Umbrella Academy: The Disturbing Detail Everyone Ignored About Vanya

The Umbrella Academy, similar to X-Men, is about a makeshift family (albeit dysfunctional) whose members have superpowers, and ten glorious episodes were gifted to the world by Netflix on February 15, 2019. While there has been plenty of debate since the release of the show's binge-worthy chapters, one area of conversation people keep returning to is Vanya Hargreeves — who, similar to her powerful brothers and sisters, was one of 43 children inexplicably born on the same day in 1989 to women who showed no previous signs of pregnancy.

Vanya Hargreeves (Elliot Page) spent a good portion of the first season powerless. Her family made it clear that Vanya didn't have any superpowers like her brothers and sisters — until one day, she broke free and (er, spoiler alert) became the most powerful of them all.

To make a long story short, Vanya, in a fit of jealous rage, ended up destroying the world, along with virtually everyone, including her family. Luckily, this was in one alternate universe — and Vanya's "brother," the time traveling kid known as Number Five, stopped the apocalypse from occurring in The Umbrella Academy's main timeline.

Sure, Vanya is a hurt child lashing out, and this is a world of unique powers, but the fact remains that she was ready to kill her entire family. Similar to The Ring's lovely and cheerful Samara Morgan, Vanya had trouble controlling her powers at a young age — but as it's made clear by a Reddit user, she killed without any remorse, even as a child.

Reddit user u/Darth_Hufflepuff points out that sympathy is given to Vanya in spades, even as she went into blackout rage mode, tried to kill everyone, and ended up getting badly hurt (her power to convert sound into energy relies on her ability to hear, and a gun was discharged near her ear, possibly leaving her deaf and powerless). However, her madness wasn't a sole occurrence. After all, in flashbacks, we see Vanya killing her nannies because they told her simple commands, such as to eat her breakfast. Sure, her family, especially her adoptive father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, treats her poorly — but many people are treated poorly without resorting to wanton murder.

Vanya didn't understand her powers as a girl, which one might imagine could be frustrating. Children don't fully understand death or grasp empathy. But her siblings also had deadly abilities — everyone at the academy had superpowers — yet her siblings didn't kill their nannies (at least not that we know of).

We can understand what Vanya went through; she was raised by an unloving adoptive father who exploited his children and treated her differently than her siblings, for starters But how she handles her problems is, to say the least, questionable. Killing your nanny? Not cool, Vanya. Fast forward to the end of the first season, and Vanya becomes the ultimate villain — the "White Violin" — and tries to, unintentionally or not, force the apocalypse.

Not everyone reacts the same to childhood trauma, but Vanya handled her issues worse than most. She was already damaged before Leonard Peabody/Harold Jenkins, her love interest and master manipulator, entered her life. Vanya's father put her on drugs at a young age to suppress her powers and lead her to believe she's different from everyone else — ordinary. This betrayal and manipulation backfired, to put it mildly. It'll be interesting to see if the show's writers give Vanya redemption in The Umbrella Academy season 2, because she sure could use some of that.