The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 3 recap: The Swedish Job

The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 3 recap: Klaus seeks out Dave in Dallas.

Why was Klaus so keen to return to Dallas? We finally find out the real reason in this episode as he visits a little hardware store and meets with a sales associate named Dave. Yes, that Dave, the Dave Klaus fell in love with when he time-traveled in the first season. And the same Dave who died in the war in Klaus’s arms. It’s a sad little scene, given some levity by Ben skulking in the background with one-liners.

Obviously, Dave has no clue who Klaus is, even as he makes up a reason to be there and buys some paint cans. When they leave, Ben questions why Klaus would do this, he considers it selfish and feels like he’ll only confuse the kid. Klaus says Dave once told him he enlisted on the day Kennedy was murdered, and he hopes to convince him not to so that he could maybe save his life.

The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 3 recap: The Handler’s escapades.

The Handler, dressed as fabulously as she always is, makes a trip to Earth to traipse into a local pet store. Inside she finds a young boy tapping relentlessly on the aquariums and whispers something in his ear scary enough to make him wet his pants.

Then she looks mischievously at the tank of fish. Could she have a plan to disrupt her sentient goldfish boss AJ Carmichael?

Another quick scene shows her basking in a bathtub while perusing Five’s files. She’s clearly plotting something, but it’s unclear what just yet.

The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 3 recap: The truth about Lila.

Cut to Diego, who survived his knife wound thanks to Lila. She followed him and helps patch up his wound back at Morty’s. It involves cauterization, which knocks Diego back into unconsciousness.

When he wakes up, he’s still mostly naked and very sore, yet thinks he’s ready to go after his dad again. Lila puts an end to that by poking him in the stomach with a broomstick handle, sending him falling back into bed from the pain before he can get both legs into his pants. Turns out, that’s not a bad thing since his pants don’t stay on for too long.

Lila spills a dark secret about her childhood to Diego. When she was only 4-years-old, she found her parents facedown in the living room, dead after a home invasion. It’s something she never told anyone before and seems to cement a bond between them.

Diego and Lila’s budding relationship is one of the highlights of a great sophomore season, so this scene was particularly full of ooey-gooey feelings, especially with the incredible humor between the actors added in.

“Is it okay that I don’t hate you like I hate most people?” Lila asks.

Diego tries to kiss her and gets slapped.

“I don’t understand you!” He groans.

Lila then climbs on top of him to kiss him for real and Diego tells her to be gentle.

“Never,” she responds.

Seriously, their chemistry, the physical comedy, all of it is perfect.

Once they have sex and start throwing clothes against the windowpane so hard it rattles the windowpane, Elliott gets a temper as they disturb his tuna jello mold — sounds disgusting if you ask me. The humor this season just feels so much more organic than it did in Season 1.

But of course, the relationship I get really attached to is not without a major twist.

While Diego sleeps, Lila sneaks out in the middle of the night to head to a familiar pet store and a fish tank. Inside, she finds a room key tucked away in the little toy chest. It leads her to a hotel and guess whose inside Room 217? Yep, The Handler!

Even more twisted?

Lila asks if she can order room service and The Handler says, sure, you deserve it.

“Thanks, Mum,” Lila replies.

WHAT!?  But wait, Lila told Diego her parents were murdered at a young age. While that could very well be a lie, I think it might be more likely that Lila was taken in by the Commission after their deaths (perhaps they even orchestrated it) this could lead to a very twisty story.

Extra Thoughts on The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 3.

While I appreciated the dramatics of the Luther fight scene spliced together with the sit-in erupting, I do also agree with the Vulture recapper’s point that it felt like the terrible realism of the protest lost some of its importance and gravity by being used with “superhero spectacle.”

The recapper, Scott Meslow, does a good job of dissecting why these scenes don’t parallel well together considering one is made in utter fantasy and the other is something very real and horrifying. Not to mention that while Allison saves her husband, we don’t know what happened to all the other protestors.

As Meslow writes, the scenes together compare a Black man being beaten, which is “a national shame that America is actually, painfully grappling with right now — with the ridiculous spectacle of a depressed superhero inviting someone to punch him into oblivion.”

Even Raymond himself says that a white police officer wouldn’t just stop what he was doing because a Black woman told him too. That point may have been too on the nose, but I thought it was somewhat poignant and sobering that Allison’s only way of getting the cop to stop his attack was by using his powers. Unfortunately, Allison’s powers don’t exist in the real world.

The Umbrella Academy Season 2 is now available to stream on Netflix.