Umbrella Academy is filled with a lot of timey whimey wibbly wobbly stuff and throughout this post, we’re gonna be breaking down how time travel works in the show, all the timelines that happen in it and how the show avoids creating a paradox.
This is really heavy doc and because of this, there will be heavy spoilers, terrible puns and jokes. Hopefully, though you come away from this having learnt something.
Time Travel
It’s one of the most fascinating things in fiction and over the years it’s been used across a wealth of media to tell a multitude of stories.
Humanity is absolutely obsessed with it and the idea and many have dedicated their entire lives to trying to find a way to go back and change things.
The Umbrella Academy has used this notion to great effect and Season 2 predominantly centres around the Hargreeves trying to avert the apocalypse by altering events in the past.
Five Jumps too Far
Time Travel was first introduced through Number 5 and it’s through him that our video will predominantly centre. After realising that he could teleport great distances the character tried to hurtle himself through time and space and he actually succeeded in doing so. However, this wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be and after jumping too far, Five found himself on the opposite side of Doomsday.
Unable to go back, Five spent several decades in the barren wasteland that was Earth and after several years of wandering, he was recruited by the Temps Commission. They stated that if he agreed to serve them for five years that he could retire to a time and place of his choosing and completely forget about all that had gone on.
Five agreed to this but reneged on the deal and instead travelled to his family, eight days before the apocalypse to stop it from happening.
Due to miscalculating the jump, time travelled through Five as he travelled through time and the character ended up back in his older body.
He and his family tried to end armageddon but they actually ended up causing it and Season 1 ended on a big cliffhanger with the world being destroyed.
Now, this creates a perfect loop in which the future changes the past and causes the events to happen in a way that allows for the future to as well. Thus in the first season, we completely avoid a paradox and everything happens the way that it was supposed to in the first place.
However, where things get a little bit complicated is that the group actually jump back to the sixties and ends up altering events massively throughout the course of the season.
Time Travel Theories
Now before we talk about the show and how the timeline in it operates we have to talk about time travel itself. It’s something that theoretical physicists have studied for generations and predominantly the widely accepted idea was that time travel was impossible.
Theory 1: The Grandfather Paradox
This states that if one were to travel back in time and kill their grandfather before they were born that their grandfather would never create their parent, thus they would never be born and could not travel back in time to kill their grandfather in the first place.
Clearly, the show does not operate like this as there are major elements that negate this being a possibility.
Theory 2: The Bootstrap Paradox
The second theory that a lot of physicists subscribe to is the bootstrap paradox. This states that the events in the future affect those in the past and everything is a perfect loop.
A good anecdote to explain this is that there’s a scientist, one day whilst he’s watching the Heavy Spoilers show he hears a knock at the door. He finds a book on his doorstep detailing how to build a time machine. Using this he creates one and then travels to the future. The scientist takes the book with him and leaves it on his own doorstep so that he can create the time machine.
This creates a perfect loop and it’s something that was adopted by the Netflix show Dark up until about the third season which is when it segued into our next way of thinking.
Theory 3: The Many Worlds Theory
The many worlds theory states that when we carry out a quantum measurement we can see where the electron is when we look. However, before we look it could be in a different position and there are multiple possibilities for this.
This is known as a superposition in quantum physics. This degree of varying possibilities creates several alternatives known as a wavefunction and as all are valid and possible, there may be alternate realities.
This was demonstrated in the Schroedinger’s Cat thought experiment which stated that before a particle is measured it exists in all states at once due to the statistical possibilities that surround it.
However, once we observe it all the particles come together and form this one position. So if we can apply this thinking to electrons which make up everything we can apply it to everything.
Thus if we placed a cat in a box with a radioactive substance which has a 50% chance of decaying and killing it, the cat exists in both states of being alive and dead and it’s only upon observing it, or rather measuring the state that we see how it exists for us.
Thus when applied beyond the box we realise that if this theory is correct that everything exists in multiple states of realities across branching universes in which every decision has a vast degree of outcomes that all alter a timeline from a certain point.
Yeah, my head’s exploding too.
This is what theory The Umbrella Academy subscribes to and you may have also seen it in Avengers Endgame.
In that, the heroes travel back into the past and in altering it create branching timelines so that nothing in the past affects their own. Tony Stark even drops the name of David Deutsch one of the many great thinkers behind this notion and it is slowly becoming more and more accepted as the main time travel theory.
In that one can go back to the past but in doing so every choice they make will create alternate worlds because you can’t change your past as your present will always be your present.
It was also seen in that episode of Community, Season 3 Episode 4 with the with the…dice…anyway.
Alternate Realities & Branching Timelines
The idea of alternate realities was actually teased all the way back in Season One of the show when we watched a day, namely March 29th in which a different day played out that had some slightly different outcomes, namely Allison and Luther kissing.
Five changed this and thus this timeline did no longer remain as the main one though it would’ve continued in its separate reality.
This would have still led to the apocalypse and thus it becomes null and void.
The next alternate timeline happens at the start of Season 2 and we learn that after Vanya was taken in by the FBI, their powers went into overload and the FBI headquarters were destroyed just as JFK’s motorcade was passing.
Because Vanya was Russian and was suspected as a spy, The US declared war on the country and the Umbrella Academy intervened, fighting in the war. The Russians deployed Nukes to destroy them which the US retaliated with and thus the Apocalypse happened once more.
Seeing this causes Five to travel back and in doing so he creates a brand new alternate timeline in the 60s in which the second season predominantly takes place.
Now things get more complicated when he meets his younger version in the past. This actually creates another branching timeline in which he sends himself back but rather than being a young boy he’s an old man.
We don’t know the outcome of this timeline but as Five did not know of the events in the first season other than that it led to Luther and Five travelling to the Sixties, he probably followed the same footsteps as they did, taking the group back there after he failed to change things in the future, only this time he’d be an old man.
Now though I have seen some people say that the way the season ends is another alternate timeline on top of this, it’s actually just a continuation of the timeline that we saw play out in the sixties.
The Temps did promise to avert the apocalypse and for better or worse they kept up their end of the bargain.
Hargreeves in this Timeline
Now as Vanya being a member of the Academy is what led to armageddon, they may have altered several events to change things and it is possible that they even subliminally guided Hargreeves towards picking children that were not powerful enough to end the world.
This is why we see the Sparrow Academy at the end with Ben, who, though not weak, is certainly not strong enough to destroy the planet.
Hargreeves is also alive in this timeline, possibly due to his family sticking with him instead of leaving as how they did originally.
What Could Happen Next?
Now we don’t know where things will head in the next season yet but if the family jump once more they will further fracture reality again, and even end up back in a timeline in which the apocalypse still happens.
I can’t see them doing this and I think this will be the reality that they remain in as it’s the one place that we know things don’t go to hell. The Temps did keep their word and alter events in a way in which the world would not end and perhaps this is the way that events need to happen to avoid all of the realities in which armageddon was the only outcome.
In conclusion, when we see time travel in the show we should take it as the group going back and forth between alternate realities which will continue on after they’re gone.
This allows everything to be a possibility but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna be a positive outcome.
Maybe we just have to accept that the Umbrella Academy will always cause the apocalypse and if we want a really good time we have to learn to love the Sparrow Academy.
All hail hydra.
Now that’s our breakdown of the time travel and timelines in the show. I’ve tried to make it as simple as possible but if you have any questions then make sure you leave them in the comments below and I or someone smarter than me will hopefully get back to you.
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