How The Umbrella Academy's Powers Work Together

Contains spoilers for Netflix's The Umbrella Academy season 2

The second season of The Umbrella Academy is every bit as big a thrill ride as the first one, and then some. At the end of season 1, the most powerful member of the Hargreeves family, Vanya (Ellen Page), causes the apocalypse by destroying the moon, and the time-and-space-hopping Five (Aidan Gallagher) rescues his siblings by taking them to the past. Of course, something goes wrong, and the Umbrella Academy finds itself scattered across the early 1960s in Dallas, Texas. What's more, the apocalypse has followed them, and the world's now set to end on November 26, 1963.

As each sibling makes their own way through the early 1960s in Dallas, Texas, new and returning characters enter the equation, and the stakes keep rising higher and higher. Fortunately, the Hargreeves aren't quite as ill-equipped to deal with the situation as they were in the previous season. Though there's still plenty of bickering and bad blood between the adopted siblings, astute viewers have noticed that the Umbrella Academy now seems to be quite a bit better at using their powers ... through the simple magic of cooperation. Here's how The Umbrella Academy's powers work together.

In the opening scenes of The Umbrella Academy season 2, we witness a team of Hargreeves who are so uncharacteristically competent that they wouldn't look out of place in a more traditional superhero movie. In their ultimately futile fight against the 1963 apocalypse, the team tears through a strong Soviet invading force, dressed in color-coordinated black outfits and acting as a cohesive unit. In just over a minute, Vanya stops a tank shell mid-air, Klaus (Robert Sheehan) unleashes a squad of dead soldiers (and some very angry lady ghosts) as Luther (Tom Hopper) shields him from a bazooka strike, and the ghostly Ben (Justin H. Min) puts his tentacle abomination powers to good use. Meanwhile, Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) uses her rumor power to literally blow some minds, and Diego (David Castañeda) demonstrates why shooting bullets at a man whose superpower is curving trajectories is a horrible idea. Perhaps most impressively, our viewpoint character in the scene is Five, a grizzled, time-traveling assassin in the body of a tween. Season 1 established that Five is a brutal and well-trained warrior himself, and his sheer bewilderment in the face of the situation truly sells his adopted siblings' newfound abilities as a tight combat unit.   

While this is a neat way to reintroduce the characters and their powers to the viewer, The Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman tells Bustle that there's a lot more to the Hargreeves' skillful use of powers. According to him, the Umbrella Academy members are merely starting to find out that "their powers are stronger when they're actually together as a team."

One of the reasons the Hargreeves are more efficient with their powers in The Umbrella Academy season 2 is the simple fact that they're still learning to use them. "All their powers are evolving now," Steve Blackman says. "They never finished their training with [their] dad. They left when when they were adolescents and went their own way." 

We already saw hints of power development during season 1, when Vanya's suppressed energy powers reawakened and Five discovered his (unfortunately rather unreliable) time-jumping abilities. Examples of such developments are sprinkled liberally throughout the season 2. In the opening scene alone, Vanya, Diego, and Klaus all demonstrate an previously unseen amount of control and precision. Vanya also discovers a completely new side to her usually destructive powers when she revives and accidentally empowers young Harlan (Justin Paul Kelly). Even the deceased Ben demonstrates more ability to possess people and interact with the corporeal world than we've previously seen. 

Seeing as the siblings have such untapped potential for power upgrades, and that they have now discovered the benefits of teamwork, there's no telling how mighty the Umbrella Academy will be in the future. Of course, chances are they'll need every last drop of those powers. Thanks to the emergence of Lila (Ritu Arya) and her power-mimicking abilities, we now know that there are other superpowered October 1, 1989 babies out there ... and who knows how powerful they will be?