Did the Hargreeves siblings mess up the timeline when they defeated The Commission in The Umbrella Academy? It takes a brave bunch to delve into the unpredictable world of time travel, but the Umbrella Academy weren't left much choice. In the debut season of Netflix's offbeat superhero series, the Hargreeves siblings discovered that the apocalypse was penciled in for 2019, and their own sister Vanya was the one responsible. The only option was for Number 5 to drag everyone back through time and somehow find a way to avert Earth's destruction.
The Umbrella Academy season 2 picks up in the 1960s and the Academy exhibit a shocking lack of regard for the butterfly effect during their time there, heavily involving themselves in both historic events of the past and their own personal timelines. So it's hardly surprising that when the apocalypse problem is solved and the siblings go home to 2019, they find a completely different world awaiting them. Not only is Sir Reginald Hargreeves still alive, but he now leads the Sparrow Academy, and who knows what else might've changed beyond the walls of the mansion?
The finale ends on this scintillating cliffhanger, and the working theory among viewers is that by approaching Reginald in the 1960s, the Academy inadvertently prompted him to pick different members for his superhero team. The only common denominator is Ben, who Reginald never actually saw in person. However, another event in season 2 might've been the true moment the Umbrella Academy unwound history - the destruction of The Commission.
The Commission Protect The Timeline
The Commission (known as the Temps Aeternalis in the comic books) are essentially the antagonists of The Umbrella Academy. They force Number Five to commit horrific acts of murder in their name and then aim to engineer the end of the world in 2019. Most of The Commission's villainy comes from Kate Walsh's self-serving Handler - the organization itself isn't hellbent on world domination or anything quite so evil. Instead, The Commission's true purpose is to protect the timeline. Admittedly, this usually involves the assassination of select targets, but the overall aim of the group is to preserve history and ensure everything transpires as intended.
The Commission have a fabled machine known as the Infinite Switchboard which predicts when a timeline divergence is threatening to occur. Agents are then sent to deal the problem in the field, while a team of office workers chew through case files that determine which thread to pull in order to correct the course of history without creating any other disturbances. Known incidences of Commission interference include the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to trigger World War I, and ensuring the Hindenburg disaster takes place in 1937. The audience can assume that, in the world of The Umbrella Academy at least, these tragic events were necessary in the course of human development.
The villainous element of The Umbrella Academy emanates from the philosophical conundrum of who, exactly, gets to decide which events are "necessary." Although this aspect of The Commission remains largely a mystery, season 2 revealed the board of directors, chaired by Carmichael. In the previous setup, this mysterious committee gave instruction to The Handler, who was responsible for the day-to-day running of The Commission. The various links in this leadership chain might have questionable intentions, but the core purpose of The Commission isn't inherently villainous at all.
The Umbrella Academy Destroy The Commission
In The Umbrella Academy's second season, The Commission is thrown into disarray. Following her season 1 failure, The Handler is demoted by Carmichael, but has her revenge by bribing Number Five to assassinate the entire board of directors. With an opportunity to escape the 1960s at stake, Five agrees, and this act of bloody violence gifts The Handler the top Commission position with no competition. Of course, the entire arrangement is a set up, and The Handler fully intends to kill Five and the entire Umbrella Academy in due course, leading to a climactic confrontation in the season finale. Faced with the full might of The Commission and its agents, Vanya is forced to wipe out the oncoming army of blue-suited time-travelers with a huge sonic wave. The Handler is then killed by the leader of the Swedish assassins, and this leaves Herb in charge of The Commission with Dot by his side.
While Herb is understandably thrilled at his swift and sudden promotion, what state is The Commission left in after The Umbrella Academy season 2? The board of directors is gone, their leader is an inexperienced stand-in, and while the office employees might still be busy hammering away on their typewriters, most, if not all, of The Commission's field agents were wiped out by Vanya. Under Herb's guidance, The Commission will surely become a more wholesome organization, but how well can they protect the timeline with so many agents dead and no clear leadership structure?
By effectively destroying The Commission, the Hargreeves siblings have opened the timeline up to chaos, where key events are no longer protected and absolutely anything can happen. The new rules (or lack thereof) in The Umbrella Academy's timeline are highlighted when Herb lets the gang return to 2019, even though entirely new versions of each sibling exist in the altered reality - doppelgangers of Vanya, Klaus, Luther, Allison, Diego and Five who were never recruited by Sir Reginald. A stand-up guy Herb may be, but he's literally breaking the biggest law of time travel by allowing six paradoxes to exist.
The Umbrella Academy Was Always Supposed To Happen
The very existence of the Sparrow Academy could be another sign that Herb's Commission simply aren't up to the job. In The Umbrella Academy season 1, the 2019 apocalypse was deemed a fixed event in the eyes of The Commission. Since Vanya was the one on world-ending duties, Sir Reginald Hargreeves forming the Umbrella Academy must surely also be a protected point in history. Even entertaining the possibility that the apocalypse could've been triggered by something else, or that The Commission clearly changed their mind about bringing Armageddon upon an unsuspecting 2019, the Umbrella bunch are so intertwined in these events, their existence must be integral. And yet, somehow, Reginald has been allowed to create a completely different Academy with those awful Sparrow creeps.
If The Commission hadn't been decimated by Vanya in the 1960s, this is exactly the type of nonsense they would've put a firm stop to. Any time Reginald begins scouting a child who isn't one of the intended 7, along comes a Commission agent to keep history on track. Now a shadow of their former glory, Herb's Commission may lack the manpower for such operations, allowing wrinkles such as this to creep into the fabric of time. By defeating The Commission, the Umbrella Academy have killed the people who would've safeguarded their very own creation.
This begs the question of how many other changes the fall of The Commission might've caused in the new 2019. The final scene of The Umbrella Academy season 2 is careful to only show inside the Hargreeves mansion, where Ben and Reginald are both alive and umbrellas have been replace by sparrows. But on the outside, are zeppelins now a popular mode of transport because the Hindenburg landed safely? Did the U.S. never join WWII? Was a deadly virus allowed to rapidly spread across the planet? All the events that those dead agents may have one day been assigned to protect are now subject to change, depending on how time flows for The Commission in relation to the real world.
Looking ahead to The Umbrella Academy season 3, the Hargreeves siblings will no doubt be battling to set the timeline straight. Perhaps Herb appears, realizes The Commission have messed up, and both sides work together to put things right. Knowing they were partly (mostly) responsible for the mess would surely be motivation enough for the Academy to agree.