emotionally, beautifully crafted, character establishing dance sequences on TV.

Then comes the lightning which calls all the kids outside to check out what’s going on and holy smokes, straight through the fabric of time comes NUMBER FIVE who nostalgically wants a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich and really wants to know the date. Turns out he was in the future and he’s back with an ominous, apocalyptic mission. At the patriarch’s funeral Luther protectively guards his father’s urn in the rain and while some sweet words are spoken, Diego lets out decades of fury and resentment for him causing a physical fight between him and Luther destroying Ben’s memorial statue.

The show showcases the cruel treatment of the siblings and Vanya’s isolation in a montage of the kids doing training exercises and getting an umbrella tattoo that no one seems thrilled about except for Luther, while Vanya draws on her own with a marker. We also see how the dad showed affection for Luther and none of the others and how he rejected affection because he was mission orientated. As Vanya pops her “medication” and heads home, refusing to stay at her family home with her siblings, Number Five heads off to find coffee at the diner  (Griddy’s Doughnuts) the kids used to sneak off to as a kid and we see how he has discovered a new skill while he was in the future. Number Five has become a badass assassin and he fights his way to safety, killing everyone when a group of time agents show up and close in on him trying to bring him in.