The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 9 recap: 743

The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 9 recap: Do the Hargreeves manage to stop Vanya?

The opening of The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 9 starts right where the previous episode left off. Diego, Klaus, and Allison all give their best efforts to make it to the room where Vanya is emanating all of her power from, but unfortunately they each fail.

Then Ben steps forward and takes one for the team, as his spectral self heads toward the room. I think I might have screamed at my screen because I adore Ben, so much.

Elsewhere, Luther is torn between two Fives, unsure of which one to listen to as they both are against each other and each one is also suffering from paranoid psychosis.

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At the Commission, The Handler is getting fitted into yet another incredible outfit when Lila shows up. Her mother already knows Diego is M.I.A. because she threatened Herb with a knife to tell him what happened with the infinite switchboard.

With Lila in the loop, The Handler is eager to find out how she’ll handle things — i.e. she’s expected to kill Diego. Lila wants to let him go, but her mother essentially tells her she needs to stick to their deal or things could get bad for her upon losing The Handler’s trust.

Meanwhile, Herb notices AJ the fish getting busy in his fishbowl. He notices AJ spelled out “743” in the pebbles at the bottom. Herb rushes to the filing room and tracks down the file called 743.

Back with Vanya at the FBI building, Ben manages to possess her and Harlan stops freaking out at the farm. When Sissy and Carl find him, he utters Vanya’s name, spooking them both, but especially Carl.

Carl picks him up and hoists him out of the house, intending to take him to an institution where he can get “real” help. Sissy stops him by standing in front of the car and aiming her shotgun at her husband.

“Maybe you should watch how you talk to me for once.”

Herb runs into Lila on his way out of the room and she corners him, threatening him if he doesn’t tell her where Diego is. Herb tells her about their escape plan and that Diego returned to Dallas to assist his family. He also questions whether she’ll really kill him and she says of course not, she loves him. Before she can go find him, Herb gives her the file he found and whatever is on it devastates Lila.

Luther has his hands full with the Fives, especially when he realizes they’re both reaching stage seven of paranoid psychosis — homicidal rage. He tries to get them to calm down and think things through but young Five incapacitated him with a swift kick to the groin so the two Five’s can start fighting each other.

Then comes one of the saddest scenes of the season, I admit I was reaching for the tissues as Ben entered Vanya’s mind, I had a feeling what was coming. Inside, Ben finds a single white violin and within another layer of his sister’s mindscape, he finds a sobbing Vanya, terrified of what she’s become.

The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 8 recap. light. Must Read

Ben assures her that it’s not her fault, their father tormented her for years, drugged her, didn’t allow her to learn how to control her ability. Ultimately, he helps her realize she can stop it all, that it’s not too late, and sacrifices himself in the process as he’s unable to withstand the energy she’s emanating any longer.

“Can you hug me as I go?” He asks, as a final favor.

He also requests that Vanya tell Klaus something, but we don’t hear what he whispers. Is this really the end for Ben? I hope not.

Cut to the farm again and things heat up between Carl and Sissy as he gets out of the car to confront her. He doesn’t think she should be asking for anything more than what she has, claiming he’s been faithful all these years and provided a decent life, but Sissy loves Vanya and she clearly hasn’t loved Carl for a long time.

Plus, it seems he forgot how many nights he’s spent getting drunk at the Carousel Club. While his parents fight, Harlan gets out of the car and chooses his mother over his father. Carl tussles with Sissy for the gun and in the struggle it goes off, aiming a bullet directly at Harlan.

He activates some kind of force field, I’m guessing from Vanya’s powers, and the bullet bounces off and redirects right into Carl’s chest, killing him.

As the Fives continue fighting, Luther eventually manages to get the upper hand by snatching the gun old man Five was going to use to kill Kennedy. He pretends he’s going to kill young Five but then quickly knocks old man Five unconscious as he grabs the suitcase and tells Five to open the portal.

Around the same time, Lila confronts The Handler with the truth about 743, which was a kill order to take out her parents. It says it was approved by AJ Carmichael, but through a flashback we see it was The Handler herself who made it happen, assigning Five to the case to slaughter her parents.

Thinking Lila found out, The Handler even inches toward a knife, but Lila only knows AJ’s stamp is on the paper and Five was the assigned killer. The Handler uses her discovery to turn Lila against Diego, insinuating he only came to the Commission to find the file and hide evidence from her and that he and Five are in cahoots to keep the whole thing secret.

When Lila leaves to go after Diego and his brother, The Handler sets her sights on poor AJ, who she realizes is behind order 743 leaking. She swallows his little goldfish body in one gulp.

When Vanya wakes up and reunites with her siblings, they’re all happy to realize they’re alive and it seems, doomsday has been averted. Realizing this, Diego thinks he can still save JFK since Vanya isn’t going to blow up, he doesn’t see why Kennedy should have to die and he’s close to arriving so he rushes off, even though Allison tries to stop him.

The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 9 recap: Does Diego prevent Kennedy’s assassination?

As Diego sprints to tackle his father, who seemingly shows up on the grassy knoll just like the photograph predicted, Five tells the old version of himself to get into the portal and gives him the correct calculations for his later time jump. But just before he jumps through, Klaus from 2019 throws a fire extinguisher through eh portal and knocks Luther to the ground.

In the skirmish, old man Five lunges for the briefcase, and the two Fives fight once again as the portal starts to shrink. Panicked, Luther kicks old man Five into the portal before it’s too late. Unfortunately, the briefcase goes with him and half of it gets cut off in the portal, rendering it useless.

Before they can process the latest blow to their plans, they realize Kennedy is turning the corner in his motorcade and will be assassinated in seconds.

Diego reaches the man he thinks his father and knocks him to the ground, but surprise! It’s not Reginald after all. It’s a decoy of some kind since Kennedy winds up dying and the man hands Diego a note from his father that simply reads, “Told you so.” Poor Diego gives us that heartbreaking single tear as all his effort winds up being for nothing.

The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 9 recap: The shocking truth of Reginald Hargreeves.

In one of the most unexpected twists of the season, we finally learn something more about who, or what, exactly Reginal Hargreeves is.

Remember how Reginald told Grace that she needed to trust him and essentially made her think that all the nefarious stuff in his secret bookcase room wasn’t what it seemed? Well, it appears that was true, to a degree. He did not want Kennedy to die and arrives in the tiki bar at the hotel where he hosted the dinner for the Hargreeves earlier in the season.

He’s angry with the Majestic 12 for carrying out the assassination. Apparently, Kennedy was not to be touched. He has no intention to keep dealing with the group at all, but then the man in charge threatens Reginald. He says if he doesn’t keep giving them the crazy rocket technology they’ve been using to explore the moon (and Reginald’s interests on the “dark side of the moon”) then they’ll tell the world who he really is.

Reginald doesn’t take kindly to that, so he strips off his suit and then HIS HUMAN SKIN, revealing himself as some kind of lizard man or diet Demogorgon, before ripping all the men in the room to shreds. I guess we can see why Reginald is fascinated by the moon since he doesn’t seem to be from our planet.

In the final moments of The Umbrella Academy Season 2, Episode 9, The Handler gets a call to go to the infinite switchboard room. Inside, the technician tells her he’s seeing an anomaly that’s “off the charts.”

She asks if he’s told anyone else about what he’s seen and he says no, so she killed him and then recalls all Commission personnel from the field, declaring war. We finally see what she saw on the screens, it appears someone is making a lot of energy come out of Sissy’s barn, and I’m guessing it’s Harlan.

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The Umbrella Academy Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.

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