Line #115 Headscratchers/TheUmbrellaAcademy2019


1	[[foldercontrol]]
2
3	[[folder:Commissions time travel]]
4	* This may be explained later or in the comics but, the commissions' time travel makes no sense. Did they develop it after the apocalypse? If so then how did they survive? If they were behind events like Hindenburg and JFK than they're clearly making the decision to change the timeline, because if those things happened on their own they can't just change on their own. The whole idea of "correcting the timeline" is nonsense unless there exists some unknown entity that is doing it, history can not just change on its own. Also separate question but, how does Number Five write numbers on a wall and come up with names?
5	** There's reason to believe there might be aliens in this universe. In the comics, the Handler is a goldfish.
6	** They're trying to undo the actions of other time travelers and put the timeline back to how it would have been without any time travel.
7	*** ...or at least that's what they say. Five calls them hypocrites and it could be that they're simply lying.
8	[[/folder]]
9
10	[[folder:Hindenburg case]]
11	* The montage of Five shooting various targets throughout history includes a shot of what appears to be the Hindenburg. However, later, when he is recruited to be a case manager, his first assignment is the Hindenburg. From the Commission's perspective, isn't that case already closed?
12	** The first time, Five is working as an assassin. The second, he's a caseworker. Might Five have been sending instructions to his past self?
13	*** Fridge brilliance, that is how he was able to come up with the impressive Hindenburg plan [[spoiler:while secretly planning his defection, he just remembered his assignment thus providing time for him to research and plot his escape while he pretended to be working on the Hindenburg.]]
14	** From what I understand, the Commission doesn't really operate with linear time. At any point, time can be altered because some rando decided to change their actions or moved back in time and altered things, therefore, people keep reviewing the same event to make sure that things have about the same outcome no matter what happens. Remember that there were about three different outcomes for the apocalypse.
15	*** Well the Commission does have some amount of linear time. Their agents are contracted for five years, after which they retire. Other than the Commission agents and Five himself (who only does it once), there's never anyone else established to be time traveling, so why would they have to address an issue more than once?
16	*** The nature of time in this verse seems particularly fickle, with Five mentioning that killing seemingly unrelated people could stop events unfolding as they do - alterations in one part of the time stream might change the course of events later down the line, the random decisions people make altered by even the slightest of ripples; they review the timeline constantly in order to ensure that events still play out as they're 'supposed' to.
17	*** Humans experience time linearly, but time isn't linear in the sense that events happen and then become fixed. It's possible some of these events are time-locked like in Doctor Who, where preventing them causes ClockRoaches.
18	[[/folder]]
19
20	[[folder: Klaus's role in missions]]
21	* What exactly did Klaus do in missions? Sure, he has powers, but in combat he'd be just as useless as Vanya.
22	** They were all physically trained for combat, so chances are he'd be useful to some extent. Vanya could've been used in the same capacity but [[spoiler:having her in such stressful environments would risk triggering her powers]], which is probably why Hargreeves wouldn't allow it.
23	** Yeah, the show is very coy about what the hell he does. Judging by the fact that he's only able to speak to ghosts until the end of the first season, he was probably limited to gathering intelligence from ghosts before and after engagements.
24	*** Maybe Hargreeves was hoping that sending him on missions would spur him to develop the powers we see by the end. Not a bad assumption, since they end up manifesting under pressure.
25	** [[RunningGag He was the lookout.]]
26	[[/folder]]
27
28	[[folder:Agnes abandoning her shop]]
29	* The note Agnes leaves on the door of Griddy's Donuts reveals that she owns the shop. Did she really just lock the door and abandon it? With all the furniture and appliances still inside? With all the day's donuts still on the shelves? What happened to the other employees we see in some scenes? Did she even contact them to tell them that they've lost their jobs? She tells Hazel that she's been saving her money to go to the country, so why didn't she try to sell her business to augment her savings? Was Hazel's carpe diem speech really enough to persuade her to abandon everything in a snap?
30	** She had already given Hazel the speech about how birds did everything that they wanted to do, as soon as they did it. Eat when hungry, screw when horny, etc. In fact, it seemed like that speech was what really inspired Hazel to have his change of heart, so it wasn't like it was a total change of attitude for Agnes; Hazel's affections for her was just the push she needed to pursue her impulsive dreams. She may have called the employees the night before leaving, and planned on taking care of selling the business later after a "honeymoon" with Hazel first.
31	** She wouldn't even have to wait. If she'd already hired a realtor, they could sell the business for her while she was on vacation.
32	[[/folder]]
33
34	[[folder:The other 36 babies]]
35	* If there were 43 babies born, and we only follow the stories of 7 of them, does that mean there are 36 other super-powered people running around in the world?
36	** In the comics it was explained that a lot of them didn't survive past infancy so the same can be assumed for here as well. As for the ones who survived, a handful of them may have ended up with powers too niche to notice and never developed that far due to lack of training.
37	** Another answer is the same one that people who make media have used since we had media, they are saving them for the next seasons.
38	** It's confirmed in season 2 that there are others like the Umbrella Academy, such as Lila who can [[PowerCopying copy powers]]. The ending of the season implies there might be more to come on this topic, but this also brings up the question of how did the siblings not know there could be others, since a bunch of women suddenly getting pregnant seems like the sort of phenomenon that would get a lot of media coverage.
39	** Depending on what the powers are, they might have just gone unnoticed. Who would figure out they could control trajectories? How would Lila have figured out she could copy powers if everyone around her was normal? If someone like Klaus had gone up to their parents and said, "Mommy, I'm hearing voices," what's to say they wouldn't have been drugged up (which is known to interfere with powers) or institutionalized? The only ones that'd be obvious would be ones like Luther, Vanya, Ben, or Five's. Also, the kids trained their powers relentlessly throughout their childhoods. If they hadn't, there's no guarantee they'd have developed to the point where other people could see them, and someone like Ben specifically with such a horrific physical difference might have been killed as a child for being a monster. Reginald was the only reason the kids a) knew they had powers, b) could develop them, and c) were given leniency to express them in any way at all, so it's not surprising that the surviving members of the alien stock brood are probably just living their lives unaware that there's much different about them beyond the circumstances of their birth.
40	[[/folder]]
41
42	[[folder:Killing people to correct timelines]]
43	* Not sure if this runs in the comics too, but isn't killing people an awful way to correct the timeline? They'd have to find people who were pivotal to one event but completely irrelevant to ''the rest of history'', and it's implied they've done this a lot of times.
44	** That's why they dedicate so much time to calculating what the best approach is.
45	** Maybe that's why they keep having to fix time, why certain events keep un-happening.
46	[[/folder]]
47
48	[[folder:Five's inability to go back in time]]
49	* So Five spent decades in a post-apocalyptic wasteland because he couldn't go back in time... until he does? Why couldn't he go back in the first place? What allowed him to go back after all that time? This is all mentioned but not explained.
50	** And why can't he jump a few hours back once the world starts to end?
51	*** Five has actually time jumped an extremely limited number of times. His first time jump was to go to the apocalypse the first time, whereafter he didn't jump again for 45 years. After that, he had the commission briefcase helping him rather than his own power, so we can logically conclude that the jump back to the day of Reginald's funeral is only his second time jump. Looking at things that way, it's obvious why he doesn't do more precise time jumps – he simply doesn't have the control.
52	** When the Handler finds him, the walls of the library were covered in calculations. Given he pulls out a book also teeming with formulas, it is most likely that his time at the Commission gave him insights into time travel that allowed him to complete the formula and make the jump to 2019, albeit with one mistake that de-aged him.
53	** ˆ That's definitely it.
54	[[/folder]]
55
56	[[folder:Five snapping people's necks]]
57	* Five doesn't have super-strength; how does a 13 year-old snap a man's neck with his bare hands?
58	** The man was possibly too weak to put up any sort of resistance after already being mortally wounded, plus Five was trained to fight people twice his size.
