"Plenty of time to restore the timeline."
— Hazel
"Right Back Where We Started" is the first episode of The Umbrella Academy's second season.
Five lands in Dallas in 1963, in the middle of a battleground where the Soviets are about to nuke the United States. Although he sees his family fighting the Soviets, Hazel pulls him out of the way just as a nuclear missile strikes the city. Hazel brings him ten days earlier and manages to reveal that the world ended that day before he is killed by a trio of gunmen, leaving it up to Five to find his siblings. With the help of a TV salesman/conspiracy theorist named Elliot, Five learns that his siblings landed in the same place at different times.
Diego has landed in an asylum for his ramblings that JFK is going to be assassinated in a week. An amnesiac Vanya has landed in the custody of Carl and Sissy, a husband and wife, and their son Harlan. Klaus ended up in San Francisco and is en route back to Dallas, Ben in tow. Allison has found a loving husband in fellow civil rights activist Raymond, while Luther is doing underground cage matches.
In the middle of Diego's escape attempt, the same gunmen who killed Hazel attack the facility. He is assisted by a fellow inmate, Lila, and the two manage to break out. Five meets with Luther at a club, but the latter rejects his plea to help him stop the apocalypse.
Tropes for this episode include:
- Anal Probe: Discussed. Elliott believes Five to be an alien and asks him why they always do anal probing.
- "Awkward Silence" Entrance: When Allison enters a "whites only" Malt Shop, the whole room goes silent.
- Backstab Backfire: After Luther's won his prize fight and turns away, the dirty opponent goes after him with a knife. Luther turns around breaks the guy's arm with a Sickening "Crunch!" sound.
- Butterfly of Doom: Seeing Diego obsessed with saving JFK makes Five speculate Kennedy living leads to the dark future he saw.
- Call-Back: When Diego asks the asylum orderly whom his visitor is, the orderly responds, "I ain't your secretary." Diego's gym boss/landlord said the same thing in Season One.
- Cavalry of the Dead: Klaus is shown summoning an entire ghostly army regiment against the invading Russians.
- Cassandra Truth: Needless to say, Diego's constant claims some random nutcase is going to kill President John F. Kennedy leads to him locked in an asylum.
- Come with Me If You Want to Live: "If you want to live, come with me," Hazel says to Five before he pulls him out of a battleground.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Five is astounded Diego can't grasp just maybe his saving JFK is what causes World War III and realizes better to leave him in the sanitarium.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Hazel is abruptly offed in the first minutes by a trio of gunmen.
- Emergency Temporal Shift: Five winds up in a Bad Future in which the Russians invade the United States. Though the Umbrella Academy's badass future selves appear to be holding off the invaders, it's all for nothing as an apocalyptic nuclear strike is launched at their location; Five is only saved by the timely arrival of a significantly older Hazel, who uses his briefcase to give him a lift back into the past before the blast wave can reach them.
- Here We Go Again!: This season starts the same way the first one did: Five landing in a new time, knowing the apocalypse ends in ten days. Only this time, his siblings are temporally and spatially disparate.
- Hit Stop: The scene slows down during the Fight Clubbing scene where Luther gets hit in the face by his opponent.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: All three machine-gun wielding assassins completely miss Diego and Lila despite them being at the other end of the straight hallway.
- Invaded States of America: In the first timeline Five lands in, the Soviets have invaded the U.S. and are just about to nuke it.
- I Work Alone: Diego makes it clear to Lila that he doesn't want company for his big break. Eventually, they do it together.
- Just Toying with Them: In his prize fights, Luther lets his opponents get some hits in until his manager flags him to get serious at which point Luther turns his fights into a Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Killed Offscreen: Agnes died of cancer between seasons, as Hazel relates to Five.
- Lost in a Crowd: Diego and Lila escape the assassins by letting loose the other inmates, who are all dressed in the same white outfits they are.
- Man Bites Man: In the middle of stealing a truck, Klaus bites the owner's hand.
- Movie Superheroes Wear Black: When Five witnesses the full force of a unified Umbrella Academy fighting the Soviets, all of them are in black and in full superhero mode.
- Newspaper Dating: After Klaus tries What Year Is It?, Ben picks up a discarded magazine and learns that it's 1960 by checking the date.
- No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: While Luther blends in easily into the 1960s society, Allison and Diego have to deal with open racism, Klaus and Vanya with homophobia.
- Popcultural Osmosis Failure: In one of Diego's group therapy sessions at the asylum, Diego cracks a joke about Luke Skywalker when he is asked about his relationship with his father. No one gets the joke because it came 14 years too early for them.
- Refusal of the Call: At the end of the episode, Luther tells Five that he doesn't give a shit about his mission to return everyone home.
- Shout-Out: There's this reaction by Five on being mistaken for an alien:Elliott: It's all true, yeah? UFOs, crop circles...Five: Well, the truth is out there.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The action sequence of the siblings staving off a Soviet attack in the streets of Dallas is set to Frank Sinatra's "My Way".
- Three-Point Landing: Diego lands on his knee, foot, and fist when falling from the portal into the year 1963.
- Unreadably Fast Text: Elliot has post-it notes indicating the arrival of each sibling above their rows of pictures. Allison and Luther, whose exact arrival dates are only shown in captions by the year each arrives, are respectively June 29, 1961 and April 10, 1962.
- What Year Is It?: Klaus asks a passerby "what year is it, or what day?" after landing in 1960.
- Wimp Fight: Klaus and Ben have a pathetic fight with slapping and amateur grappling on the side of the road. Ben is of course Invisible to Normals, so to a man driving by it just looks like Klaus spasming.
- Wrongfully Committed: Diego gets committed to an asylum for his ramblings that JFK is going to be assassinated in a week since it hasn't happened yet.
- Your Head Asplode: Allison Rumors a trio of soldiers with "I blew your minds". Cue head explosion.
