"If she finishes this concert, the world goes up in flames."
"So much for saving the world."
— Klaus
"The White Violin" is the tenth episode of The Umbrella Academy's first season.
Vanya destroys the mansion and kills Pogo; Five realizes that Vanya, not Leonard, causes the end of the world. The Handler berates Hazel and Cha-Cha for their failure and order them to protect Vanya so that the apocalypse still happens; however, Hazel, uncertain that the Handler will follow through on her deal, tries to kill Cha-Cha. Five visits the Handler, who offers him a chance to leave before the apocalypse happens. As the siblings try to come up with a plan, they are attacked by a group of masked individuals and flee, arriving at the Icarus Theater as Vanya's concert begins.
Luther and Diego attack Vanya onstage but are unable to stop her; they are besieged by the mooks again but Klaus is able to manifest Ben, who uses his powers to take them out. Luther leads a suicide charge against Vanya but she easily stops them and comes very close to killing them before Allison steps up with a gun pointed at her. Instead of shooting Vanya, Allison instead fires the gun near her ear to distract her, causing her to drop the brothers and send a blast into space. This hits the moon, which causes a large chunk of it to fall towards the Earth, causing the apocalypse. As the Earth goes up in flames, Five takes his siblings back in time.
Tropes for this episode include:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Klaus' ability to summon Ben did not manifest until the climax of the season when the heroes are under heavy fire from the Time Police mooks.
- Backup from Otherworld: Ben, temporarily corporeal, helps Klaus get Diego out of the collapsing mansion. Later, Klaus is able to summon him more fully, and he is able to use his powers to take out a bunch of mooks.
- Boom, Headshot!:
- Hazel shoots the Handler in the head.
- Allison almost does this to Vanya from behind, but ultimately chooses to Take a Third Option, shooting near her right ear and knocking her unconscious.
- Brick Joke:
- A few episodes previously, The Handler was on a liquid diet due to having burned her rugae. She's evidently recovered from that as she spends most of her appearance in this episode chowing down on takeout.
- Hazel complains frequently about how annoying it is to lug around the heavy Commission briefcase and that if the bureaucrats knew what it's like to carry them, field agents wouldn't be burdened with the protocol of carrying them around 24/7 and he stashes it in their motel room vent. It's revealed in this episode that the Handler apparently has similar feelings about the Commission briefcase as she also left her briefcase in the motel room vent while waiting for the apocalypse to happen.
- Coincidental Broadcast: When the Hargreeves siblings wonder how to find Vanya, Klaus opens a newspaper and sees an ad for her concert.
- Collapsing Lair: Vanya destroys the Umbrella Academy.
- Colony Drop: A huge chunk of the detonated moon hits Earth and the impact creates a World-Wrecking Wave that ends most of terrestrial life.
- Concealment Equals Cover: At the bowling alley, the heroes hide behind wooden tables which provide sufficient cover against the henchmen's machine gun fire.
- Concert Climax: The season's finale is set in a concert hall.
- Crisis Makes Perfect: Klaus can only summon Ben twice; to save Diego from the Academy's rubble, and when the mooks fire on them at the concert.
- Detonation Moon: Vanya fires an energy blast at the moon, causing a huge chunk of it to fall onto Earth, causing an extinction-level impact.
- Didn't Think This Through: Luther tries an Indy Ploy to attack a dangerous being. It ends up backfiring because he didn't plan for any contingencies.
- Diegetic Switch: Diego throws a knife at a mook, which sends him falling backwards into the sound controls of the bowling alley and causes "Saturday Night" to start playing, which then carries on through the rest of the scene and even into the beginning of next scene with Five and the Handler.
- Emergency Temporal Shift:
- The Academy team discovers that their efforts to stop the apocalypse have failed and all life on Earth is about to be wiped out in a colossal asteroid impact triggered by the final battle. Number Five's only solution is to use his teleportation powers to send them all back in time so that they can escape imminent death, hopefully getting a chance to avert the disaster before it ever happens. Thankfully, he manages to get it working seconds before the concert hall goes up in flames.
- In the same episode, Hazel and Agnes use a briefcase to escape the same disaster, exchanging a kiss before vanishing into the past just ahead of the firestorm.
- Forced Friendly Fire: At the concert hall shootout, Five jumps onto the back of one henchman and makes him turn around to shoot another mook.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Vanya's irises glow softly blue when her powers are active.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Pogo shouts at everyone to evacuate the mansion when he realizes that Vanya broke out of the soundproof room. Then he goes to talk to her to deliberately draw the brunt of her wrath. The minute she asks if he knew about her powers, he sighs and says, "Yes, I did," knowing what was going to follow.
- I Don't Pay You to Think: The Handler makes it clear to Hazel and Cha-Cha that they are not paid for thinking but for executing orders.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Vanya impales Pogo on decorative antlers.
