The 2019 Mystery That Needs To Be Solved In Umbrella Academy Season 3

Spoilers follow for the first two seasons of The Umbrella Academy

The first season of the Umbrella Academy on Netflix introduced a group of seven children who were adopted by Reginald Hargreeves, a billionaire with a wealth of secrets to match his fortune. The Hargreeves children were all born at the exact same time in 1989. They also happen to have superpowers. Reginald raised them to be part of a superhero team known as the Umbrella Academy, but, well, that didn't really work out. The family as a unit went defunct after one of the brothers, Ben, died and another, Five, accidentally time-traveled to the future.

That first season is about the Hargreeves children getting back together following the death of their adopted father, just in time to try to stop the apocalypse. When they fail to save the world, Five takes them on a time jump to the past, leading into season 2. Each of the Hargreeves siblings lands at a different point in the 1960s, but they end up finding each other in 1963. Unfortunately, their time jump has disrupted the fabric of the universe and is about to cause another apocalypse that's somehow related to the Kennedy assassination. This time around, the siblings succeed in their endeavors and make a triumphant return to their own time — but the season ends on a serious cliffhanger.

It's clear almost immediately that the 2019 where the siblings find themselves isn't the same timeline they left at the end of season 1, and it clearly isn't the timeline from when the story began. This is a whole new world. We know this because Five picks up a newspaper that reveals it's April 2, 2019 — the day after the first season's apocalypse.

The Umbrella Academy emerges from their time jump into their father's opulent mansion. There's only one problem: the Academy as they know it doesn't seem to exist anymore. Things in the house have changed — there's a picture of Ben over the mantle, and Reginald — whose death kicked off the whole series — is alive, kicking, and waiting for them. He informs the siblings that it's not their home, not in this timeline. There is no Umbrella Academy here. "This is the Sparrow Academy," Reginald explains. Enter: a new group of kids, led be a now-alive Ben.

Now, we don't know where we are or what universe we're in. What happened to the Umbrella Academy, and did it ever even exist in this timeline? Did the Hargreeves accidentally cross into some bizarro dimension? How does the Sparrow Academy differ from the Hargreeves we've come to know, and what past actions led to this dramatic shift? The Umbrella Academy season 3 has plenty of questions to answer, and there's sure to be enough twists and turns to keep us guessing until it does.