59	** Technique.
60	*** Season 3 sees him do it again, and this time to Grace; a robot who was designed to be much tougher than any human. Technique alone won't cut it there.
61	[[/folder]]
62
63	[[folder:Hazel vs Luther]]
64	* Hazel doesn't have super-strength; how does he go toe-to-toe with Luther?
65	** Hazel is, comparatively, smaller, faster, and lighter than Luther. Add in that, despite his strength, Luther hasn't been in a fight in at least 4 years while Hazel does this everyday, and Hazel actually has the advantage in their fight.
66	** It's pretty clear by the end of the season that Hazel and Cha-Cha are not normal humans. They recover from numerous life-threatening injuries in hours or even minutes, so it's very possible that their strength is enhanced as well. At one point Cha-Cha is ejected from a speeding car and hits the pavement face first. [[MadeOfIron She walks it off]], with [[{{Determinator}} more than enough gas left in her tank for a hand-to-hand fight with Diego.]]
67	** In the comics it’s established that every Commission agents underwent extensive surgical enhancements and augmentations as to make their bodies more resilient and enhance their fighting skills.
68	** Have you forgotten? Sir Reginald got seven children. What happened to the others?
69	** Also, don't forget that Luther has been living in micro-gravity on the moon for 4 years. There's a good chance that the majority of his super strength is being used to just make sure he can even stand upright.
70	[[/folder]]
71
72	[[folder:Vanya the sociopath]]
73	* Why does Vanya seem so sociopathic as a child and so normal as an adult? Several of them were capable of killing annoying nannies, but only Vanya did it. A lot.
74	** Because Vanya was given drugs to suppress her powers and personality, which was reinforced by years upon years of constant belittlement, she was also hypnotized by her sister Allison into believing she had no powers to curb her growing psychopathy.
75	** Also, Reginald is a terrible parent and didn't bother correcting Vanya's bad behavior properly. Her killing her nannies is sort of analogous to children throwing blocks at you when they're throwing a tantrum; the difference is that obviously, Reginald reacted with a huff and just continued replacing the nanny instead of having a corrective conversation or something.
76	** We only ''see'' Vanya doing it. But also, her powers are more directly, immediately lethal and are tied to her emotional state, and she was very young at the time; she may not even have meant to killer her nannies or understood that she was doing so. When she fails to kill mama, she immediately yields and eats her oatmeal, even though she could have obviously done a lot more damage if she wanted.
77	** Kids are just sometimes tiny sociopaths who end up completely fine.
78	[[/folder]]
79
80	[[folder:Locking Vanya away]]
81	* Why did anyone think locking Vanya in a soundproof room would contain her? Sound still happens inside the room.
82	** The room was lined with material designed to absorb and dampen noise. These rooms can get so quiet people have reported hearing their blood flowing in their veins. The theory was likely that she couldn't muster up enough sound to do anything, since the sound waves would die out before she could manipulate them.
83	** and then she uses the sound of her own heartbeat and bloodflow to blow the front wall off, it seems as long as she can hear something she can use her powers, more sound just makes it stronger.
84	** Simply put, nobody knew that she could do that. Reginald successful locked her away down there in the past, and it always worked. The fact that she could use something as quiet as her own heartbeat was completely unprecedented. Plus, they're underestimating her, because that's what they've been conditioned to do.
85	[[/folder]]
86
87	[[folder:Daddy Hargreeves' origins]]
88	* Where did Daddy Hargreeves come from in the first place?
89	** In the comics [[spoiler: he's an Alien.]]
90	** [[spoiler: He's an alien in the Netflix series too, the Season 1 finale shows him in a flashback talking to a female member of his species on a planet with spacecraft taking off across an alien landscape. Possibly HumanAliens, since they look exactly the same on their own world as they do on earth.]]
91	** In season two, they reveal he is ''definitely'' not human, given that he pulls off his face, which turns out to be a mask, displaying a not-so-human head, and promptly massacres a group of men who scream in terror. No idea about the woman from season one, though.
92	[[/folder]]
93
94	[[folder:Androids but no internet]]
95	* How is it that Hargreeves can make an incredibly sophisticated android but no one ever invented cell phones or the internet?
96	** The show hints that he's an Alien.
97	** It's perfectly possible that phones and the internet exist, we just don't see them on the show for stylistic reasons, especially since the show seems to take place in a bit of a RetroUniverse. Either way, it's definitely not something to read into too much. WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief , anyone?
98	*** The internet exists in the show. Diego got his fake badge off of eBay.
99	[[/folder]]
100
101	[[folder:Diego's true power]]
102	* Is Diego's power really just throwing knives really well?
103	** He can control any object he throws, and with more development some objects he ''didn't'' throw. The official name is trajectory manipulation, and he later uses it to redirect bullets fired at him – knives were just the most useful tool Reginald thought to give him.
104	** It is possible he is a very specific telekinetic, as in he can move things with his mind but only if he has touched it and it is going a certain speed, perhaps under a better mentor, he might have gained proper telekinesis, as with most of the siblings, their powers seem very underdeveloped, Take Five for example, he is shown to be a teleporter, but also a time traveler, but unlike his teleporting, his time jumping is very underdeveloped, because Dad never tried to teach him properly, again with a better and more supportive mentor he might have been a human TARDIS.
105	** He may still have the ability to hold his breath for extremely long stretches of time from the comics, and we just never see it. It's teased at like Klaus' telekinesis when he doesn't react at all to Luther farting in the elevator.
106	[[/folder]]
107
108	[[folder:Five's sanity]]
109	* How is it that Five can be sane and rational in all respects, except that he's convinced he's in a relationship with half a mannequin?
110	** Klaus put it best: Five is addicted to the apocalypse. His relationship with Dolores is a symptom of that addiction.
111	** Isolation can break even the toughest egg. It's also perfectly reasonable that a person in a situation such as his would [[CompanionCube grow attached to an inanimate object]] to the point where it being inanimate becomes irrelevant. He might be aware (at least to some extent) that Dolores is a mannequin, and simply choose to ignore reason. She's a coping mechanism, after all.
112	[[/folder]]
113
114	[[folder:Bullet immunity]]
115	* Is everyone's secondary power immunity to bullets?
116	** Or every bad guy has [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy Storm Trooper aim]].
117	** They started getting trained for physical combat as children, and most likely were taught how to dodge bullets (and probably got plenty of experience on it in missions).
118	*** Luther must have been a poor student then. He trained with a smaller body. He is shown to be akward with his new form and bump into things. He was sent to the Moon after his transformation so never trained with his new form.
119	** Diego's power is trajectory manipulation. It's entirely possible (at least for scenes where Diego is present) that he's subconsciously altering the trajectory of the bullets so that his family doesn't get hurt.
120	[[/folder]]
121
122	[[folder:Allison vs Leonard/Harold]]
123	* Why was everyone so worried about Allison confronting Leonard/Harold on her own? Didn't she spend years fighting armed criminals alongside them?
124	** This was the first time that Vanya had been in the crossfire. The unspoken concern was that Leonard/Harold could use Vanya as a hostage to gain the upper hand.
125	** Also, Allison doesn't use her powers anymore, which were a big part of her combat style. Add in the possibility of Leonard/Harold being armed, setting up an ambush, or other ways he could gain an upper hand, they had reason to be concerned he could overtake her.
126	[[/folder]]
127
128	[[folder:Commission's policy regarding time]]
129	* Why does the Commission only ever work to ensure that bad things happen? How do they decide what's fixed in time and shouldn't be changed? Where did they come from? Where did they get their technology, given that technological progress presumably stops after the apocalypse?
130	** It is possible that the future we see is the "correct" future, but not the ''only'' future, so they got the tech from a "wrong" future, theoretically, they seem to be less TimePolice and more a Time DoomsdayCult, maybe they only change things in such a way to make the world worse and their "corrections" seeing as most of the agents we see seem to be psychos, so their "correct" future is actually not the "correct" future, just the one they want, maybe their plan is to wipe out all life, then move to the future and populate it with themselves, creating their perfect society.
