The Umbrella Academy season 3 will properly introduce the Sparrow Academy, and while most viewers are expecting both teams to fight each other, it would be more fitting with the show’s themes if the Umbrella Academy saves the Sparrows. The superhero genre has become immensely popular in recent years, and the success of big-budget productions has made way for darker and lesser-known stories to be adapted to different media, and among those is The Umbrella Academy.
Created by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy is a series of comic books that made the jump to streaming thanks to Netflix in February 2019, with a second season arriving in July 2020. The Umbrella Academy follows the Hargreeves, seven adopted siblings who, along with other 36 babies around the world, were born on the same day and under the same mysterious circumstances. This curious event caught the attention of scientist and billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore), who could only adopt seven of those babies, and as they developed superpowers, he trained them and formed The Umbrella Academy. However, Reginald wasn’t a good father, and the Hargreeves ended up parting ways, reuniting in 2019 for Reginald’s funeral and to stop the fast-approaching apocalypse.
The Hargreeves’ relationship with Reginald is the source of their many traumas and has also been at the core of many of the conflicts between them, but The Umbrella Academy season 2 finally saw them overcoming those traumas and putting their differences aside in order to team up and save the world from another apocalypse, now in 1963, which they successfully stopped this time. The Hargreeves were also able to return to their present (2019), but to their surprise, they landed on a timeline where Reginald is still alive and instead of the Umbrella Academy, he formed the Sparrow Academy with six different kids and Ben (Justin H. Min), who is also alive and is very different from the brother the Umbrellas knew so well. The way Sparrow Ben “greeted” the Umbrellas has made fans believe The Umbrella Academy season 3 will pit both teams against each other, but the series would benefit more from having the Umbrellas save the Sparrows.
Unlike the Umbrellas, who didn’t talk or see each other for years, the Sparrow Academy members are still together, which shows that they have a closer relationship with Reginald than the Umbrellas had. Although this gives them the upper hand as they have been working as a team for longer than the Umbrellas, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all these years with Reginald haven’t affected them. If there’s something the Umbrellas and the Sparrows can bond over is their experiences living with Reginald and being trained by him, and with the main themes of The Umbrella Academy being those of family are those you choose and coming to terms with trauma by means of togetherness – something the Umbrellas did in season 2 – the original team should empathize with the Sparrows and help them overcome their own traumas, and maybe even save them from Reginald’s control.
Of course, it’s to be seen how much Reginald changed since his meeting with the Umbrella Academy in 1963 and his breakup with Grace, though it’s unlikely that he has now become father-of-the-year. Having the Umbrellas save the Sparrows in The Umbrella Academy season 3 is more fitting with the themes that have dominated the show so far, though that doesn’t mean they can’t fight a couple of times before they help each other.