The Umbrella Academy: The 5 Biggest Mysteries That Were Solved In Season 1 (& 5 That Weren't)
The 2019 Netflix series The Umbrella Academy quickly gained fans, and with its second season scheduled for release at the end of July, fans couldn't be more excited to see the Hargreeves clan prevent a global apocalypse. Despite being based on the comics released under the same name, the series maintains a good amount of suspense, putting its own unique spin on the original events.
It's full of mysteries and plot twists to keep viewers glued to their seats, and while many of these mysteries were answered in the very first season, there are still plenty of mysteries that will hopefully be solved in this second season.
10 Solved: What's The Deal With Mom (AKA Grace)?
Since her first appearance, fans knew that there was something off about Grace, the "mother" of the Hargreeves children. Her responses felt stilted and unnatural, which made sense given the fact that she was later revealed to have been a robot created by Sir Reginald Hargreeves.
Fans assumed he built her because he needed additional help raising all seven children, but it was later revealed that his primary reason for creating her was because she couldn't be killed by Vanya's uncontrollable powers, unlike the other nannies the young girl didn't take a liking to.
9 Wasn't Solved: How Did Sir Reginald Hargreeves Know When To Die?
Since the very first episode, the Hargreeves children were divided in their opinions of their father's cause of death. While some felt like it was more than just a simple heart attack, others felt that it was about time their old man kicked the bucket. It was later revealed that he planned his death to bring the Umbrella Academy back together to save the world. But how did he know the world would need saving?
Something tipped him off about the coming apocalypse. Although it could be argued that without his death in the first place, Klaus would've never thrown out his private journal, and Harold Jenkins would've never stumbled upon it and figured out how to activate Vanya's dormant powers. Time travel just complicates everything, and yet the simple fact of the matter is that Sir Reginald Hargreeves knew that something bad was coming.
8 Solved: Who Is This Dolores That Number 5 Keeps Talking About?
After refusing to listen to his father's warnings, Number 5 foolishly decided to jump through time, transporting himself far into the future to a point where all civilization on the planet had been wiped out due to some unspecified global catastrophe. Upon returning to the past, he kept referring to Dolores, his only companion in his apocalyptic future. Fans were curious to see what she was up to in the present, and they got their answer at the end of the second episode.
Number 5 trekked to a local department store just to retrieve a mannequin that he dubbed Dolores, revealing her true identity. This truly meant that Number 5 was Earth's sole human inhabitant in the future, and whatever caused the global apocalypse was a lot worse than anyone could've imagined.
7 Wasn't Solved: Where Exactly Did Sir Reginald Hargreeves Come From?
Eccentric billionaires just can't be trusted; Reginald Hargreeves was no exception. While his backstory is very much still shrouded in mystery, the last episode Season 1 opened with him speaking to a dying lover. When he looks out of their window, viewers are greeted to a dystopic scene of a wide field with ships (or missile) being fired off from multiple locations, a sign that the world Hargreeves came from wasn't one that people wanted to stay on.
If he truly is from a different planet, what made him choose Earth as his new home, and what exactly was the situation on his home planet?
6 Solved: What's In The Briefcase?
Hazel and Cha-Cha, like all assassins hired by the Temps Commission, carried around an ominous briefcase that they barely let out of their sight. Briefcases have always maintained an aura of mystery, especially when carried around by suspicious figures in suits; take Vincent and Jules in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, who spent much of the movie hunting down a briefcase.
After Klaus managed to steal it when he escaped their clutches, the briefcase was revealed to be a time travel device used by agents of the Temps Commission to travel to and from different points in time.
5 Wasn't Solved: Who Exactly Is The Handler And Who Are Her Superiors?
Although fans saw much of The Handler's true personality, there's still so much that isn't known about her. While she appears to have been killed by Hazel, she was shown to survive a grenade exploding point-blank at her feet, meaning that there's no guarantee she's completely out of the picture just yet.
She's able to freeze time whenever she arrives on the scene, an ability that makes fans question if she herself has special powers, much like the Umbrella Academy children. Nevertheless, she made it clear that she answers to unspecified superiors. If she's in fact just a small cog in the Temps Commission machine, who are the hands that make the entire wheel turn?
4 Solved: Does Vanya Have Powers?
It was hard to believe that Vanya didn't have any powers at all, especially when all of her siblings did. Over time, Harold Jenkins helped Vanya discover her own powers that Sir Reginald Hargreeves successfully managed to inhibit long after she moved away from his watchful eye. During the final few episodes of Season 1, she proved that her abilities were far more deadly than any of her siblings'; she could manipulate soundwaves and turn them into a force of nature.
Her powers enabled her to cause intense destruction to her surroundings by barely even trying, and even in a room void of noise, the sound of her own heartbeat was more than enough for her to bring down an entire building. There are still so many aspects of her power that aren't understood, but the fact of the matter is that she has always been an incredible force to be reckoned with.
3 Wasn't Solved: What Exactly Caused The Birth Of The All Of The Children?
On the 12th hour of October 1st, 1989, 43 women all around the world gave birth to babies despite not having any previous signs of pregnancy before this point. Though Hargreeves tried to get all of the children under his custody, he only managed to get seven, meaning that the fate of the 36 other babies is still unknown.
Were they raised by their actual mothers? Are they even still alive? What powers do they possess? More importantly, what exactly led to these miraculous births in the first place? Hopefully, Season 2 will bring us closer to the very first mystery that the show posed.
2 Solved: What Causes The Apocalypse?
The mystery guiding Season 1 was the unknown cause of the apocalypse that would soon take place.
The final episode put this mystery to rest after Vanya, who lost control of her powers, managed to cut the moon into pieces, subjecting Earth to a catastrophic meteor shower the likes of which the planet had seen only during the age of the dinosaurs.
1 Wasn't Solved: How Exactly Did Ben Die?
Due to Klaus' abilities, Ben, formerly known as Number Six, still gets plenty of screen time despite being dead. Out of all of the children, his power seemed to be one of the most destructive. He could control monstrous tentacles that sprouted from a dark abyss in his stomach. It's hard to believe someone with such an ability could've been killed, but the cause of his death was never revealed throughout the first season.
Ben could've died from anything: a training incident gone wrong, a villain who got the better of him, or even by his own power, but with Ben reverting back to his younger form at the end of Season 2, it's only a matter of time until viewers learn the truth behind his tragic demise.