131	** We only see the Commission's activity from the point of view of their hitmen, so it's possible they have other activities involving ensuring that events not involving someone dying happen or that - given the butterfly effect - the murders they commit are for (their vision of) the greater good. How the apocalypse could fit into any "greater good" short of their being a doomsday cult isn't clear. They could have gotten their technology that way or they could have developed their own technology over centuries - since they have access to time travel technology (a crude form of which could have been created at some point in the past), they could create remote research centers thousands of years ago or in the future after the apocalypse. It's also possible that civilization didn't actually get completely wiped out, since Five doesn't seem to have traveled very far while in the future (and while travel to other continents would be possible, it would be dangerous for him to do alone even with his powers), and eventually bounced back enough to create advanced technology.
132	** It's weird. Two of the messages Hazel & Cha Cha got would have stopped the Apocalypse. If they had protected Harold like they were told, those drunks he'd hired to attack him would have been killed a lot sooner, and Vanya's powers wouldn't have triggered. And if they'd protected Vanya like they had been ordered, the Umbrella academy wouldn't have been able to attack her, and Allison would probably have calmed her down.
133	** Regarding the first two questions, it's very possible that the Commission members aren't the only people who have ever gained access to time travel- they could primarily be working to counteract people who are trying to "improve" the timeline by preventing major tragedies. It would certainly explain why seemingly all of their field agents are called "assassins"- even if they find a way to fix the timeline that doesn't involve killing anyone new, there's always going to be a meddler that needs to be eliminated.
134	** We do actually get a very brief glimpse of them making sure something right happens! It's very trivial, but the Handler tells one of her employees that Johannes Gutenberg is having second thoughts about the printing press. I certainly can't remember what she exactly says, but it's something along the lines of making sure he still goes through with it. Very menial, but still important and good!
135	[[/folder]]
136
137	[[folder:Briefcases with trackers]]
138	* Why doesn't the Commission put trackers in their briefcases?
139	** They do, they just don't give it to their agents.
140	** That's how they knew Hazel and Cha-Cha's briefcase had jumped to the '60s.
141	[[/folder]]
142
143	[[folder:Klaus ending up in the war]]
144	* Why did the briefcase Klaus stole put him specifically in an American military encampment in Vietnam in the middle of the war?
145	** It was most likely related to Hazel and Cha-Cha's next assignment.
146	** Or he randomly triggered a random time and place when he was cracking the locks.
147	[[/folder]]
148
149	[[folder:Vanya not getting new pills]]
150	* Why did Vanya stop taking her pills in the first place? Couldn't she just go to a pharmacy and get the prescription refilled after Leonard threw them out?
151	** Psych meds often require an authorization from the doctor/insurance, especially if a refill is before the scheduled date. Given that the show only covers 8 days, she probably was waiting for the refill to come in.
152	** Vanya outright told Leonardo she feels much better without the medication, and therefore doesn’t see a need to order a refill.
153	[[/folder]]
154
155	[[folder:Fixing Vanya]]
156	* Why did they bring current Vanya back in time? Wouldn't fixing her be much easier by going back in time and fixing her as a child, before she has decades of suffering breaking her mind?
157	** Possibly they are hoping that a Vanya in control of her powers will be of more help than a Vanya bumbling about with them. More likely, even after everything that happened, they just couldn't leave their sister to die.
158	** Five is shown to be especially sympathetic to Vanya in all of his iterations, and he seems to have the attitude of fixing your past by dealing with your present rather than erasing your struggles (notice how he wants to come back to 2019 in his old body, not go back to the day he left to grow up with his siblings in his young one). He also understands the intricacies of the timeline, and it's entirely possible there was no way for him to bring them all back with the degree of specificity they'd need, considering he couldn't even bring them all back to the same year in their normal bodies. Finally, time travel doesn't seem to work that way – you don't rewind into your past, you'd become a separate version of yourself that exists concurrently beside your younger self, and you'd get paradox psychosis, which Five is well-educated on even before he meets his older self in the sixties. You can change events in the past, but there's simply no way to re-do your whole life like that (not to mention that throwing them all back into the childhood that traumatized them so severely the first time around is the perfect way to shatter an already splintered and dysfunctional family).
159	[[/folder]]
160
161	[[folder:Five's name]]
162	* Why doesn't Five have a name? In the episode where he runs away from home he calls Seven "Vanya" so they already had names by that point.
163	** Even before that, on their first mission at the bank, they call Number Six "Ben". However, they say that Grace gave them names ''after'' Five vanished.
164	** WordOfGod confirms that Grace actually named them before his disappearance, and that Five actually does have a name, but he just prefers to go by his number.
165	[[/folder]]
166
167	[[folder:Leonard's eye]]
168	* How did Leonard's eye end up in Luther's hand in the apocalypse Five saw? What was Leonard doing at the academy and why in the world would Luther rip his eye out?
169	** Knowing Leonard's habit to [[BullyingADragon pick fights with the wrong people]], he might have gone over to the Academy and boast about how he's responsible and what he's done to Vanya, leading to Luther's response.
170	** Keeping in mind that Five came upon them after the fact, there's no guarantee that Luther got into a fight with Leonard. Given that Five didn't find Leonard's body in the wreckage, it's possible that Vanya killed Leonard at the Academy and Luther picked up the eye afterwards.
171	** There's still some tissue attached to the eye, though. So, is Luther really clumsy enough to remove the eye that violently post-mortem? And if he didn't kill Leonard, then why the hell would Luther be carrying around his eye? For all we know, the sight of Leonard's death might have been what finally made Vanya snap this time around - assuming he hadn't let the mask slip this time around.
172	** My belief is that in the original time line, Leonard was there with Vanya when she brought down the academy. Then either Luthor attacked Leonard, yanked out his eye and Vanya killed them all in retaliation. Or Vanya attacked, and Luthor yanked out his eye during the combat.
173	[[/folder]]
174
175	[[folder:Klaus' war experience]]
176	* How did Klaus not pick up any combat skills or proficiency with weapons during his time in Vietnam? Even without basic training and likely Dave looking out for him, you'd think he would be able to handle firearms or know what to do during gun battles after nine months in a war zone?
177	** It's possible that he did, but given that none of the Hargreeves siblings will let Klaus within arms reach of any sort of weapon, we don't get to see it. He also was showing serious signs of PTSD when he came back, so he might not be able to react appropriately anymore when under fire.
178	*** This. Every time we see the Hargreeves under heavy gunfire (the bowling alley and the farm are the most noticeable), Klaus is the only one covering his ears. It's subtle, but he reacts differently to gunfire than the rest of his siblings, and particularly during the season 2 finale it's obvious how he's relying on Luther to comfort and protect him. The one time he does act actively wrong around gunfire – when he needs to be ''told'' to find shelter in the theater despite hearing the gunfire before he went in – Cha-Cha is on his tail, who he's extremely afraid of due to the torture he suffered at her hands, and he's preoccupied with warning his siblings that she's found them.
179	** Plus, he does seem a lot handier in a fight after his time in Vietnam - actually managing to score hits and dodge punches in the barroom brawl, and later going on to K.O. a Commission goon with a thrown birthday cake.
180	[[/folder]]
181
182	[[folder:Allison making Reginald supportive]]
183	* Allison said that she used her powers to get whatever she wanted from Reginald and had no issue in doing so as a child, so why didn't she use her powers to make him caring and supportive?
184	** Hargreeves knew about their powers beforehand and knew how to train them individually for harnessing their powers; so it's likely he took preemptive measures to make sure their powers couldn't be used on himself, such as Allison's voice.
185	** Also, Allison was a child. Asking her to have the foresight to say "I heard a rumor that you were a loving and caring father" is a bit much. By the time she realized all that, the damage was done and she decided to just leave instead.
