Fridge / The Umbrella Academy (2019)

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Fridge Brilliance

Season 1

• In the first episode, when Five falls through the portal and returns to his family, Klaus asks, “Does anyone else see a little Number Five, or is that just me?" On first watch, one might not think anything of it, until you remember Klaus can see the dead. He's genuinely asking if the others can see Five, because if they can't, it means Five would have died shortly after he disappeared.
• Why is Ben's hood covering his face for the first episode? Because Klaus is still stoned, which impedes his powers. Ben's hood moves further back as Klaus has to stop binging, and finally we can see his face when Klaus's level of drug/alcohol use goes lower and lower. The topper is him actually being able to physically affect things when Klaus is totally sober.
• It makes sense that the others wouldn't believe Klaus when he said that he was able to contact Ben and Reginald in the afterlife since he's been on drugs for years to inhibit his abilities, hasn't successfully used his powers since he came back to the academy, and is generally messing around with them instead of being helpful. After all, who would believe that just two days of being off of drugs that you've been taking for years would suddenly let your powers be useful again?
• In the flashbacks during episode one, when Reginald is monitoring the children as they sleep, the activity coming from Viktor is higher than his siblings, foreshadowing his greater power.
• The great irony of "The Day that Wasn't" is that, had that timeline not been retconned by Five time-traveling to the morning, the siblings would have all been in a better headspace to confront their situations and possibly stop the end of the world. Viktor finds out that Reginald knew about his powers and had them suppressed when Allison isn't around for him to attack. Because Luther's off with Allison, he doesn't lock Viktor in a cell because he doesn't attack Allison. In addition, Klaus sobers up enough to contact Dave, and Grace is about to confess one of Reginald's secrets to Diego in a peaceful moment.
• When Five retcons Wednesday's events out of existence and starts the day over, why do Hazel and Cha-Cha still receive orders to kill each other, if Five is no longer at Commission headquarters? Because the headquarters are located in 1955. Everything he did during that day can't be retconned by a jump back to Wednesday morning, because in 2019, they're in the past.
• If Klaus was so horrified by the sight of Viktor locked in the soundproofed room, why didn't he try harder to let him out? Pay attention to the look on his face in the scene following, where he's trying to play pat-a-cake with Ben and make him corporeal. That look of determination makes it clear he's going to head back down to the basement and give freeing Viktor another try once he has backup.
• Ultimately, both The Academy and The Commission suffer serious setbacks due to their failure to recognize signs that members were seriously disaffected, and more importantly failing to properly address it. This sort of thing is a pretty common source of problems for Real Life organizations. In both cases, attempts to deal with this make everything worse due to Poor Communication Kills being in full effect.
• How is Allison able to get the drop on Viktor during the climax? Viktor's powers are focused around his sense of hearing, and he previously muted Allison. He couldn't hear his sister approaching while playing his violin, and Allison approached him from behind while he was focused on his other siblings in front of him.
  • On the subject of Allison's powers, with her powers, Allison was the most poorly equipped to threaten Viktor, since Viktor's powers are sound-based like hers, but Allison's powers require her to give a preemptive announcement. There was pretty much no other possible outcome to trying to Rumor him.
  • Not only was it a bad match-up but Viktor was one of the worst people to try it on. He not only is well aware of Allison's power and how it works, but Viktor's own abilities are extremely quick on the draw. Which means that when Allison begins the trigger phrase of "I heard a rumor" that Viktor knows what is about to happen and can stop it. Compounding that - Viktor himself repeatedly shows throughout the season that his ability is very instinctual to use and that he himself defaults to being extremely aggressive with his powers. So not only is Allison attempting to use her power on someone that knows how it works, has had it done on them before, but also with the quickness to stop her and the personality to do so.
• The Handler mocks Hazel by saying she thought he was the smart one when he decides to turn on her in the end. Hazel's intelligence is actually the cause of a lot of problems for The Handler, since it causes him to second-guess his actions early on and not give the Handler or Cha Cha a chance to fight back in the end. The Handler is dead before she has a chance to finish monologuing.
• Luther and Viktor are both not so different in at least one aspect: Their father effectively subjected them both to Solitary Confinement. Where Viktor was locked in a sound-proofed cell, Luther was sent to the moon for four years. For all intents and purposes, a space capsule surrounded by vacuum is a sound-proof chamber with no hope for visitors. And while Viktor was locked in there ostensibly for everyone's protection, it seems that Luther was sent to the moon purely so Reginald wouldn't have to deal with him. Klaus falls into this category as well due to his experiences in the mausoleum, though his experience is much closer to Viktor's than to Luther's, and it was for the opposite reason as Viktor (to amplify his powers rather than restrain them).
