*Spoiler warning for The Umbrella Academy season 2*
Okay, folks. If you, like us, spent your weekend going back in time to the 1960s and binging the latest season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, then you’ve probably spent just as much time since theorising exactly what happened at the end of season two. Y’know, besides the fact that Reginald Hargreeves is some sort of alien creature who just *casually* takes off his human skin and reveals multiple eyes and teeth and nopity-nope-nope.
Anyway, while the show hasn’t officially been renewed for a third season (yet), Girlfriend spoke to the cast of The Umbrella Academy and showrunner Steve Blackman about some of the season’s biggest moments, a potential spin-off and how they reacted to the finale scene.
The cast of The Umbrella Academy breaks down that season two cliffhanger
For those not aware, the second season of Netflix’s TV show about a dysfunctional family of superpowered traumatised individuals sees them thrown into the past—Dallas, Texas in the 1960s, to be exact.
After a ten episode journey to find each other and their way back to the present, the crew eventually travel forward in time and return to the correct time, only to discover that things aren’t as they remembered. For one, Reginald and Ben (with an emo-cut fringe, may I add) are alive and joined by a group of mysterious shadowy figures that make up this universe’s Umbrella Academy: the “Sparrow Academy.”
Perhaps Klaus, Allison, Vanya, Diego, Five and Luther meeting with Reginald 26 years before he adopts them all changed the course of time and is why Ben is the only member who seems still part of the crew in this new timeline? Is the show holding off showing us these shadow figures because they’re alternate identities of our fabled and deeply troubled heroes?
Blackman, who said he’d like to do four seasons or “as many as Netflix wants to do,” admits that while he can’t tell us much about that ending, we should all be paying attention to the words “Sparrow Academy.”
“I don’t want to tell you too much, because if we have a season three, that’s where I want to go,” he told Girlfriend. “I didn’t give those pages out till the last minute [but] it’s something I planned from the beginning of the season.”
When asked about the silhouettes and whether they’re theoretically people we may have met before (like, idk, alternate realities of Klaus, Vanya, Allison and co), he said, “it’s a mystery who those people are going to be.”
“We’ve heard the word Sparrow Academy, so it’s alluding to where we’re going to go in the future. I know who those people are and who they’re going to be but I really can’t say much more than that.”
“Steve Blackman, our showrunner, sent us a secret email just to the cast. So, just the seven family members with the last three pages,” Justin H. Min, who plays the now alive Ben told us about the final scene. “I was casually reading it and then read, like, the last line, and I was just in my apartment screaming, you know, just in utter shock and disbelief that not only would I be coming back alive, but I would be coming back as a sort of like a totally different character.”
“[That’s something you] never get to really do that as an actor on a show, you sort of play the same character. So, to be able to play someone very different from the Ben that we knew was so exciting.”
“I have to really train if we get a third season because, you know, if Ben is alive, I’m sure he’s gonna be doing a lot more,” he continued, when asked about stunts and action scenes he had to perform in the recently released season. “I need to brace myself mentally physically and emotionally for that.”
“I think [Ben] was the one family member that everybody loved and he got along with everyone,” Blackman said about Ben’s relationship with the other siblings prior to his death. “He was sort of the person everyone trusted everyone could come to because he just had a, you know, a wonderful heart, which is ironic now that the one person he has to communicate with is Klaus, who, you know, is the worst narrator and the worst person you want to tell your narrative.”
“I think it’s all a bit shocking,” adds Emmy Raver-Lampman, the star behind Allison Hargreeves. “In the moment, it’s like, “okay, well in one moment, Dad’s here, which is like—that’s insane. And then, when we turn around and there’s like these silhouetted people on top and then Ben shows up… I think for Alison, I genuinely think in that moment, her first thought is, well, if these two are here, where’s Claire? And what does that mean for Claire?”
“There’s that scene with Luther when he comes to the Chestnut house and he tells her, ‘we have to go, we have 42 minutes to get to the alley we’re gonna jump,’ and she’s like, ‘I can’t.’ I think in that moment, I think for her, it’s just this feeling of, ‘oh, God, we did it again. Again, we jumped and now I’m gonna have to deal with people being back in my life,’ all while trying to wrap her brain around the fact that Claire could not exist at all.”
While we aren’t 100 percent sure where season three will go, Blackman says that he’d love to explore more of the “dynamic of the sisters, Vanya and Allison… [have] Diego spend more time with Allison,” and see basically everyone interacting with Hargreeves, and assumedly, Ben.
Could we see a Diego and The Commission spin-off?
In the second season, there’s a moment where it seems like Diego might join the Commission, the agency that runs and manages the correct order of time. But, after realising it’s not all it seems—namely, that his girlfriend Lila is a secret agent for them and adopted daughter of The Handler, and that they plan to kill his brother Five—Diego flees their headquarters and goes to help his family.
But, the last episode of season two seemed to suggest the shy and awkward nerd at the facility, Herb, is now in charge. With a new management, could we see Diego join them in the future?
“I didn’t think about it [but] I hope if there’s another season that they do touch on that, the possibility of Herb running the Commission, and maybe Herb becoming the really bad person,” David Castañeda, who plays Diego, told us.
“Herb becomes evil,” Robert Sheehan (Klaus Hargreeves), jokingly speculated. “I’d like to see that lady you know, the lady who’s always having lunch in the canteen with Herb, becoming his right hand woman.”
“A villainous duo,” Tom Hopper (Luther Hargreeves), added.
“Actually, you know, it’s funny that they had a scene, they were always trying to get that one cuss word in there, and they were gonna give it to Dottie,” Castañeda recalled. “She was going to say don’t f**k with accounting.”
The second season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy debuted on the 31st of July. And, as our pals at Syrup pointed out in an interview with Raver-Lampman, the new season has come out at a time that’s made its story, set in the 1960s, feel grounded in the now.
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