186	[[/folder]]
187
188	[[folder:Accents]]
189	* Small but if the Hargreeves were so isolated, and raised by a British man and a Chimp with a British accent, why do they have American accents? Flashbacks show that even before Grace is created and they have nannies with completely different accents, Vanya still had an American accent.
190	** Even people with English as a second language outside the US tend to develop American sounding accents thanks to its prominence in media. They may not leave the house that much but they probably still had access to televisions and such, or at least the vinyls Hargreeves plays. It's also highly likely that there was more staff working at the mansion, at least before Grace came along, and the kids probably had tutors and such. And at the end of the day Hargreeves is so controlling and anal, I wouldn't find it surprising if he went out of his way to get the children to have American accents (to sound more well adjusted once they reached fame or something).
191	[[/folder]]
192
193	[[folder:Mom not escaping]]
194	* Why didn't Mom even try to escape the house during the collapse, especially after being asked to? We know she was not allowed to go outside but she manages just fine in The Day That Never Was...
195	** Given we never see her move faster than a casual walk, her frame may not be designed for running and evasive actions that would be needed in escape and evasion. It's possible she decided IWillOnlySlowYouDown and sacrificed herself so as not to be a hinderence to her kids.
196	** I kind of assumed this was her accepting her role in the abuse the kids had suffered and chose to die alongside Pogo.
197	[[/folder]]
198
199	[[folder:Nobody secretly talking to Vanya]]
200	* Allison, Klaus and arguably Diego are the more vocally adverse to the "Let's keep Vanya locked up without even talking to her" plan. Allison in particular only gives up because she can't overpower Luther. What keeps any of them from going back to talk to her once Luther's back is turned?
201	** The door seems pretty heavy (and old probably), maybe the others wouldn't have the strength to open it?
202	** Pogo could open and close it. Strength probably wasn't the issue.
203	** Klaus and Diego both left the room on their own, so it seems like they may have accepted Luther's decision, albeit begrudgingly. As for Allison, Luther was with her the entire time after she left, so she never had the opportunity- it's quite likely that she would have snuck down and released Vanya if she hadn't broken out so quickly.
204	*** Klaus and Diego might have had a similar idea: since Luther is unyielding in his position and they cannot force him to move, they might have intended to feign giving up and come back later. Klaus in particular seems to be frustrated when he can't corporealize Ben while playing patty-cake, so it's entirely possible that, scrawny as he is, he wanted backup before going back down there.
205	*** For Klaus at least there was probably the unspoken threat of being locked up himself. Luther had already proven that he wasn't afraid of putting his siblings into traumatic situations; Klaus' own severe claustrophobia, and the fear that Luther would do the same or similar to him if he got in the way, could have been a contributing factor in his decision to submit to Luther.
206	[[/folder]]
207
208	[[folder:Reginald not exploiting Allison]]
209	* Why didn't Sir Reginald use Allison's powers on the other children more often? Hargreeves was a total control freak, so I wondered why he didn't order her to make Five less rebellious and more agreeable, easier to handle. But then I realised Hargreeves had access to future events and could have known Five running away was necessary. But what about Klaus? Why wouldn't he use her powers to get him to develop his? His diary entry on Klaus is clearly frustrated at how little progress he's made, so why not make him more compliant and less afraid in order to make him a more powerful weapon?
210	** Similarly, couldn't Allison have stopped Klaus' drug addiction? If not out of genuine care and worry for her brother then because Hargreeves would've wanted to preserve the Academy's image or just make him "easier to deal with". I also find it strange that in the present day someone like Luther wouldn't even suggest this. I just find it 'such' a Luther thing to do, to just see it as a simple way to eliminate a problem (Klaus' erratic behavior) in order to keep the team focused, without realizing how insensitive it is to use these powers without consent.
211	** The show hints that Allison's powers seem to have a temporary effect on the people she uses it on, such as her husband, and unless proper precautions are made they'll simply ware off. Just like they did with Vanya, when she stopped taking her medicine and started to become more self-assertive.
212	** Being a control freak, he probably wasn't comfortable using such a blunt (and poorly understood) tool on such a complex system as the human mind. There were far too many variables and too few ways to course-correct in case there were unwanted side effects.
213	** Re:Klaus, there are some theories that Reginald knew ''exactly'' what he was doing throwing Klaus in the mausoleum and then watching him spiral into drug abuse. Reginald hints that he knows exactly how powerful Klaus could have been if he had developed his abilities properly – abilities which, in the comics, include levitation and telekinesis ''on par with Vanya's''and in the show at the very least include the ability to summon a tangible dead army – and, well, if you have two children potentially capable of causing the apocalypse, there's more than one way to keep them drugged up enough to sedate their powers. He didn't really get to Klaus early enough that he could have simply said 'take these pills' without some type of rebellion, so breaking Klaus until he did it to himself was the next best option.
214	** Season 3 Reginald theorizes that he made them weak on purpose so he'd have better control over them. If this is true, then he probably didn't care about Klaus drugging himself since that wouldn't affect his self-resurrection powers. As for Allison, he didn't want to rely on one of his children to control the others, especially since it'd encourage her to control the others on her own.
215	[[/folder]]
216
217	[[folder:Preserved corpses]]
218	* Why were all the corpses of Five's siblings so perfectly-preserved when he came across them in the future? We saw how the apocalypse happened: the whole city, along with the rest of the world, was utterly consumed by fiery impact. Any humans remains should be charred bones at best, scattered ash at worst.
219	** Incorrect. We ''didn't'' see how the apocalypse happened: we saw how a different apocalypse happened. Quite apart from all the little indications that the final confrontation didn't happen the same way, Vanya only hit the moon by accident, so chances are, her powers didn't end the world in a meteor shower during the previous iteration, but kicked off a more internal cataclysm - earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic activity, etc.
220	** However the apocalypse happened, it was powerful enough to reduce every single building to charred rubble. That the corpses look like they've been gently laid down to sleep is still totally at odds with the state of the world.
221	** A concussive/explosive blast would have had an effect similar to what Five saw. With all of the time traveling, changes have already been made to the timeline so that the end of the world is different than the one Five saw (Five found their bodies in the ruins of the Academy the first time but they were at the theater the second time). The nature of the apocalypse might have changed as well.
222	** I believe he was ultimately only a day or two after the apocalypse so the bodies hadn't had time to decay.
223	** It happened differently from the apocalypse we see - as mentioned above, the bodies are found in the academy. It's not implausible to believe that the Umbrella Academy didn't die from the apocalypse at all, but rather never made it out of the house when it was collapsing. Then Viktor went off to fiddle the world into ending and the rubble of the Academy preserved his siblings' bodies.
224	[[/folder]]
225
226	[[folder:Cha-Cha's offscreen teleportation]]
227	* How did Cha-Cha get from the motel bathroom to the hallway outside (seemingly) so quickly and quietly? I know the answer is probably “the vents, same as Klaus”, but that feels unreasonable given she doesn’t make a sound. It almost feels like she teleported, but while she and Hazel are evidently superhuman in some way, they can’t do that!
228	* Why didn't Hargreeves have Allison tell Vanya, "I heard a rumor that you can control your powers" instead of, "I heard a rumor that you think you are ordinary?" It just seems a lot more efficient that way.
229	** He might have believed her powers to be inherently uncontrollable. Alternatively, he might have been equally afraid of what she would ''intentionally'' do with her powers as of what she might accidentally do.
230	** Allison's powers don't work like that. She can't tell Vanya that unless Vanya knows how to control her powers...which would make telling her that pointless. It would be like telling a normal person to shoot laser beams from their eyes.