• Viktor found little success as a violinist not necessarily because of a lack of talent. His medication was meant to dampen his emotions which would have an effect on his playing. He might be technically proficient but with a very flat emotional landscape, Viktor would have had a hard time summoning that creative spark that marks true mastery of an art form. Thus, when his medication starts wearing off, he suddenly summons up enough talent to make first chair in one audition.
  • It's also possible that, because Allison's rumour convinced him he's "ordinary," Viktor has a mental block that prohibits him from excelling at any creative pursuit, whether it's music or writing books. Only tapping into his powers is enough to remove the block.
• In the original timeline Luther is holding the fake eye with what appears to be the person's eye lid around it. Since Viktor's powers are connected to his emotions it's possible that in the original timeline one of Luther's last actions were to attack Leonard thus causing Viktor to lash out and bring down the academy.
  • Especially as Leonard was using Viktor to attack the Umbrella Academy so he would cajole him into going down there just to pick a fight.
• The baby in the prologue is heavily implied to be Viktor, not only because of the Russian name, but in the scene where Hargreeves came to buy the baby, the lights are flickering violently in line with Viktor's powers. This is seemingly confirmed in episode 208, where Viktor is being interrogated and hallucinates a dinner scene with his family. After the first bite, he has flashes of memory, the first few of which are from the first scene of season one. Strange that he’d remember his own birth, though.
• Viktor's powers are again foreshadowed in episode 1 during Luther and Diego’s brawl at Hargreeves’ funeral: Viktor shouted “No!” after Diego threw his knife at Luther and the knife only grazed Luther’s arm which visibly surprised Diego. Viktor unconsciously interfered with Diego’s planned trajectory for the knife.
  • Not only that but there's a sound cue in that moment that comes back when Viktor uses his powers later.
• In the fourth episode Ben says this is the most sober Klaus has been since he was a teenager, after he's been without taking any drugs for only about a day. But what about all the times Klaus was in rehab? Well, in rehab a person can be prescribed other medications to mitigate withdrawal symptoms. The effects these have on Klaus's brain could also work to block his power. When he's taken off his medication in rehab, he would begin reacting to things that are not there as far as anyone else can tell, which would obviously be considered a bad sign. Tests would show he's not taking something he's managed to smuggle in, so that would likely be considered some kind of extreme and unusual withdrawal symptom and he's put back on the meds.
• Why does Reginald drug and neutralize Viktor? He's the defiant one. It's not his ability to destroy or kill that got him to lock him up - but that he doesn't listen to him. Even through the drugs he wrote a Tell-All book about his family, and the incident that sparked him to back off for the day? Viktor destroyed all of the glass cups at once probably because being four he didn't want to train and had realized that Rehinald would keep him training until all was destroyed. A lot of things come back to this honestly - including his placement at the table. A square table like that has the head of the table at either end - and in formal circumstances the female host will take the other end.
• Viktor and Pogo talk about his leaving a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich for Five every evening after he vanished, in case he comes back in the middle of the night and is hungry. Five comes back in the middle of the night and the first thing he does is go to the kitchen and make himself a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich.
• As an adult Klaus appears to have the largest bedroom, but a closer look reveals the room to be a combination of his and Viktor's bedrooms with the partition removed. In the flashback where Klaus is setting the dresser drawer on fire, his room appears to be close in size to Viktor's room, which is next to his.
• In Episode 5, Ben does not appear until the ice cream truck ambush. This is obviously not because Klaus had been drinking and took drugs earlier, since of course Ben has always been around regardless of Klaus' (lack of) sobriety. Earlier, Five had guessed that Klaus had time-traveled as Klaus had exhibited all of the signs accordingly. The time-travel had likely temporarily affected Klaus' power as well.
• At the start of the family meeting in Episode 6, Ben is present with Klaus, and later he walks off and vanishes during Klaus' heartfelt conversation with Diego in the attic. After the reset of the timeline by Five, Ben is absent (as the camera emphasizes by showing the prominent empty space next to Klaus during the family meeting) and is not seen again until Klaus is searching for Luther - around the same time of the retcon from before. Therefore, Ben was likely not affected by the timeline reset and in fact bears the memories of the original day that wasn't.
• Throughout the first season, Viktor relies on a taxicab for transportation until the finale, when he takes the bus to the theater. Viktor spends almost the entire episode Drunk with Power, with his only two lines — twice to Pogo, "Did you know?" — spoken when he briefly returns to normal to confront him. As his dark-sided power seems to prevent him from communicating, he cannot call the cab company, whereas one does not have to speak to a bus driver unless they need a transfer, which is obviously not the case with Viktor.

