The Umbrella Academy season 2 trailer gave fans a good look at what to expect from the Hargreeves’ new missions now in 1963, and it also confirmed the appearance of a peculiar character from the comics: Five’s fish boss. Based on the comic book series of the same name by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy debuted on Netflix in February 2019 and was a big hit with viewers, so the streaming giant decided to renew it for a second season, set for a July 31 release.
The Umbrella Academy centers on the Hargreeves, seven kids adopted by mysterious billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves. Them, along with other 36 babies, were born on the same day, at the same time, and to women who weren’t pregnant when the day began. As the Hargreeves began to develop unique sets of superpowers, Reginald trained them and formed the superhero group “The Umbrella Academy”, and sent them to different missions. Sadly, Reginald wasn’t the best father, and the siblings ended up going on their own ways, and the first one to leave was Five (Aidan Gallagher). When they were 13-years old, Five went against Reginald’s orders and jumped to the future, and kept doing so until he landed in a post-apocalyptic world, and he couldn’t find a way to go back to his time.
Five spent decades alone in the future before he was recruited by The Commission, who sent him on different missions to different places and points in time. Season 1 of The Umbrella Academy introduced The Handler (Kate Walsh), head of the Commission and Five’s boss, who didn’t stop until she caught him and convinced him to go back to work, only for him to leave again and do what he felt was correct. Season 2’s trailer showed that The Commission will continue to go after Five and his siblings, with Five coming across with a bigger authority than The Handler: Carmichael, a talking fish.
Carmichael made his first appearance in the Dallas series, where he approached young Five to talk about his unfinished mission: the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Carmichael is a shubunkin goldfish who gained the ability to speak, genius-level intelligence, and, as described by Five, “the strategic instincts of Nathan Bedford Forrest”. Carmichael is Five’s boss (The Handler isn’t in the comics, and she was originally believed to be a female human version of Carmichael), and as such orders young Five to carry on with the JFK mission, and even threatens him with killing his mother – which also reveals a big secret about Five.
Five and Carmichael surely have some unfinished business aside from the mission to kill JFK, as Carmichael’s reaction to seeing Five wasn’t exactly one of excitement – which is understandable considering all the problems he has brought to The Commission. The trailer also mentions how everything in the Hargreeves’ new lives is connected to the plot to assassinate the President, so it makes sense that season 2 will add Carmichael to the mix. Of course, it remains to be seen if Carmichael will also reveal some big details about Five’s life as he did in the comics or not, but hopefully, the series will expand his character more than the source material did.