The Umbrella Academy season 2 ended on a major cliffhanger as the title team returned to 2019 only to find that their team doesn't exist, and instead, the Sparrow Academy was created – and this team already has a big advantage over them. Based on the comic book series by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy made the jump to the world of streaming thanks to Netflix in February 2019 and became an instant hit. The series was renewed for a second season not long after, and viewers reunited with the team in July 2020.
The Umbrella Academy follows the Hargreeves, seven adopted siblings who 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. This caught the attention of Sir Reginald Hargreeves, a scientist and billionaire who set out to adopt as many of those babies as he could but only got seven of them. These kids developed unique superpowers and so Reginald trained them and formed the superhero team “The Umbrella Academy” – sadly, the kids ended up parting ways and didn’t talk nor see each other for years. The Hargreeves reunited years later for Reginald’s funeral and to stop the apocalypse, but they failed to prevent the end of the world, and the only way to save themselves was to jump to another place and point in time.
Season 2, then, reunited viewers with the Hargreeves in Dallas, Texas, but they all landed in different years between 1960 and 1963. The Hargreeves eventually reunited in 1963 and successfully stopped another apocalypse, and by the end of season 2, they were finally able to return to their present – or so they thought. The Umbrella Academy ended up creating different timelines, so when they landed back in 2019 they were met with a completely different world, one where the apocalypse never happened, Reginald is still alive, and their team doesn’t exist, as he instead created The Sparrow Academy with different children – except Ben, who is also part of this team. Little is known about the powers that the Sparrow Academy members have, but they already have a big advantage over the original Hargreeves, as unlike them, they have been a team for over a decade.
As mentioned above, the Hargreeves parted ways as years passed, in big part due to Reginald not being the best father figure and using extreme methods to train the children (such as locking Klaus in a mausoleum for hours), and by the time he killed himself, the Umbrella Academy team consisted of only Luther, who was living and working in the moon. The Sparrow Academy, on the other hand, are still together as a team, as they didn’t go through the tragic experience of losing Ben and their relationship with Reginald seems to be completely different from the one the Umbrella team had with their father. The Sparrows then have a lot more experience working as a team than the Umbrellas, so they know each other’s powers quite well and how to use them, both individually and as a team, while the Umbrella Academy are only starting to work as a team again and keep on learning about each other’s powers.
This will give the Sparrow Academy the upper hand if they fight against the Umbrella Academy at some point, but it can also help the original Hargreeves if they join forces to go against whatever threats season 3 brings. The dynamics between the members of the Sparrow Academy (and those between them and Reginald) are already very different from those between the Umbrella team, and make way for a number of possibilities for The Umbrella Academy season 3.