Season 2

• While a minor detail, a reason that Diego looks so shaggy is because it's likely the staff is aware of his penchant for sharp things, and are too scared to let him be near anything sharp or give him anything. Unfortunately, he does manage to steal the pen and get out.
• When Five time travels to kill the board in the 80s, it seems like the apocalypse never happened as everything seems similar to the original timeline. When one thinks more deeply about it one can realise that Five probably stopped the apocalypse by leaving, without him Viktor and Sissy wouldn't try to run away and would never be arrested. This would mean Viktor isn't mistaken for a Russian and doesn't cause JFK to stay alive. Five accidentally stopped the apocalypse by leaving and just never realised.
• A subtle indication that Viktor has been deliberately suppressing his memories as the FBI agent claims is that Ben shows up as an adult in his hallucination like the other siblings that aren't Five. The only time Viktor would've ever seen Ben as an adult in either season is when Klaus manifests Ben to fight off Commission goons in season 1.
  • The other indicator in Viktor's hallucination is robot Grace being present and Viktor asking if Grace is okay. There was no indication that Viktor knew Grace had been restored in the first season, only that Grace's hardware had seemingly been degrading; based on Grace's damaged appearance in the hallucination, Viktor recalls this.
• When Diego clarifies that Lila isn't their biological sibling, the rest of The Umbrella Academy treats it as a "Duh" moment, but Diego just wants to make sure that he didn't have sex with his sister. Granted, it's still a "Duh" moment.
• The reveal that Diego can manipulate trajectory, not improbable aim, the Commission goons repeated failing to shoot any of the Hargreeves siblings suddenly makes a lot more sense. Diego could have been subconsciously causing the bullets to miss them.
• Throughout season 2 are sparrows scattered everywhere; embroidered on Pogo's suit, as a wooden figurine, on candy wrappers... seems like a quirk until the last couple of seconds when the The Sparrow Academy shows up and has replaced The Umbrella Academy.
• While selling Klaus paint, Dave says latrine instead of bathroom because that's the term used in the military, which makes sense consider that his father, his uncle and his grandfather are veterans.
• When Klaus complains that his cult is going to be mad at him for getting the date wrong for the end of the world, it comes off as a sarcastic one-liner. Obviously, they'd all be dead, Klaus included. However, his power to commune with the dead gives him enough experience to know what to expect from a disgruntled ghost, and he temporarily passed into the afterlife in season one, meaning he has an idea of what to expect in the next life even if he chooses (as a ghost) to pass on. What he's really complaining about is, one way or another, he'll never get rid of them as they'll likely haunt him for lying about the end of the world.
• As Dave boards the bus to ship out during the finale, he is referred to as a Marine. However, he and Klaus had originally met while serving in the Army. Although Dave had enlisted a few days earlier than he was originally supposed to, Klaus was still ultimately likely successful in saving Dave's life.
• While many fans criticize Klaus' character regression this season, it actually makes sense. In Season 1, it was his love for Dave that motivated him to get sober just so he could see him again and brought out his most vulnerable side. So, when he's violently rejected by Dave and finds out that he not only failed to stop him from enlisting but actually sped up the process, of course he'd fall back to his old coping mechanisms, namely Drowning His Sorrows and retreating to his Sad Clown Stepford Smiler act from the beginning of Season 1.
• While it's been well-established that drugs mitigate the siblings' powers, alcohol does not. A drunken Luther is still able to knock Klaus across the room during the first season; and despite falling off the wagon on alcohol the second season, Klaus can still communicate with and be possessed by Ben, whose head remains uncovered.
  • With that in mind, Diego is the only sibling not seen consuming any alcohol the first two seasons. While in the United States a person might still be legally able to drive after only one serving of alcohol, they are still impaired, albeit slightly. Since Diego's power is telekinetic, one drink could alter his knife-throwing accuracy and cause him to miss his target.
• How did Viktor know his first and last name, while know nothing other about himself before meeting his siblings? Viktor has never been seen carrying a purse/handbag, so his wallet with ID was likely placed in the pocket of whatever he was wearing at any given day; as such, it would have been pocketed in his concert tuxedo outfit. Sissy obviously took Viktor to a doctor/ER immediately after the car accident, and Viktor would have been allowed privacy to change into a medical gown, allowing Viktor to find a wallet with his future ID. The fact that Viktor knew that LGBTQ rights and autism were better known in today's society indicates that he realized he was from such that time accordingly.
• Lila is wearing Vans that were invented in the 70s.
• Lila is trying to give Five a High Five, which was invented in the 70s.
• Prior to The Reveal that Lila is the Handler's adopted daughter, and later, that she was part of the Bizarre Baby Boom, there are hints that lead up to these. She tells Diego that she learned how to fight from her mother, and later, that her parents were killed in a "home invasion"; the latter words weren't used in the 60s. Her parents were killed in 1993, and Lila appeared to be four years old, same as the Umbrella Academy siblings. Also, a Rewatch Bonus of Episode 5 shows that Lila is mimicking Five's power.