231	*** Well, but yes, they do, and yes, she can. In season 2, she says "I heard a rumor I blew your minds," which makes her opponent's heads ''literally explode.'' The more likely reason is that Allison's compulsions are temporary, and usually simple, and it would have taken way too much effort for her to constantly be controlling Vanya's powers by proxy. Also, Vanya seemed to actually be in pretty good control over her powers, she was just extremely defiant: when Reginald says she needs to break the glasses, she breaks them ''all'' to end her training. When her nannies say she has to eat oatmeal, she doesn't explode the windows or blow up the kitchen, she just breaks their necks. Vanya's lack of control as a child was never the issue, it was that her power had been developing for 26 years without any intervention and it had gotten to the point where she was THEN unable to control it as an adult rediscovering it for the first time.
232	*** Also, Allison herself was just a child, and hadn't developed her powers yet to that reality-warping extend.
233	[[/folder]]
234
235	[[folder:Cha-Cha's recovery]]
236	* During The “Don’t Stop Me Now” fight in the second episode, Five takes a garden knife and slashes Cha Cha. There’s a blood splatter and she falls. And yet, in the next cut she’s in, she’s totally fine! It had dark lightning so maybe I’m confused but how did she get back up so quick, (on first viewing, I thought it was a neck slice) or at least, what was that splatter?
237	** By the end of the series, it's pretty clear that Hazel and Cha Cha are MadeOfIron at the very least, as Cha Cha is able to walk off being launched from a speeding car and crashing into the pavement face-first twenty or thirty feet away, something which ''should'' kill most people, or at least leave them in no shape to immediately walk off and get into a round of GoodOldFisticuffs with a vigilante superhero.
238	[[/folder]]
239
240	[[folder:Allison playing soccer]]
241	* While Allison was thinking about all the way she cheated in life using her rumors, the first thing you hear is her child self forcing her way onto a soccer team. Which raises the question, when would she have the opportunity to even just be on a soccer team? Did Dad send them to school? Was Luther a mathlete? Was Klaus Queen Bee? I feel as though that wouldn’t exactly fit what their father tried to do for their childhood. And even if that was the case, I doubt Reginald would let them have extracurriculars. That’s too far.
242	** A mission maybe?
243	*** Thats still very misleading and doesn’t fit the theme of the moment, which is cheating to get ahead in life, not a dangerous mission.
244	*** She might have Rumored her way onto the soccer team in a moment of being poorly supervised, before Reginald caught her and ordered her home.
245	*** In the comics at least, it was shown that Allison had a habit of sneaking out of the Academy often, for example, claiming to go to the library to study when in reality she was meeting up with a boy. It could be a case here that Allison was also sneaking out to play with other kids.
246	[[/folder]]
247
248	[[folder:Klaus' rehab not sticking]]
249	* Klaus is shown in rehab twice. And yes, he obviously relapses, he still. But in the show, he’s sober a mere few days, and suddenly he gets all these new powers. How come he never activated these powers in rehab? I’m pretty sure you have to stay more than a few days.
250	** Presumably he somehow "cheated" rehab enough to never be entirely sober.
251	*** Alternate explanation: Every time Klaus was in rehab, he was prescribed for the entire duration medication that is used to mitigate withdrawal symptoms. It is feasible that would also stifle his powers, since the medication Vanya takes seems to have a very mild effect on her beyond blocking her powers. Also, his rehabbers likely didn't know about his powers, and Klaus didn't make an effort to hide them; when the junkie in withdrawal gets taken off his meds and starts talking to people who aren't there, you put him back on the meds pretty quick.
252	** It's not just about the drugs; he was afraid his whole life of his powers. This time, between being sober, Ben's encouragement, and the necessity of dealing with Hazel and Cha-Cha, he started to conquer his fear and began embracing his powers for rhe first time in his life.
253	[[/folder]]
254
255	[[folder:Luther's membership]]
256	* Why was Luther allowed to be a member of the Umbrella Academy if he had no powers prior to receiving his injection (which took place after all other members had quit/moved on)? While Hargreeves' treatment of Vanya's supposed powerlessness is shown to be due to other circumstances, it's explicitly stated in an Episode 10 flashback with Vanya speaking to her siblings that only kids with powers were allowed to go on missions. Did he have super strength before the injection and it just enhanced it?
257	** Luther absolutely had super strength before his injection. In the first episode he is shown throwing fully grown men 20 feet in the air effortlessly at age thirteen. And with all Vanya’s angst about being the ordinary one, of course he had actual powers as a child. Especially to be Number One.
258	** Not only does he throw grown men around, he throws them an absurd distance. The serum has nothing to do with Luther's strength, and just changed his looks.
259	*** In the season two opening sequence, Luther appears to be somewhat indestructible as a result of the serum, as he jumps down and shields Klaus from an exploding projectile.
260	[[/folder]]
261
262	[[folder:Klaus reason for rehab]]
263	* Why did Klaus go to rehabs in that flashback and in the beginning of the series? He clearly never had any intention of getting clean, ever, and yet he goes to rehabs enough that he has become very accustomed with the rehab workers.
264	** In the first episode, Ben is only shown in a hoodie, and doesn’t talk. It’s possible Klaus could only really communicate with Ben sober, so that could be a major factor.
265	** Klaus says he once dated a man because he was tired of finding a new place to sleep, so he probably just liked staying in one place for a while.
266	** It's possible he was arrested and sentenced to rehab a few times.
267	[[/folder]]
268
269	[[folder:Diego's aliby]]
270	* How would the gun that was used to shoot Patch clear Diego as a suspect? Him being able to provide that and unable to explain where it came from seems like it would just make the case against him stronger.
271	[[/folder]]
272
273	[[folder:Five not liking his renewed youth]]
274	* Why does Five hate being a teenager again? He's more fit than he's been in decades and he gets to live longer than most people. The pros kind of outweigh the cons in my opinion.
275	** He's already gone through it once in the apocalypse, which would have made his surviving absolute hell. As teenagers need more nutritional intake than an adult.
276	** Also, it's suggested that due to his miscalculation on his math, not only was he reverted back into a teenager, he's stuck as a teenager forever. That means he won't be able to get alcohol unless someone else gets it for him. He won't be able to hook up with any women because he's back in the body of a young boy, despite being older (this is even mentioned by Luther when he comes to Five's table, saying "She's too young for you." But in the girl's mind, he's younger than her to not even be at that table in the strip club). It essentially brings about a whole new set of problems with people thinking he's a little kid, not an adult in a kid's body that he now has to deal with on a regular basis.
277	*** This is explicit in the comics; the Temps biologically modified Five to make him stop aging, so his accidental jump reverting him to a child means that he can outright ''never'' grow up into an adult again.
278	*** At least as far as the show is concerned, it is never stated at any point that Five is permanently stuck as a teenager. In fact, towards the end of Season 1, when he believes he's averted the apocalypse, he embraces his 'second life' and gets ready to grow up again. In Season 2, Luther mentions to middle-aged Past!Five that Present!Five is stuck as a teenager forever, but that seemed to be him just making something up to motivate Past!Five to help them in exchange for preventing that from happening.
279	*** Not to mention he meets his 100 year old self in Season 3, proving that he is not stuck as a Teenager.
280	** He's a fully grown man going through puberty for the second time. I think anyone would be pissed about that. Plus, he is mentally in his fifties but everyone keeps treating him like a child. Beyond that, it's pretty obvious that he wants his life to remain as is and even just become normal – he didn't try to go back to the day he left and grow up again with his siblings. He's not interested in being alive for nearly 150 years. He's lived a long time already, and he just wants to be in the late stage of his life like any normal person and for his siblings to see him for who he is, not who he was when he first left home.
281	** This troper wants to ask: would any adult user here go through middle and high school again willingly? Five isn't just going through puberty, he's at the ''very beginning'' of puberty, with all the mood swings, angst, bodily needs, and mental health issues that implies for the next ten to fifteen years of his life.
282	** Hell yeah I'd go back to high school again.
283	[[/folder]]
284
285	[[folder:Diego's obsession with JFK]]
286	* Why exactly is Diego obsessed with preventing the JFK assassination.
