In just one season, The Umbrella Academy left a couple of mysteries viewers are hoping will be solved in season 2, among those what the lights Reginald kept in a jar truly were. Based on the comic book series of the same name by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy follows the dysfunctional family of adopted siblings, the Hargreeves. Each kid has a superpower, and they were all adopted (and trained) by the mysterious Sir Reginald Hargreeves, becoming a team known as “the Umbrella Academy”.
Hargreeves wasn’t the best father figure, and the siblings eventually went their own ways, reuniting years later when Reginald passed away. In addition to that, the end of the world was approaching, and in order to stop it, the siblings had to stay together. The Umbrella Academy offered some glimpses at the Hargreeves’ childhood and a very brief look at Reginald’s life pre-children with superpowers. At one point, the series showed that Reginald was married, but his wife passed away.
It was in this flashback that viewers saw a jar of lights next to the bed of Reginald’s wife, which he later took and released into the air, with the little orbs quickly dispersing and disappearing. But what exactly were those lights?
The Umbrella Academy: What The Lights In The Jar Truly Are
Though an explanation wasn’t given in the series, and the source material doesn’t offer an answer either, the common assumption is that the lights are the Umbrella Academy siblings (and the rest of the babies born that day under the same circumstances). The comic books revealed that Reginald is actually an alien, something that was hinted but not explicitly said in series. In the aforementioned flashback scene, when he releases the lights, the setting clearly isn’t planet Earth, with rocketships casually flying around. With that in mind, the lights might either be how his species procreate or they were created by him through other, less natural methods. This would explain how Reginald knew he had to search the world for kids born that day to women who weren’t pregnant when the day began, and that he had to adopt as many as possible.
If the lights truly are the kids and they were created by Reginald, that would mean he is the real father of the Hargreeves (and other 36 children out there), which would make certain situations weirder than they already were... like Allison and Luther’s relationship. If they are not Reginald’s creation, then the mystery grows as it’s unknown how they were created and why. The Umbrella Academy, both the source material and the series, is full of enigmas, which add to the overall vibe of the story and make it more entertaining, but as the TV series either skipped some details or changed them completely, some of these mysteries are starting to get confusing.