Season 3

• That Ben is again called Ben is not a coincidence. Since Grace helped name the children, and while humans are growing into somebody else with different experiences, a robot would be programmed the same, so it makes sense she would pick out the same name.
• Luther courts Sloane with outdated means, like a mixed tape. But that's the point, Luther is very inexperienced with dating, was on the moon in the 2010s and only knows how through movies he watched in the 90s and early 2000s.
  • It also makes sense The Obsidian Hotel has tapes lying around for him to borrow.
• When Klaus sees Alive!Ben for the first time, he compliments his "sexy scar" and tries to hug him, which makes Ben so angry, even his own siblings ask him if it is necessary to act like that. Later, he drunkenly hooks up with Klaus, so he obviously had his own issues with his sexuality he projected onto Klaus.
• During the fight with The Sparrows Diego asks repeatedly "Who's your Daddy?!" Turns out, he is the daddy of Lila's child.
• There are hints that Stanley is not raised by Lila. For example, he doesn't speak any other language than English, he doesn't know what a Molotov Cocktail is, and he has no idea how to get rid of a dead body. All these things he would automatically pick up as her son.
• Although The Reveal that Lila is pregnant with Diego’s child doesn’t come until nearly the end of Episode 7, a hint comes in the previous scene that she is in, where the Umbrellas and the remaining Sparrows celebrate with champagne; Lila is the only one not drinking.
• The Commission briefcases having almost identical time travel effects as Five's jumps in time make sense once it's revealed that future Five is the founder; he oversaw the creation of time travel machines based on his own powers.
• Prior to The Reveal that Allison cut a deal with Sir Reginald, there are a couple of hints leading up to this. Along with Allison's fake apologies to Luther and Viktor, Sir Reginald tells Viktor he heard him and Allison arguing the night before. However, the entire argument took place while Reginald was giving his wedding speech.
• It seems a little hard to believe that Klaus could have died 56 times in his life and never notice. However most of his deaths were likely because of: Reginald's experiments when Klaus was young and didn't understand the severity, the result of an overdose in which paramedics would tell him it was a close call, or happened when Klaus was drunk or high and wouldn't fully recall the situation and thus assume that it must not have been as bad as it seemed. 56 is still a lot but it's not as surprisingly when you remember that Klaus overdosed immediately after getting out of rehab.
• Of course the siblings would accept Viktor's transition with open arms. For all his many faults, Reginald wasn't a bigot.
  • He's also an alien - Even if he was bigoted, the way in which his bigotry manifested would likely be entirely different from the way bigotry manifests in human cultures. For all we know, his species might not even have a concept of gender, and his choice to present himself as a "man" is as much an affectation as his choice to present himself as a human.
  • Also also, Klaus is trans as well. Robert Sheehan stated Klaus isn't strictly identifying as male - Klaus is either non-binary or gender fluid. The siblings already knew the drill.
• Diego asks Viktor if he feels loved by his siblings after coming out as transgender. This seems like a throwaway-line to deter Luther from his party-plans. But the first apocalypse was induced by Viktor feeling unwanted by his family - so it probably was also a way to figure out if Viktor was upset enough to split the moon again.
  • This also means the siblings, and especially Diego and Viktor, finally talk with each other instead of swallowing their feelings till somebody breaks down in the worst way possible.
• Allison's fake apology to Viktor is very convincing, enough to fool him. Of course, she's an actress.
