THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY Season 3 | Your WTF Questions Answered

Umbrella Academy Season 3 ends with a big cliffhanger that seems like it’s ripped right out of the ending of Fight Club. Even the ending shots are set up in the same way. If you’re here then it probably means you have no idea what’s going on.

Well, you’re in luck as throughout this video we’re gonna be going over the biggest WTF questions to give you some clarity on what exactly is happening in Umbrella Academy Season 3.

Ok so the first big question I think we need to talk about is:

Who Is Sir Reginald Hargreeves?

In the series, we have had hints towards his backstory and season one’s final episode opened with him at his wife Abigail’s side as she lay in her death bed. Season 2 showed us that he’s in fact an alien and this opening scene in ten was actually his home planet.

He said farewell to Abigail and took with him not only a jar of orbs that he opened up but also a white Violin that he later gifted to Victor. Now in the comics, we get some of what happens after this is fleshed out when we read more about the character. We discover that his planet was dying along with his wife and that he set out amongst the Cosmos in his private vessel The Minerva. This was with his private bodyguard Abhijat who doesn’t feature in the comics and instead a lot of his role is shifted over to Pogo.

On Earth, Hargreeves invested in several businesses, he became a Nobel Prize Winner and also an Olympic Gold Medalist.

In Season 2 when the family travelled back in time we discovered that he had teamed up with the Majestic 12, a group of Illuminati-esque members who have some basis in the real world.

For decades now there have been conspiracy theories surrounding the mysterious members that make it up and they’re meant to be a number of high-ranking scientists, military leaders and government officials. According to the rumours they control world events and also hide the existence of UFOs. The group was apparently formed all the way back in 1947 under the orders of President Truman and after recovering an alien spacecraft they began to cover up the truth from humanity.

The group and Hargreeves worked together for a long time and he helped them with several technological advances. This is when he became so involved in the space race. We discover in Season 2 that he’s attempting to reach the Dark Side of The Moon, which we learn the reason for in Season 3.

Turns out Abigail is there and I believe that his ship crash-landed on Earth after dropping her there which is why he was desperate to get back. She may have been shot out in an escape pod-esque station which we see Luther was put in charge of guarding.

Now Hargreeves ended up severing ties with the group after he discovered that they were complicit in the assassination of JFK. After that, he went into somewhat obscurity, formed the academy and enacted the next part of his plan.

Now I believe that the Hotel itself might actually be his downed ship. When the environment transforms around it, it seems like some kind of vessel with a cockpit inside of it.

What was Hargreeves’ plan?

I think that Hargreeves’ plan was to reset the Universe and he wished to unleash the orbs, and let them get absorbed into women in order to create life. He would then take these children, nurture them until they matured and then use them as a way to power up the machine.

This would then allow for the universe to restart so that he could be with Abigail.

This explains why he got involved in the space race, tried to get to the dark side of the moon and also trained the Academy. However it might also be possible that you can just sacrifice lives in order to start it up, but adding the orbs into it explains why the 7 members at the end don’t need to die in order for it to be charged.

I think that the ship carried its own defence mechanisms in the guardians and that this stopped him from accessing the ship which is where we see with the Soldiers.

He sent a number in but they were all wiped out and thus he decided to train the Umbrella and Sparrow Academy so that they’d be strong enough to take them on. In the training session, we see they’re literally fighting over a bell on the floor, which foreshadows the seven bells that he talks about them having to ring.

We learn that there were 43 women who ended up giving birth to children with special abilities and that he tried to adopt all of them. However, he only managed to get 7, making me think that he wanted backups just in case the others either left or died.

Now he originally tried this with the Umbrella Academy but due to Ben dying and Number 5 disappearing they slowly started to fracture and eventually the group split up. Thus he ended up taking his own life in order to bring them back together for his funeral. My guess is that he had put the pieces in place so that they’d discover the hotel and then they themselves would end up powering the machine up with the universe being reset through that.

This would then bring him back to life and he could carry out his own plan.

Did it work?

Things went awry and after the apocalypse happened they had to travel back in time. This eventually led to them meeting Hargreeves and after he realised that they weren’t the kind of students he could train he started to track down others.

This was basically his endgame and Hargreeves is really the villain of the show with his ultimate goal being to reset the universe so that he can be with his wife.

Judging by the final scene it seems like they rule over the entire world and that the pair have their fingers in every form of industry and infrastructure. With Abigail at his side, he likely changed the face of the planet and will probably be the big bad come the next season.

