Umbrella Academy Theory: Season 1 Ending Creates a Time Loop

The dramatic ending of The Umbrella Academy season 2 could have created a time loop involving the entire Hargreeves family. Drawing inspiration from the best-selling comics of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy is a trippy and eccentric series that stars a dysfunctional "family" of superheroes as they attempt to avert the end of the world.

In The Umbrella Academy's ending, the students realized they were always destined to fail. In spite of their best efforts, Vanya's power flared and knocked a chunk out of the Moon. This fell to Earth, with the impact triggering an extinction-level event, by wiping out all life on the planet and creating a doomed future that Five had desperately been attempting to prevent. But there was still hope, as Five used his time travel powers to transport his family to another time period, one in which they intended to regroup and work out how to save the world.

It was a stunning cliffhanger ending, one that diverges notably from the original comics and thus, in theory, makes The Umbrella Academy season 2 impossible to predict. But this isn't your average TV series; it's a smart, carefully joined-up show that signposted major twists all the way back in episode 1. That means it's entirely possible some of the narrative in season 1 offers hints - and one detail in particular stands out.

This Page: Sir Reginald Hargreeves Knows Too Much About The Future
Page 2: Time Travel Would Explain Hargreeves' Knowledge, But Can The Loop Be Broken?

Sir Reginald Hargreeves Knows Far Too Much

The Umbrella Academy - Reginald Hargreeves

The story of The Umbrella Academy begins decades in the past, with the spontaneous birth of 43 babies - children of women who had previously shown no hint of being pregnant. Sir Reginald Hargreeves, founder of the Umbrella Academy, believed these children were unique and had the power to become heroes. He traveled the globe seeking the infants out, attempting to persuade their mothers to put them up for adoption. He managed to acquire seven of them (the fate of the other 36 is unknown, although in the comics several died due to the circumstances surrounding their births, while others became super-villains).

This origin story raises a lot of questions. The first is just how Hargreeves knew these births had even happened in the first place; after all, these were only 43 births, and they were scattered across the globe. In an age before social media, it's unlikely any journalists would have heard of this mysterious event, and so it would have been unremarked on by the world's media. And yet, Sir Reginald knew they had happened, and he must have used considerable resources to comb the planet for the babies. Given these circumstances, it's actually quite impressive that Hargreeves managed to get his hands on seven of them.

But why did he exert such effort anyway? It's unclear how Sir Reginald Hargreeves even knew that these babies would be special, and that they would have superhuman powers. Interestingly, flashbacks in The Umbrella Academy season 1 seem to suggest that Hargreeves understood what these abilities would be. He knew that Five had the potential to travel in time as well as space, for example; even more curiously, he understood the perils of time travel enough to caution Five on them. He was able to accurately warn Five that traveling through time could affect both his body and his mind. Again, how did Sir Reginald Hargreeves know all this?

Into the present, Sir Reginald evidently knew that he had to get his students back together, and he was even willing to commit suicide in order to set the whole chain of events into motion. As Five noted, it's as though Sir Reginald was aware that the apocalypse was due. Meanwhile, in one scene, Mom - an android built and programmed by Hargreeves - stitched embroidery showing a chunk of the Moon being blasted off. This may have just been an amusing Easter egg, but it could also be further evidence that Hargreeves knew what was coming.

Page 2 of 2: Time Travel Would Explain Hargreeves' Knowledge, But Can The Loop Be Broken?

Time Travel In Season 2 Could Explain Sir Reginald Hargreeves' Knowledge

One possible solution lies in the end of The Umbrella Academy season 1, when Five takes his siblings on a jaunt through time to prevent their deaths when the chunk of Moon-rock hits the Earth. Given the future is a barren wasteland, it's reasonable to assume that Five has taken them back in time. What's more, this time Five hasn't even tried to do any calculations; he's doing a blind jump, which is why all of his siblings are affected by the temporal field and de-aged (and, in Ben's case, possibly even resurrected). If there's a physical effect, there may well be a mental one as well, with the Umbrella Academy students left confused and disoriented.

Now imagine a scenario where the brothers and sisters have been spirited back decades, to before they were born, and they head to the one place they instinctively feel at least a little secure; the building that would become the Umbrella Academy. There, they meet a younger Sir Reginald Hargreeves, and he gradually puts the pieces of the future together from the fragments of their shattered memories. This would explain everything, most notably Hargreeves' knowledge that time travel could cause physical and mental problems; he'd know that because he'd seen people struggling to deal with the consequences of a random time-jump.

According to this theory, in The Umbrella Academy season 2 the siblings will spend a certain amount of time with Hargreeves, and he'll learn a lot from them. He'd discover the miraculous and mysterious births, and that these 43 babies would have potential super-powers. What's more, he'd know that there was an imminent apocalypse and that these children could be the planet's only defense. It's reasonable to assume Hargreeves wouldn't work everything out about Vanya, though. Presumably, he'd have no idea she would bring about the end of the world. If this theory is correct, then the Umbrella Academy is trapped in a time loop. They travel to the past to escape the apocalypse but unwittingly set in motion the very events that will shape their lives and lead them all to that fateful day when Vanya wipes out the human race.

Can The Hargreeves Family Break The Time Loop?

If this theory is true, then it raises one last question - is it possible for the Umbrella Academy's heroes to save the world? Fortunately, The Umbrella Academy season 1 does suggest that history can indeed be changed due to time travel. The future timeline Five visited was different to the one they actually experienced. In the original timeline, the one where the Umbrella Academy faced the apocalypse without Five, Leonard and Vanya confronted the heroes at the Academy itself. The confrontation evidently turned violent, with Luther tearing out Leonard's replacement eye, and Vanya lashing out and destroying the Academy. It's even possible that, in this original timeline, Vanya was at the Umbrella Academy when she triggered the end of the world.

This is quite a crucial point. It means that time travelers have the power to change history. It's possible that major events, such as Vanya's wiping out the human race, are harder to change, but this certainly suggests there's reason to hope. It's just a matter of changing the right thing, at the right point in history; and no doubt it will take all the Hargreeves siblings' efforts to work out what that change really is in The Umbrella Academy season 2.