The Umbrella Academy Season 2 finale recap: The End of Something

The Umbrella Academy Season 2 finale recap: How does Season 2 wrap up?

The cold open for The Umbrella Academy Season 2 finale takes us to 2006 when Ben Hargreeves died. His remaining siblings congregate around his coffin and we even get to see Pogo once again. Then Reginald arrives to eulogize his fallen son, and it’s just as callous and cold as one would anticipate.

He blames the Umbrella Academy for failing Number Six and letting him die. The children start bickering shortly after their dad walks off, leaving Klaus alone in the gazebo where he summons Ben’s spirit.

Ben says he needs to go back so he can “go into the light,” but Klaus assures him that he can move on anytime he wants. That scene appears to suggest Klaus was unable to let his brother go, and might be responsible for keeping Ben tethered to him for all these years.

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In Dallas, all of the Hargreeves are wanted by basically everyone in the world for their potential associations to Vanya and Kennedys.

Luther is thought to have mafia ties, Klaus is a cult leader, Allison instigated riots, Vanya was in the FBI’s custody, Diego escaped from a sanitorium, even Five is wanted, although only because they think he’s a kid taken hostage by the “terrorist network.”

Diego and Five both comment on the Commission planning to hunt them down wherever and whenever they go, which is more concerning than the Dallas police or the FBI. Then they get into an argument over the Commission as Diego tells him how he got headhunted and offers a job there.

Meanwhile, Vanya tries to get in touch with Sissy as her siblings bicker. She gets a vision of some kind to Harlan, who is still struggling to handle his abilities. Vanya realizes that whatever he’s going through must be because of what happened when she resuscitated him at the lake.

Downstairs, she gets her siblings’ attention and asks them to help her, because she doesn’t want to do it alone. While feeling for her, they all say they can’t because they have more important priorities right now. Vanya leaves alone, but before she can drive off, Klaus slips into the passengers seat and asks for confirmation on what happened to Ben.

Vanya tells him that he saved her and the world in the process. She also lets Klaus know that it actually wasn’t his fault that Ben stuck around all those years, Ben’s message to Klaus was that he didn’t go into the light because he was too scared, not due to anything his brother said.

Following Klaus’s lead, all of the other Hargreeves pile into the car, deciding to help Vanya, after all. Awe. Unfortunately, they don’t notice that the final Swede is sitting nearby in his dairy truck, waiting to follow them and get his revenge.

At the farm, Vanya convinces Sissy that she’s not a liar, didn’t assassinate the president, and definitely not part of a terrorist group. She introduces her to her family and convinces her to let them into the barn to help Harlan. Vanya uses her powers to get inside his forcefield while Diego and Five approach two new visitors to the property, The Handler and Lila.

Diego finds out Five killed the board of directors and The Handler says she wants to kill him for that, reneging on their deal. Lila tries to get in a piece about how he killed her parents, but The Handler distracts from that before too much can be revealed (like how it was her who issued the order).

At first, it seems like the Hargreeves will be fine since it’s seven to two (seven, Diego still thinks Ben is there doesn’t he? Nooo). But The Handler snaps her fingers and the legion of Commission assassins show up like a scene from Avengers: Endgame.

The fighting commences but doesn’t last long thanks to Vanya. Once she manages to get Harlan out of his forcefield, she takes to the skies and unleashes a massive energy burst to wipe out all of the Commission agents, except, strangely, The Handler and Lila who are inside a forcefield created by Lila. Someone’s got a secret.

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Lila then does the exact same move Vanya does, releasing an identical energy burst against all the Hargreeves. She starts fighting with all the siblings, stealing Luther’s super-strength, using Allison’s rumor power against her, until she faces off with Five and again, mirrors his time manipulation abilities. It seems she is a mimic, and maybe one of the 43 babies born the same day as the Hargreeves?

Meanwhile, The Handler slips into the farm to find Harlan, who she has taken a supreme interest in. She punches out Sissy and says she’s going to become the boy’s new mother.

The siblings gather outside to help Diego, who was stuck under a tractor, while Five and Lila continue fighting. Together, they understand Lila can imitate their powers and start to understand she might be one of them, which is unsettling to Diego who wants to be sure she’s not their biological sister since… ya know.

They start wondering if they can take her on with more than one of them at once, maybe she can only mimic one power at a time.