Now his plan to restart the universe would’ve happened either way without the apocalypse or not. We discover that Project Oblivion is something that he wanted to carry out for a long time and that it’s the reason Pogo ended up leaving his employment. This was a suicide mission and discovering this is also why the Sparrows decided to medicate him so that he couldn’t manipulate them into doing it. Klaus stopping him from taking his pills allowed the character to get back into his proper frame of mind and he ended up manipulating him for most of the season. He became an apparently good father and this made Klaus try and win him favour with the family once more. Hargreeves then planted the idea in their head about resetting the universe and he killed Luther to unite the group.

This was his plan all along and it didn’t really matter if there was a Kugelblitz or not.

Now that kinda leads us to my next question which is:

Why was The Kugelblitz created?

This ties into Harlan killing the mothers of the Umbrella Academy. After he ended up getting his own special abilities he said he felt them upon his mother’s death. However, he couldn’t control his powers and thus he killed their mothers instead. This meant that they were never born and thus if they were never born then they could never have created the new timeline by travelling back in time and then travelling to the future to be part of it cos..it’s a lot of timey wimey wibbly wobbly s**t.

Though we don’t know exactly how Pogo goes out, he was killed along with the reality as were all the other characters that don’t make it through the portal.

Normally the Commission would have kept things in check but as we know, they were wiped out.

We actually discover that Five ended up creating the Commission which again…is a bit of a head f**k. Five states that he doesn’t remember doing this and therefore it could be his future self rather than being a variant.

I think that it has to be a version of him from later down the line as he tells him not to stop the apocalypse and he also says Oblivion, of course hinting towards the Hotel.

Just in case you don’t know, that’s the true name of the Hotel and this was revealed in the aptly titled 3rd volume Hotel Oblivion.

How did Luther come back to life?

Though he would’ve returned in the reset, he showed up back at the hotel along with Klaus. I believe that this is the next evolution in Klaus’s powers and just in the same way that he can return to the land of the living, I believe those trapped on the other side can be brought back too.

Early on the season was very much about him mastering his abilities and this is likely the next step.

Does Sloane exist in this reality?

The answer is a mystery but I am leaning towards yes due to everyone being returned and all their wounds being healed. However, she should’ve come back in the elevator as she was at the hotel so potentially the machine might have sacrificed her. Sloane may not have existed in a new timeline if the Umbrellas had been born so she might have actually been wiped out in order to not cause another paradox.

A second version of Ben?

Two versions of Ben exist in the franchise. The first version is the initial one who was with the Umbrellas that died as a child. He became a ghost but his spirit was put to rest in the second season.

However when they went back in time and changed things Ben was altered too. Neither Harlan or Hargreeves met him because he was a ghost and therefore his mother wasn’t killed and he was seen as being someone who could be selected by Reginald.

So this Sparrow version exists but so does the original because he wasn’t killed in the first timeline.

The only person who doesn’t seem to be affected by anything is Allison who still has a bandage on her arm showing that she hasn’t healed. Because she is the one that pressed the button inside what I’m guessing is the cockpit she likely was protected from the effects.

Remember this was designed by Hargreeves so that he could be with his wife and he likely didn’t want to lose the memories he had of her with the universe reset. It’s possible that the one we see ruling over everything actually has no idea that his plan worked and rather than living peacefully with his wife he decided to do this because he didn’t know the alternative.

Putting himself at the top like this would make him and Abigail a target for people that want to overthrow him and if this was all a plan to get her back I don’t think he’d go through with it if he had any memory of what had come before.

What’s up with Ray?

Ray returns at the end to be with her and it appears that the pair finally got their happy ending in the present. Now I’ve kinda gone back and forth on this and there are really three outcomes. The first is that he was transported into the present after Allison pressed reset like my mate used to when I was beating him on Smackdown.

However, this would cause a paradox and if they wanna go for the fourth apocalypse in a row then him being in the future could be the cause of it. He would’ve only been brought forward if they went back in time but they couldn’t have gone back without the first… sorry my brain hurts.

Now the second option is that the person who pressed the button gets their hearts desire in this new universe and that all the rules go out the window to make it work. This would mean he’s her child’s father now and that there is no paradox created.

The third version and one that I think might be the most likely is that he’s a hallucination.

Throughout the series Allison had several hallucinations and I think that’s most likely the case here.