WARNING: Spoilers ahead for The Umbrella Academy season 3
Why does Grace, the Hargreeves siblings' android mother, glitch so badly in The Umbrella Academy season 3? The answer is sadder than you might think. In The Umbrella Academy's original continuity, Sir Reginald Hargreeves quickly discovered regular nannies were not well-suited to raising super-powered children, so he did what any self-respecting alien billionaire would do and built an android with the face of his ex-girlfriend. Grace became the Hargreeves siblings' mother in every respect, not only taking care of household chores, but showing them the affection Reginald was wholly incapable of.
The Grace android returns in The Umbrella Academy season 3's Sparrow timeline, where Sir Reginald picked a different group of kids altogether. Sadly, she's a very different robot in this continuity. The Umbrella kids' mother was largely indistinguishable from any other human, but when the Sparrow version appears, she's glitching like a garage sale toaster. Her mechanical body spasms awkwardly, her voice box falters into a deep growl, and she even starts worshiping a glowing orb of black holes in the basement.
Grace's glitches highlight one of the most tragic differences between the Umbrella Academy and the Sparrow Academy - the Sparrows treat their android like a robot rather than a mother. When Grace first appears in season 3, plate of cookies in hand, a surprised Diego asks, "Mom?" The Sparrow Academy's Jayme then replies, "She's a robot, you perv." This snarky retort is the first of many examples whereby the Sparrow Academy treats Grace like a mechanical slave, affording her no respect, kindness or attention. For all their faults (and there are no shortage), the Umbrella Academy all considered Grace their mother. They bonded with the android, appreciated her love, and aside from a couples of days when they thought she murdered Sir Reginald, never dismissed her for being nuts, bolts and circuitry. The reason Sparrow Grace glitches so badly in The Umbrella Academy season 3, therefore, is because the Sparrows never cared enough to maintain or fix her.
In The Umbrella Academy season 1, the Hargreeves siblings ponder whether Grace's hardware might've degraded since they all moved out. At least one sibling (Diego, of course) has knowledge of her inner workings, implying the Umbrellas helped keep Grace in tip-top shape. Even after the Academy broke up, the kindhearted Pogo and Grace's own creator, Sir Reginald, were around to ensure her smooth operation. In the Sparrow timeline, the kids themselves aren't interested so long as grace can still cook and clean, Pogo left the Sparrows years before The Umbrella Academy season 3 begins, and because the Sparrows keep their father drugged up with sedatives, he isn't in any position to fix up the Hargreeves mother.
Grace's shoddy condition is a damning indictment of the Sparrow Academy's morality in The Umbrella Academy season 3. The Umbrellas were dysfunctional, broken, and barely together, but still somehow kept the mother operational. The Sparrows have state of the art gym facilities and an arsenal of different nut butters for breakfast, but their android mother is barely clinging on.
The Sparrows' maternal mistreatment isn't just an ethical problem. Grace becomes fixated on the kugelblitz in The Umbrella Academy season 3, weirdly believing the sphere is a physical manifestation of God. She's talking in tongues, sketching religious symbols, and even aiming a flamethrower at her own kids. Though The Umbrella Academy never addresses it explicitly, Grace's kugelblitz obsession could be down to years of mechanical neglect and a lack of connection between herself and the Hargreeves siblings 2.0. If Reginald's Sparrow Academy had treated their mother a little better, perhaps Grace would've told them about the kugelblitz quicker, and maybe she could've prevented Marcus' death.
The Umbrella Academy is now streaming on Netflix.