Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for the Netflix series, The Umbrella Academy.The Umbrella Academyhas returned with its much anticipatedSeason 3, introducing us to many new mysteries and questions about our characters. Now that the Umbrella Academy has returned to 2019, they find themselves in a new alternate timeline, one where they were not adopted by Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore). Instead, he chose to adopt different children after encountering them in 1963 back in Season 2. Reginald Hargreeves has createdthe Sparrow Academyin this timeline, and how this will affect our current cast of characters is not initially clear.
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However, this season also brings the introduction of another seemingly new character, an elderly gentleman by the name of Lester Pocket (Callum Keith Rennie), who appears to be on a mission to track down the Umbrella Academy. He appears to be rather unusual, with little to identify him outside his suitcase and his tendency to listen to white-noise sounds like bees and corn fields when he is overwhelmed by the noise of his environment. Meanwhile, when reflecting back on his relationship with Sissy Cooper (Marin Ireland), Viktor (Elliot Page) finds himself wondering about the fate he left her to after the Umbrella Academy left 1963. He discovers that Sissy was linked to the six Hargreeves, or as history now calls them, The Kennedy Six, a group of communists said to have orchestrated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Sissy ended up being put on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for the murder of her husband and is said to have died on October 1st, 1989 under a false name.
It’s not until the Sparrow Academy launches an attack on the Umbrella Academy in the Hotel Obsidian after a failed exchange that Lester’s identity becomes clear. When seeing the chaos and violence unfolding in the hotel lobby, Lester unleashes an energy blast so strong that it instantly kills Jayme (Cazzie David) and Alphonso (Jake Epstein) from the Sparrow Academy, and it is then that Viktor realizes who he is seeing. As it turns out, Lester Pocket is actually Harlan Cooper (Justin Paul Kelly), Sissy’s son who we met in Season 2. In Season 2, Episode 4, Harlan almost drowns in a lake, and when Viktor attempts to save him and give him mouth-to-mouth, he transfers some of his power to Harlan, giving Harlan similar telekinetic abilities. It’s not until the end of Season 2 when the Commission becomes aware of Harlan’s newfound powers that Viktor is able to remove them, or so he thinks. Season 2 leaves off with the image of Harlan floating a wooden sparrow toy as a reminder that things aren’t over yet for the two of them.
Once Sissy and Harlan leave to restart their lives post-Viktor’s departure, Sissy takes on the name of Dana Pocket, with her son now being named Lester. As time passes, though he has learned to verbally communicate now, Harlan struggles more and more with controlling his powers, and with no guidance to help, he ends up hurting other people and animals when slightly provoked. This ends up resulting in Sissy and Harlan having to pack up and restart their lives over and over again as the years pass, yet Sissy and Harlan continue to hold out hope that Viktor will come back to them again. Eventually, though, we start to see Sissy’s health starting to deteriorate.
On October 1st, 1989, the day the six Hargreeves and the other superpowered babies were born, Sissy is simultaneously dying of her illness in the hospital, with a grown Harlan by her bedside. Part of Harlan’s abilities is that he is able to feel the energy of the other super-powered children that are like him and Viktor, and as Sissy’s heart monitor flatlines, he senses something that feels like Viktor’s energy in space. That energy is actually the mothers of the Umbrella Academy, who are about to become pregnant with super-powered children. Overwhelmed by grief and the energy he is feeling, he bursts out with a wave of telekinetic power and accidentally kills the Umbrella Academy’s mothers via brain hemorrhage. It is Harlan who had createdthe Grandfather Paradoxand the Kugelblitz that is now threatening to destroy the entire universe.
Once Viktor hears about what Harlan has been through because of the power he gave him, Viktor wants to help him and see if he can find a way to solve the Grandfather Paradox without harming Harlan. However, since Harlan killed Jayme and Alphonso, the Sparrow Academy is now out for blood, and they demand that the Umbrella Academy turns over Harlan in return for ending the fighting between all of them. This leads Viktor to smuggle Harlan out of the hotel until he can figure out a way to properly take away his powers for the last time. Caught in the act by his sister, Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Viktor asks for her aid, and she takes him to a rundown 50s diner in the middle of nowhere. Once Viktor meets them there, he and Harlan work together to develop Viktor’s abilities so that the two of them will be able to remove Harlan’s powers for good.
While Harlan appears to have the same telekinetic and energy powers as Viktor, his senses seem to be finer tuned, and he is able to listen to the energy waves of living beings and pull power from that. He calls it his “Marigold,” it’s the ability to physically sense energy sources and to then draw power from that, unlike Viktor who would draw telekinetic energy from audible sounds. Not only this, but when he tries to teach Viktor how to channel energy in the same way he does, Viktor becomes easily overwhelmed, prompting Allison to try make them stop. When she does this, she comes into contact with his energy bubble and this boosts her powers and unlocks them to new levels, showing that he has some sort of power-boosting capabilities.
Together, Viktor and Harlan are able to finally remove Harlan’s powers, and afterward, when Allison and Harlan have a talk he offhandedly mentions how he killed all of their mothers, thinking that’s the reason that Allison hates him. However, Allison had not been told this, and once she learns of what Harlan has done and how Viktor deliberately chose to hide it from all of them she is overwhelmed with rage. Allison blames Harlan for all the grief she has been feeling this season, including the loss of her daughter, and is angry at Viktor for going against all of them. Allison decides to take Harlan’s fate into her own hands, and the last we see of Harlan is Allison delivering his body to the Sparrow Academy, and his death becoming a motivator for how Viktor chooses to deal with the end of the universe.
