Fans of The Umbrella Academy are now counting the days to the release of season 3, and Netflix has already revealed this season’s most important episode through the title list – and here’s which one it is. The superhero genre has taken over the entertainment industry in the last decade, and its popularity has allowed darker and lesser-known stories to be adapted to either film or TV, and among those is The Umbrella Academy. Created by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy is a comic book series that was adapted to a TV series in 2019 thanks to Netflix, and quickly became one of the platform’s most popular titles.
The Umbrella Academy follows the Hargreeves, seven kids who were born on the same day, at the same time, and under the same mysterious circumstances as other 36 kids around the world. Scientist and billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves set out to adopt as many of those babies as he could when he heard about this curious event, but he only got seven. As they started to develop superpowers, Reginald trained them and formed The Umbrella Academy, but Reginald wasn’t a good father, and the Hargreeves ended up parting ways over time. The team reunited for Reginald’s funeral and to stop the apocalypse, and have since remained together as they continue to save the world, get to know each other and themselves, and fix their relationship, as they never really felt like a family.
Through two seasons, The Umbrella Academy has shown what each of the Hagreeves is capable of when it comes to their individual powers and has also given a good look at their personalities, but there are still many questions to be answered about them and Reginald, mostly everything related to Reginald’s origins and those of the kids’ powers. The Umbrella Academy season 2 confirmed that the Hargreeves aren’t the only ones from those 43 kids to have superpowers, but how exactly they got their powers remains a mystery – but everything points at it being solved in what could be The Umbrella Academy season 3’s most important episode: “Marigold”.
Back in June 2021, Netflix revealed the episode titles of The Umbrella Academy season 3, and the title of episode 6 was among the ones that stood out. Titled “Marigold”, it might not seem like anything special to casual viewers, but to fans of the comic books, it gave away a lot. Marigold is what gave their powers to the 43 kids born on October 1, 1989, to women who weren’t pregnant when the day began, and as confirmed by VFX supervisor Everett Burrell, it’s what Reginald kept in that mysterious jar in season 1. Reginald let all those spheres of light free as he said goodbye to his dying wife, and Burrell confirmed that’s “how the marigold gets into the kids’ bodies". Burrell also revealed that marigold was present when Ben “crossed over” in season 2, as he disappeared into gold flakes of dust confirmed to be marigold.
The Umbrella Academy season 3’s episode “Marigold” can not only explain the origin of the marigold itself, the kids’ powers, and their mysterious births too, but can also explore Reginald’s origins a bit deeper. It was confirmed in season 2 that, just like in the comics, Reginald is an alien, but there’s still a lot to learn about him, including why he let the marigold out and what his real plans were when he did so. The Umbrella Academy season 3 is on its way to solving some of the show’s biggest questions, though it will surely also leave more mysteries to be addressed in future seasons.