- Indy Ploy: Luther realizes he actually doesn't have a plan to stop Vanya. His plan then becomes charge in while Allison goes to try and "distract" Vanya, which backfires since Vanya knocks them all away. When they try a second time, she impales them on her powers and holds them in place as she strums up her finale.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Commission's henchmen, despite being armed with machine guns and having clear shots since the Hargreeveses are right running on bowling alleys, completely fail to hit any of them.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: The moon in the sky only has an apparent size of about half a degree, and Vanya hits it almost dead center. Without even aiming.
- In Spite of a Nail: It seems the Handler was right when she told Five the apocalypse can't be stopped. The entire commission and Five thought Harold/Leonard needed to stay alive to keep things on the right track, but even though he dies, that stops nothing. Interrupting Vanya's concert also doesn't help—it stops her from ending the world by playing her violin, but only because she instead ends the world by accidentally unleashing the power she's built up toward the moon, causing it to break apart and gigantic asteroids to fall to Earth.
- Light Is Not Good: When Vanya is powering up to destroy the world, she emanates white light, and her clothing and violin turn white.
- Mistaken for Gay: A woman at the bowling alley mistakes Klaus and Diego for a couple and Five as their son.
- Mythology Gag: "White Violin" is Vanya's super villain name in the comics, though in the show itself, she is never referred as this.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Vanya smiles after noticing Allison in the audience, only for Luther and Diego to charge at her. In fact, she doesn't start charging up power until they interrupt her concert.
- No Range Like Point-Blank Range: Seeing that charging Vanya is next to useless, Allison instead sneaks up behind her sister and prepares to shoot her at point blank range before improvising by firing the gun next to Vanya's head to disorient her.
- Oh, Crap!: At one point, Five believes the apocalypse has been safely averted, but then he discovers that not only are the newspaper headlines he used to figure out the date when he time-traveled forward unchanged, but the Umbrella Academy was destroyed by Vanya, for a double Oh, Crap!—the apocalypse is still on and his sister causes it.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Vanya in most scenes takes a cab. This is the only time we see her take the bus, which is a sign that she's Not Herself.
- Pet the Dog: In a flashback, Reginald allowed Vanya to play his beloved wife's violin.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: The apocalypse still happens despite everyone's efforts to prevent it, but Number Five transports everyone back to the past before flames engulf the theater.
- Ripple Effect Indicator: Five points out that the newspaper he found in the future hasn't changed its headline which prompt him to conclude that the killing of Leonard did not stop the apocalypse from happening.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: And how. After Vanya breaks out of the anechoic chamber in the basement, she goes through the mansion destroying it room by room before collapsing the building and taking Pogo and Grace to their deaths in the process.
- Sadistic Choice: The Handler tells Five either he can either stay with their siblings till they die together or fast-forward to the apocalypse and wait an eternity for her to maybe show up and employ him again. In the end, he takes a third option; transport his siblings to the past and stop the apocalypse.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Since Five traveling back to the past failed to prevent the apocalypse in the second iteration of events, he suggests that he takes everyone back along with Vanya to help her deal with her powers sooner.
- Shoot the Dog: Luther and Five are in favor of doing "whatever it takes" to stop Vanya; Allison, Klaus, and Diego are more reluctant.
- Smash to Black: The scene goes black when the World-Wrecking Wave hits the concert hall. Then the credits roll.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Vanya's response to Pogo telling her that Reginald was trying to save her from herself and her siblings is to kill him.
- The Snack Is More Interesting: The Handler keeps eating her Chinese food while calling down Hazel and Cha-Cha. Later she snacks when talking to Five.
- Talking the Monster to Death: A variant; Allison can't talk, but she hopes to approach Vanya and show with her presence to calm her down.
- Take a Third Option: It looks like Allison will have to choose between killing Vanya and letting Vanya kill all her other siblings and destroy the world. At the last minute she decides to fire the gun past her original target, using the noise to disrupt Vanya's powers. However, while it allows her to save all her siblings, it doesn't actually fix the problem, as all the stored up power is directed at the moon, blowing it up and killing everyone on Earth.
- Tracking Chip: There was one in the candy the Handler gave Five. Five is amused when he realizes she knew where he was the whole time.
- Trash the Set: Vanya wrecks the Hargreeves mansion in her rampage.
- Unflinching Walk: During her Roaring Rampage of Revenge at the academy, Vanya does not look back at the explosions she causes.
- Victorian Novel Disease: A flashback shows Hargreeves' wife dying from an unknown illness.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Allison with her throat slit gives Luther one Death Glare after another as he disrupts her plan to calm down Vanya by walking to her and showing her that all is forgiven for the throat-slitting.
- World-Wrecking Wave: The world going up in flames following chunks of the moon falling onto Earth is depicted as a giant, quickly spreading wall of fire.
- You, Get Me Coffee: When Klaus wants to join Luther and Diego into the concert hall, Luther tells him to wait outside and act as a lookout. Klaus is disappointed.