287	** They outright state throughout the season that it's part of Diego's hero complex that led to him being a vigilante in season one and the really deep desire to be the kind of hero Reginald claimed he and his siblings would be.
288	** The therapist, ironically, hit the nail on the head when he said it was a hero complex caused by his fraught relationship with his father - even though he dismissed the fantastical elements of Diego's story, he still understood the basic emotional beats and put them together correctly.
289	[[/folder]]
290
291	[[folder:Why not send Ben after Vanya]]
292	* Why not send Ben after Vanya first? He doesn't try until after all the others have failed. But he wouldn't be affected by the sound waves in the first place, so why didn't Klaus just send him?
293	** There was no guarantee Ben could have possessed Vanya the way he could possess Klaus, since Vanya wasn't a medium. It was something he decided to do as a last ditch effort after watching his living siblings fail. Also, Vanya's energy ''did'' finally kick him into the light for good, and if Klaus had any inclination that might happen he could have been too scared to ask Ben to do it.
294	[[/folder]]
295
296	[[folder:Klaus not mentioning Ben]]
297	* Why did Klaus lie continually to his siblings that Ben wasn't with him? Even with his deteriorating relationship with Ben, it still seems like a 180º considering that in S1 he tried to convince them that it was Ben who saved Diego's life.
298	** It's possible the lingering trauma from trying and failing to convince them then – and likely several times as children – made it a reflex. But also, Ben was getting increasingly antsy about being in the living world. Klaus could corporealize him at will in season 2, and the whole possession scenes show how desperate Ben was to connect to the world of the living. Klaus is well aware of how his siblings feel about him, and it's proven when Diego tells Ben to ''not relinquish control of Klaus' own body'' because they "need someone responsible behind the wheel." He didn't want to be reduced to just the messenger for their infinitely more "valuable" brother.
299	** Add to that the physical implications on Klaus when he and Ben discover the latter could possess him. Just ten seconds at the light supper incapacitates Klaus for the remainder of the evening, and then the next day there are the more serious complications from Ben following Diego's orders (despite those scenes being PlayedForLaughs). Had the other siblings known Ben was alive and could possess Klaus, they might have tried to make Ben possess Klaus without the latter's consent, which could have posed as a serious health risk to Klaus.
300	* Also, why did no one questioned Klaus when he said that Ben wasn't with them? Like, they didn't believe his word in S1 and they don't see to trust him very much in S2, they've must been ''desperate'' to talk to Ben again after seeing Klaus manifest him in the Icarus Theater ''and'' Five '''saw''' him fighting with the others when he was dropped in November 25.
301	** To be fair, their whole thing this season was that they were trying to connect with and trust each other more. Interrogating Klaus about his own abilities as if they know better when none of them have any inkling of what he's really seeing or hearing at any given moment isn't the way to do that.
302	*** However, Five saw Ben fighting with the others on Doomsday. Since he was the last to arrive in the 1960s, nothing in the messed-up timeline would have changed prior to Hazel bringing him back ten days earlier. If he would have remembered that on the day of the siblings' family reunion, he could have disputed Klaus' answer.
303	[[/folder]]
304
305	[[folder:World War III and the Commission]]
306	* If World War III occurred in 1963, how was Five able to go to 1982 to take out the Commission? There doesn't seem to be any indication of anything apocalyptic when Five asks the Wisconsin Polka Association about the Midwest Soybean Society. Are they assuming 19 years is enough to restore everything back to normal (and still be America)? Or, is it that since Five knows how WWIII happens, [[spoiler: them preventing it in the last episode means everything is still there]]? Or is it some sort of Time Oasis?
307	** Five likely prevented the apocalypse when he left 1963 to take out the commission. Removing himself from this part of the timeline means he never tells Vanya to pack up and leave, so she never gets arrested and interrogated by the FBI. No interrogation means the JFK assassination goes off without a hitch, apocalypse prevented so 1982 is unaffected. The Apocalypse only kicks off again when Five re-inserts himself into 1963.
308	*** To to that. Before Five popped up to begin with, Diego probably did escape, saved JFK, and something may have turned the cold war hot. In the end just like season 1, Five's insertion into the timeline plus the machinations of the commission alters events to either encourage/prevent a major disaster.
309	** Its possible that there's some kind of multiverse at play, or that the Commission has access to previous timelines. They do seem to exist outside of time, in a sense, and the idea that they need to repeatedly work to ensure certain events suggests that they have access to multiple timelines. So its easy to imagine that the Commission decided to hold their board meeting in an apocalypse-free version of 1982. In fact, it might be an added layer of security, since no 'normal' time-traveler would be able to find them. Unfortunately for them, Five was given access to this timeline by the Handler...
310	[[/folder]]
311
312	[[folder:The Handler surviving season 1]]
313	* How did the Handler survive at the end of season 1? Sure they reference a metal plate in her head, but I'm more questioning how she ended up in a bloody morgue in the first place. The world was destroyed like an hour after she was shot. Did the Comission for unfathomable reasons extract her body from the apocalypse at the last minute only to burn it somewhere else? Or was that a regular Earth morgue and there was some how enough time to pronounce her dead, organize her cremation and get her to a hospital before the world exploded? Even if we throw in time shenanigans that averted the apocalypse I don't see how she could still get shot in the head and the apocalypse not happen since those two actions are pretty linked with everyone's motivations at that time.
314	** Most likely, she was indeed extracted by the Commission, as they would know what happened to her from the Infinite Switchboard. Of course, there wouldn't have been enough time before the apocalypse for police to investigate (plus the fact that a woman shot in the head in which there is already an implanted metal plate would raise serious questions, let alone them realizing that she is still alive). This troper wouldn't be surprised if whoever would have ordered the retrieval and cremation just wanted to get rid of her. Plus, as stated in the orientation film, there is a job for anyone regardless of education, skill, or comfort level with moral ambiguity; along with the office staff and field personnel, there are cafeteria chefs, janitors, and other such jobs like most of us have in life. And within the total area boundaries besides the headquarters building, there have to be doctors, hospitals (how many field assassins have needed emergency medical care?), dentists, etc., and where do headquarters personnel sleep at night? Anyone can work there regardless of their qualifications.
315	[[/folder]]
316
317	[[folder:Soviets strategy]]
318	* Why would the soviets send a land invasion into Dallas and then nuke their own army? Hell how did the Soviets even manage to penetrate that far into the USA in just two or three days? It makes for a cool actionpacked opening, but it really makes absolutely no sense.
319	** Dallais is not ''that'' far into the USA if the Soviets start from a Cuban base and land in Texas.
320	[[/folder]]
321
322	[[folder:Handler forgetting about her powers]]
323	* Why doesn't the Handler use her time stopping powers at any point during season 2? That would let her do basically whatever she wants to the protagonists, especially when she's actively trying to kill them at the end.
324	** Her time-stopping powers are technological, not a natural ability. Maybe as a consequence of her demotion, her access to the necessary tech was revoked? Doesn't explain why she doesn't get it back when she takes over the Commission though.
325	[[/folder]]
326
327	[[folder:Past Five's knowledge of the future]]
328	* In "743", wouldn't Luther and Five's interactions with the Past!Five significantly alter the timeline once he's sent through the portal to 2019, to the events of the series premiere? This version of Five now knows that the prosthetic eye is a dead end and that Vanya has powers and causes the apocalypse. That would significantly alter the events of Season 1, even if he ''doesn't'' succeed in stopping the apocalypse. The only way this wouldn't cause a paradox of some sort is if Past!Five, on going through the portal, loses his memories of meeting Luther and Five, or if we're dealing with a multiverse of some sort, and he ends up creating a new tangent timeline where the events of Season 1 play out very differently. But its odd that Past!Five knowing about Vanya is never addressed as a concern by Five.
329	** Just a wild-ass guess here, but maybe this is part of the reason why the Umbrella Academy was replaced by the Sparrow Academy?