Inside the barn, Five starts to wonder what Lila is after him for anyway and she tells him about how he killed her parents. Five owns up to that but says The Handler was the one who faked the kill order, she wanted Lila because of her powers. Lila doesn’t believe him at first, but then the other siblings arrive, including Diego, who slowly manages to get through to Lila that The Handler doesn’t care about anything but power.

He tells her they can be her real family because, like them, she was born the same day and their father did the same thing to all of them — except he didn’t kill their parents to do it. Just as it seems Lila is going to come around, the Handler busts in and kills everyone with a machine gun, devastating a confused Lila even more.

Lila asks The Handler if she even loved her, and in response, her “mother” guns her down. Then she turns her gun on Five to end things once and for all as he lays there gasping, but before she can pull the trigger, The Swede bursts in and finishes off The Handler.

Then he looks to kill Five and finish it, but Five suddenly realizes he could try something new with his abilities. He manages to rewind time by just a few seconds, right before The Handler burst in the room for the first time.

By rewinding, he manages to stop The Handler from killing everyone, although he doesn’t intervene when the final Swede shows up to kill her. Then Five calls a draw with him. Since he knows The Handler ultimately caused the deaths of his brothers and not the others, the Swede agrees to leave things alone and leaves.

As for Lila, just after The Handler dies, she grabs the briefcase to leave. Luther lurches to stop her but Diego intercepts and she vanishes into who knows where. Luther asks why Diego stopped him and he says, “because, I love her.”

Fingers crossed we see Diego and Lila reunite in Season 3. Also, she left behind her bracelet from the sanitorium, which Diego keeps.

Poor Harlan is still trapped in his little, smaller forcefield, but with The Handler problem taken care of, Vanya manages to help him. She reabsorbs her powers again, and he seems to go back to normal. Sissy rushes in to hold her son.

Herb and Dot show up after all the damage has been said and done. Diego and Five greet them on the field, which is full of dead Commission assassins. Diego and Herb are besties now and exchange a cute handshake and everything. Then Herb tells them he’s been promoted to acting chairperson for the time being, until they vote in a new board of directors.

Five asks for a favor. They need a briefcase to get back to 2019. Luckily for them, the field is full of them from all the dead agents.

Sadly, Sissy decides it is for the best if she and Harlan stay in the ’60s while Vanya moves on. While Sissy would do anything for Vanya, she doesn’t want to risk Harlan being put in any more danger, and life with Vanya would always carry risk due to her abilities, not of her, but people after her.

Still, their goodbye is heartbreaking, even as Sissy says Vanya gave her the greatest gift by making her feel alive and hopeful for the first time in a long time. She asks Vanya to promise her if she ever finds a safe way back, that she’ll take it. In the meantime, Sissy plans to move to California with Harlan where she knows a friend.

The closing montage wraps up some of the loose threads left from the time period, and the Hargreeves’ impact. Raymond finds a letter from Allison tucked into a book he gave her and as we hear Allison send her final words to her husband, we see a few scenes showing where various characters end up.

Diego and Vanya, two people who fell in love in their new decade and most recently lost their respective loves (aside from Allison), comfort each other for a moment on the farm porch. Klaus kisses Dave’s dog tags while Dave himself gets on the bus to enlist, although he can’t help but look over his shoulder in case Klaus might be there. The Swede, shockingly, hops on a bus driven by the Destiny’s Children. Luther puts in a call to Jack Ruby — I was a little confused on that clip.

Then we see Sissy crossing the border into New Mexico. Harlan sits in the backseat, levitating a toy, seems not all of his powers are gone after all.

Finally, the Hargreeves circle around Five and the briefcase, preparing to return to 2019. They arrive at their old house, April 2, 2019 — meaning they averted both doomsdays!

Unfortunately, the Hargreeves family’s happiness is shortlived. When they walk into the other room, Diego notices there is a framed portrait of Ben hanging above the mantelpiece. Even stranger, Reginald is alive and well. He greets the group as they walk into view, claiming he had been waiting for them to arrive.

Their home is no longer the Umbrella Academy, it’s the Sparrow Academy. A new group of heroes are visible on the balcony and down below, in steps… Ben! He’s alive and well in this new version of 2019, although it’s not clear if is his name is actually Ben here.

If I had to guess, I’d say old Reginald was not thrilled with the group of kids he raised after meeting them in the ’60s and decided to pick out different babies from the batch of 43 born that fateful day. That seems like something he would do, doesn’t it?

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What did you think of The Umbrella Academy Season 2? Do you want the series to be renewed for another season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

The first two seasons of The Umbrella Academy are now streaming on Netflix.

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