The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Hargreeves kids are still their same weird selves, but the world around them? Even more weirder than before. Welcome back to the world of the super dysfunctional superheroes of Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s The Umbrella Academy. When we last left the Hargreeves family, they were on their way back to the past to prevent Vanya from becoming the White Violin. But do they get there, or is this pesky little apocalypse thing going to get in the way again?
It’s all right and it’s coming on we got to get “Right Back to Where We Started” from. As always, spoilers within.
1. Stuck in the Sixties
Time travel is messy, and the rescue attempt from the 2019 apocalypse leaves everyone in the same alley in Dallas, Texas – – just in different years. Klaus and Ben Hargreeves end up in 1960, Allison finds herself in 1961, Klaus in 1962, Diego in 1963 (specifically September 1st), Vanya on October 12, 1963, and Five on November 25, 1963.
But where Five ends up is an alternate history, three days after JFK’s assassination where the Soviets invaded America. He’s not alone for long as the rest of the team catches up to try and take down the Soviets, but they don’t have much time. There’s nukes on the way.
And as a mushroom cloud explodes over Dallas, Five realizes he’s got to save the world by finding his siblings before disaster finds them. Again. And he only has 10 days. Also, there’s some very blond very pale assassins stirring up trouble.
Based on the locale and time period, it appears this season will borrow heavily from volume 2 of the comic, “Dallas.” And while it does seem like this is another rehash of Season 1 with the whole we-have-to-save-the-world angle, there’s the added wrinkle of time travel. Everyone’s done it now, not just Five and Klaus. What knowledge from the future do they bring to the past? And how will the show turn this trope of fish out of water into something fresh and different?
2. Scattered Siblings
So now we know where everyone ended up, but how did everyone end up? What’s Five got to work with to prevent the end of the world yet again?
- Diego’s stuck in an asylum, with his future knowledge of world events written off as mental illness.
- Vanya’s an au pair for a family, enjoying the simple pleasures of horses and James and the Giant Peach. She’s been suffering from some headaches and doesn’t seem to remember who she is or how she got here.
- Klaus is Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band several years early and in a very co-dependent relationship with Ghost Ben.
- Allison is married (wait until Luther finds out) and a up and coming star with her husband in the Dallas civil rights movement. Her voice is back, literally and figuratively.
- Luther’s getting the snot beaten out of him as a fighter for hire, working for some dude named Jack Ruby.
3. Let’s Get Moving
One of the things that many critics didn’t like about the first season was its pacing. The show put a lot of balls in the air very early (Pogo! Hazel and Cha Cha! Eudora Patch dead! Mama Robot Grace! Vanya’s Creepy AF Boyfriend!) jumping erratically from plot to plot, but somehow managing to have most of them all working by the end.
“Right Back Where We Started” trims the fat and then some. No Papa Hargreeves, no Pogo, only a brief cameo from Hazel to connect the seasons. The focus is squarely on the family. There’s also no Frantic Five either warning about some disaster and doom that only he’s seen; everyone glimpses what horrors will come if they can’t get their act together in time.
The script doesn’t waste time either. Whereas last season it relied on the slow simmer to build tension (it wasn’t until episode seven that all the story elements made it into place), “Right Back Where We Started” is the facts, and just the facts: everyone’s in different timelines, the end of days is yet again afoot, and Five’s the one that has to save it all. No scene, no piece of dialogue is wasted, but it’s not done in such a way you’ll feel unsatisfied at the end.
Continued belowIf you’re wondering if this snappier style comes at the expense of the family drama, never fear: the final scene shows that the other kids haven’t learned the lessons of the first apocalypse. Five’s going to have a hell of a time rallying the troops.
4. Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Plot Holes
But there are continuity holes, particularly around the time travel. Remember that Vanya slashed Allison’s throat in “I Heard a Rumor,” but now she’s fully healed. There was also the idea that time travel could trap the older souls in their teenage bodies – it’s what happened to Five, after all. As they escaped the 2019 apocalypse, you saw everyone’s body revert to their younger selves, but they arrive in Dallas as adults.
I know it’s the first episode, and there is time to address all these issues as they should be. But one imagines you could all dismiss this with a wave of the hand as “hey, time travel” which I hope is not the route this season takes. These were important parts of the first season, and should still be.
5. The Hargreeves Women
What will be interesting for me this season will be watching the Hargreeves women navigate this new world. We’re on the cusp of the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (February 1963), so there is a simmering but not large feminist movement. They not only have a population that thinks them strange for their advance knowledge of events, but the added disadvantage of being women. (Doubly so for Allison as a Black woman, a truth that hits home immediately when she finds herself in a diner with a “Whites Only” sign.)
Allison’s found her voice in the civil rights movement, but where will Vanya end up? There’s a tender moment with Sissy, the housewife of the family that took her in. Perhaps Vanya will end up birthing a gay rights movement down South….
Notes Found in Five’s Old Commission Desk (our Afterthoughts section)
– If you loved last season’s Spotify playlist, it’s back and updated for season 2!
– Hazel makes a brief cameo appearance, looking like David Letterman after he took up retirement and tried to look like Santa Claus. He does reveal that he and Agnes had a long and happy life together, before cancer claimed her in the end. Raise a glass to our favorite birdwatching donut loving couple.
We’ll see you on Tuesday (our regular recap day for this season) for “The Frankel Footage” and let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments!