330	*** Who knows how this crazy ass show will handle time travel and such, but that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense given Past Five travelled back to a time when their dad is dead, while the Sparrow Academy has their father alive and seemingly a whole different bunch of adopted super heroes.
331	*** Perhaps sending him back would have altered the timeline, but the actions they took which caused the Sparrow Academy to be made overwrote that.
332	[[/folder]]
333
334	[[folder:Cha-Cha's weapon of choice]]
335	* The Commission has access to all of time. They can get basically anything they need for whatever mission their agents go on. With that in mind, why does Cha-Cha use a WWII-era sub machine gun as her weapon of choice? Not that the MP40 is a bad gun, but she could have any firearm in history. Why that one?
336	** They probably give their agents as little timeline-inappropriate equipment as possible to minimize the risk of disruption if it's lost. And they seem to have limited resources, so they don't have ''precise'' guns for every decade. The MP40 is a straightforward, decent gun that was made in large numbers and could reasonably turn up across a long period of time, so stockpiling it and giving it to their agents working from the mid-20th century to the early 21st-century makes sense.
337	[[/folder]]
338
339	[[folder:Coroner not noticing Reginald is no human]]
340	* So in the Season 2 finale it’s revealed that Hargreeves is indeed an alien (or something definitely not human). He rips off his human mask to reveal his weird crab face or whatever it is. And yet...in the first season an autopsy is done on his body, and the coroner’s report says everything was normal. What?
341	** They staged his death, Reginald probably thought ahead to the point of making plans to fake the coroner's report. The report also claimed the cause of death as a heart attack which is clearly false as well.
342	** This also brings up the question as to how it was that Klaus saw Reginald as a human when Klaus was in the afterlife. However, Reginald did wear his monocle at the time; so supposedly, he could have had his human mask with him as well.
343	** Well, Reginald ''is'' a billionaire and officials can be bribed. For all we know, the coroner didn't even get a chance to look at the body before the money and the official statement arrived on their desk.
344	[[/folder]]
345
346	[[folder:Allison, Klaus, and Vanya's invitations]]
347	* How is it that Allison, Klaus, and Vanya all receive invitations to the light supper, when none of them had made any attempt to contact Sir Reginald before? None of the three even learn that their father is involved with the plot to assassinate JFK until episode 5; and due to her amnesia Vanya didn't even know who he was, until seeing only a blurry photograph from the Frankel footage.
348	** Luthor told Hargreeves that there were six others, and he was probably able to figure out the rest (not difficult, they're all staying at the same place at that point.)
349	[[/folder]]
350
351	[[folder:Reginald and JFK]]
352	* Sir Reginald spends much of his interactions with Diego in the second season mocking his desire to save JFK. This culminates with Sir Reginald sending a decoy to Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination with a note for Diego. However, Sir Reginald goes postal on the rest of the Majestic 12 for the assassination. Could Sir Reginald simply have prevented the assassination himself?
353	** He thought he ''had'' prevented it by cutting a deal with the Majestic 12; he didn't expect them to renege on it. That was the point of that scene.
354	[[/folder]]
355
356	[[folder:Ben not in Vietnam]]
357	* Where was Ben while Klaus was experiencing Vietnam? Did he opt not to see the carnage and and go to wherever he is when not with Klaus?
358	** Because Ben was not seen on the bus when Klaus opened the briefcase, it's presumed that he didn't travel with Klaus; and, of course, this was at least twenty-one years before they would have been born.
359	[[/folder]]
360
361	[[folder:Five time traveling without a briefcase]]
362	* How did Five get to 1982 to assassinate the Commission without a briefcase? If he was given a briefcase, why not use it to escape with his siblings immediately? Even if there were restrictions on it (and he somehow couldn't disable them, which has never been a thing before), why didn't he focus on stealing one of the Commission's briefcases? When he's chasing AJ, AJ ''must'' be headed towards his own briefcase in order to escape - wouldn't the smart thing be to pursue AJ to that briefcase, then steal it and use it to save his siblings, rather than relying solely on the Handler, who he ''knows'' is a treacherous backstabbing snake? For that matter, when AJ offers to cut him a deal, why does Five immediately reject it? Five should be happy to cut a deal with AJ instead of the Handler, especially since he can sell out the Handler as the mastermind for what happened.
363	[[/folder]]
364
365	[[folder:the Handler keeping AJ around]]
366	* Why does the Handler keep AJ ''on her desk'' in the commission after taking over? The only reason she can take over is because he's supposedly dead; him being alive would make her lose everything. Even if she must leave him alive, the absolute last place she would want him would be in that building, where anyone could come across him or recognize him.
367	** She's just the kind of [[EvilIsPetty petty]] person who'd keep her defeated adversary there to witness her triumph.
368	[[/folder]]
369
370	[[folder:Grace's existence in the altered timeline]]
371	* In season 3, why does Grace exist? Reginald built her because Viktor kept killing his nannies and before that used human caretakers, but without Viktor being part of the academy there was no need to create Grace.
372	** Speculation, but The Sparrows most likely also killed their nannies. They don't really care about human life.
373	** While Viktor forced Reginald's hand. I wouldn't be surprised if Reginald figured he needed a loyal durable nanny to deal with all the kids powers as they grew older(plus have someone he had total control over). Clearly though the Sparrows didn't see her as a mother. Maybe she came into play far later in their lives.
374	** Jayme and Christopher both have psychotropic powers. Considering what jerkasses both grew up to be, it wouldn't be far-fetched to imagine them as [[EnfantTerrible Enfant Terribles]], inducing hallucinations and/or a deep sense of fear in their caretakers to get away with their tantrums. A robotic caretaker would NoSell their powers and solve the problem.
375	[[/folder]]
376
377	[[folder:Klaus getting run over, again and again]]
378	* Reginald is testing Klaus' ability to come back from the dead... by having him run into a busy street and getting run over by cars. Repeatedly. In a day. Nobody ever stopped and looked for the guy they just killed?
379	** Most probably left to not get in trouble. Reginald may have told(or bribed) the more honorable folk to leave or observe Klaus was okay.
380	** That, plus by this time, kugelblitz's rate of escalation was such that people were likely rushing to get out of the city not knowing what was causing the destruction.
381	[[/folder]]
382
383	[[folder:Cause of the grandfather paradox]]
384	* Five has an OhCrap moment when he learns he and his siblings' alternate timeline counterparts died as babies, and realizes they've caused a GrandfatherParadox. But shouldn't he have realized that as soon as he learned Reginald Hargreeves never adopted them? Even if they were alive, he and his siblings would have lived entirely different lives and would have never gone back in time together, creating a paradox anyway.
385	** Season 1 would result in a grandfather paradox just due to how different the Apocalypse unfolds and changes Five's reasons for going back. I think the literal existence of something that can't exist is the the problem. So it's fine if they have doppelgangers with different lives. Technically there are ways for them to exists in the state they do if they were born. So nature is cool with it.
386	** The show seems to run on "only something actually literally preventing you from existing at all can cause a grandfather paradox." This doesn't make much logical sense (there's still an obvious paradox if the ''specific'' version that went back couldn't have gone back), but without that caveat simply preventing the apocalypse should have caused a paradox. The underlying problem is that the nature of preventing the apocalypse requires multiple-timeline time travel for it to make sense, whereas a grandfather paradox specifically requires ''not'' having multiple timelines... but they really wanted to use the grandfather paradox as an explanation for the doom in season 3.
387	** While logically the Grandfather paradox should refer to ''any'' change to the past which affects the time-traveler's motivation and ability to make the trip in the first place, going by the Commission's training video it seems that they use the term to refer exclusively to situations where the time-travelers negate their own existence (existence being defined here as "''some'' version of you being born in the new timeline".) And it may well be the case that there ''are'' multiple timelines (which would explain where the Past!Five from 1963 in Season 2 went, with his knowledge of Vanya being the cause of the original apocalypse), but time-travelers are only aware of and confined to the timelines created by their actions - and if those actions result in a timeline where they (or their AlternateTimeline counterparts) were never born, then the Grandfather paradox comes into play.
388	[[/folder]]
389
390	[[folder:Reginald's true goal]]
391	* So now we know that Reginald's overall goal and endgame was. He needed to get seven people through some weird portal so he could reset the universe with his dead wife alive again. Cool...only why in the world did he kill himself in Season 1? He couldn't possibly have calculated it would have involved the team coming back together, Vanya destroying the world, everyone emergency time traveling to the 60s, a random kid getting powers causing a grandfather paradox that would bring him back to life by changing the timeline to one where he...just didn't kill himself, all to get together a bunch of people who are no more willing or capable to carry out project Oblivion than in the first place. His motivation to commit suicide made some sort of sense when it seemed his goal was to prevent a nebulous apocalypse, but it's shown now that his real goal is so high concept and he's so immoral that he would literally let the world burn just to achieve it, which is a bit hard to do when you're dead.
392	** He probably ''didn't'' kill himself. He's an alien, after all, and there's no way that that could have been missed in autopsy. Most likely the corpse was a fake he produced somehow, and his long-term goal was to "reveal" his survival at an opportune time. Unfortunately the world ended first.
393	*** Except that Klaus meets him in the afterlife after hitting his head at a rave. Unless that was just Klaus hallucinating, not actually (temporarily) dying.
394	** During that conversation in season 1, Reginald is clearly irritated that Klaus hasn't been able or willing to conjure him yet. Plus, he clearly has a plan in mind, but Klaus auto-resurrects before Reginald can finish explaining it. So, it's possible he was counting on Klaus using his power to make Reginald into a SpiritAdvisor that could direct the team to the Hotel; plus, Klaus's power would have allowed him to become physical enough to manipulate the controls, maybe even make Ben corporeal enough to occupy one of the stars - unless he was keeping tabs on a spare kid to be used as a substitute. One way or the other, his death would have been undone, hence why he was so sanguine about dying. Ultimately, the plan failed due to Reginald just not getting the fact that Luther was the only one of them who cared enough to even suggest conjuring his spirit.
395	[[/folder]]
396
397	[[folder:Klaus not surviving the apocalypse]]
398	* If Klaus has had passive immortality all along, then why didn't he survive the apocalypse that Five jumped into in Season 1. His body wasn't even banged up that badly.
399	** The end of season 3 also shows that Klaus can simply choose not to leave the Void if he didn't want to and given that he had the option between eternal afterlife possibly with his siblings or going back to life in a post-apocalyptic world with no one else left and no foreknowledge of Five's presence, the choice seems pretty stacked in favor of the first one.
400	[[/folder]]
401
402	[[folder:Lila's trip to Berlin]]
403	* How long was Lila in Berlin? She's only 3 months pregnant but she had time to pick up drumming and join a band?
404	** She likely already knew how to play (although this troper questions whether the Handler would have allowed it). And another question is how she could afford a set of drums; perhaps she used the briefcase to steal them, since it didn't shut down until after she came to the Kugelblitzing 2019.
405	[[/folder]]
406
407	[[folder:Allison's deal with Reginald]]
408	* What was Allison's part in Reggie's plan? When she was caught making the deal, I sort of imagined she would rumor everyone into going to Oblivion if they didn't comply, but Reggie assures the project goes as planned by himself, and until the end she does nothing for his success she wouldn't do by her own will. Then what was the deal about?
409	** She voted for them to go through the door in exchange for him bringing her family back.
410	*** The vote didn't happen until the next morning, and Reggie/Allison weren't even planning on it being a vote. It seems more likely that she agreed to talk to everyone and manipulate them emotionally, much like Klaus inadvertently taught him how to do. Why they didn't plan on her rumoring the others as at least a back-up plan is anyone's guess though.
411	[[/folder]]
412
413	[[folder:Ben wanting Harlan]]
414	* Why was Ben so determined to get Harlan? He didn't actually seem that distraught over Alphonso or Jayme's death, he had nothing to gain from it, and he plainly blindsided Fei with it. For that matter, why do the Umbrella Academy people take his request so seriously? It's glaringly obvious that none of the rest of his family agree during the meeting.
415	** Throughout the entire season after Marcus's death Ben is desperate to be recognized as Number One and be the team leader- I don't think he particularly cared about Harlan, he just made the ultimatum to feel like he was the one in control and that the other team was making concessions to him.
416	** Ben also made a deal with Sir Reginald in the scene where he and Fei reported the debacle at Hotel Obsidian, after Fei had left the room; part of that deal was why Ben also gave Luther the Sparrow uniform. In the season finale, Ben insists to Reggie that he did as asked, but Reggie argues that Allison killed Harlan and Reggie himself had united the two families.
417	[[/folder]]
418
419	[[folder:The Umbrella's trusting Sparrow!Ben]]
420	* For that matter, why is the Umbrella Academy so eager to cut a deal with Sparrow!Ben - who has tried to kill them on multiple occasions and seems extremely unstable and untrustworthy - over Harlan, who just saved their lives? Why do they repeatedly insist on the importance of working with the Sparrow Academy when Harlan shows every indication of being more powerful and knowing more about the details of how their powers work? What if cooperating with ''Harlan'' offered more opportunities to resolve the Kugelblitz?
421	** At this point, the Umbrella Academy has no idea that the Kugelblitz is in the mansion. Harlan might have been the better choice if what they needed was raw power, but the situation called for more of an investigative effort, so they might have figured that the Sparrow Academy's greater numbers and variety of abilities plus Reginald's resources made them the better option despite the much higher tension between them.
422	[[/folder]]
423
424	[[folder: Patrick and Roy and Claire]]
425	* Allison has decided to raise her daughter with Roy, her second husband and the man she loves. What happened to her first husband? If it's truly her perfect world, or somewhere close, her ex-husband probably wouldn't be there, at least not in her life. But the reason that they got divorced is seemingly just because Allison was rumoring Claire. Patrick was trying to protect her. Now, would Patrick even know Claire exists? What happens if Allison slips back into rumoring Claire, and Roy tells her to stop?
426	[[/folder]]
427
428	[[folder: The other 20 dead women]]
429	* It's mentioned in the beginning of season 3 that in the new timeline, only 16 women gave birth instead of 43. Considering we find out that this is because [[spoiler: Harlan felt Vanya being born and tried to reach out to her, but accidentally killed their mothers before they could be born instead.]] If that's the case, why did the other 20 mothers die as well, considering [[spoiler: Harlan]] most likely didn't come into contact with them? What was special about the 16 mothers that prevented them from being killed?
430	** Nothing. I think it was just luck of the draw that they weren’t reached by Harlan.
431	[[/folder]]
432
433	[[folder: Reginald's plan with Allison]]
434	* Was Reginald originally going to double-cross Allison during the universal reset? He ''did'' prevent her from going and power the machine, but was that really his plan all along? He entered Hotel Oblivion with only seven children in total, including Allison, while Klaus' reappearance seemed to be a SpannerInTheWorks rather than part of his plan. Was he going to sacrifice Allison too but decided against it only when an eighth option became available?
435
436	** Given that everyone came back with their bodies restored, Reginald indeed intended to "sacrifice" her and then bring her back. His telling Allison to step out on the last minute was either a rare PetTheDog moment, or considered Klaus was more likely to stop him than her.
437	[[/folder]]
438
439	[[folder: The Swedes not writing in English]]
440	* Why do the Swedes insist on communicating either with silent stares or in Swedish? The major one is that how they write "An eye for an eye" in Swedish to Diego, causing misunderstanding. It seems that they are perfectly capable of at least reading English, given that the Commission gives their orders in that language.

Context Headscratchers / TheUmbrellaAcademy2019