• Reginald's betrayal of Klaus might seem wasteful considering all the effort he went to just to train the poor guy's immortality - and also considering how useful he could be in the Hotel Oblivion. However, Reginald has already murdered Luther just to motivate the merged academies a little further, and Klaus still has the ability to commune with the dead: if he ever decided to make Luther corporeal - either at Sloane's prompting or in a fight - Luther would reveal everything. So, in order to keep the secret and maintain the group's cohesion under Reginald's command, Klaus had to go as well, preferably by a method that'd guarantee no more resurrections.
• There are examples which prove that Lila's birth mother survived Harlan's accidental killing of the other mothers. Lila arrived in Berlin over a month after the event and was able to successfully use the briefcase for the time-travel to 2019. Furthermore, Harlan never saw Lila anytime that she was on the farm in 1963.
  • The unborn child also would not have caused the Grandfather Paradox, because Lila and Diego conceived the child in 1963 — a timeline in which Diego's existence is historically accurate.
• As Five is about to enter the Mothers of Agony bar in Episode 5, a car in the background in the parking lot is shown with the license plate reading, OCT 376; this applies to both of the 2019 timelines:
  • October 37+6=43: the original number of females subjected to the Bizarre Baby Boom in the Umbrella timeline.
  • October 3+7+6=16: the number of women who gave birth in the Sparrow timeline.
• There has been some speculation that Viktor could have kept his original name when he transitioned, as Vanya is a male name in Russian. However, along with being true to himself, Viktor's overall behavior has essentially done a 180° turn by then. As "Vanya" growing up and during the first season, he was an outcast in the family due to his perceived lack of powers, which carried on in adulthood as he seemingly had no friends and had never been in a serious relationship; his being on anti-anxiety medication for 25 years greatly contributed to his apathy. The only two siblings who seemed to relatively accept him had disappeared from the timeline or was killed. Then he got involved with a psychotic manipulative male who preyed on his insecurities as a means for his own plans for revenge against the other siblings. Leonard made Viktor believe that he truly loved him, prompting them to have sex for what is perceived to be Viktor's first time. Then Viktor was forced off of his meds cold-turkey, causing him to become highly emotionally unstable and lack control of his powers, killing two people, and accidentally slashing Allison's throat. While he did have every intention to kill Leonard, this was probably something that he might not have done during the third season based on the initial fight with the Sparrows, and the fact that he is much better able to read people and wouldn't have gotten involved with someone like that in the first place. Then, of course, Luther's action sent Viktor over the edge, causing him to be Drunk with Power, killing Pogo and unknowingly killing Grace, and flipping a car only because the driver called him a bitch, and ultimately causing the apocalypse, and later nearly causing 1963 doomsday. By the third season, he is one of the most rational of the siblings, and by the time of his transition, at least, everyone has forgiven him as he wasn't completely at fault. He only exerts his power when necessary, and during Allison's later The Reason You Suck speech, the worst that Viktor does is punch her in the face. Viktor wants to fully separate himself from his former identity.

Fridge Horror

Season 1

• The scene in episode 9 where Viktor is locked in a soundproof bunker is already heartbreaking, but Klaus' horrified expression and his insistence on letting him go adds a whole new layer of awful to the situation when you realize that he probably understands exactly what he's going through and is being reminded of his own childhood trauma of being locked in the mausoleum for hours.
• Diego being afraid of needles could be from when Reginald forced him and his siblings to get tattoos. As a child, Diego was the one trying his hardest to seem strong while getting his tattoo, but the experience likely traumatized him.
• When Klaus is talking to the ghosts of Hazel and Cha-Cha's victims, a lot of them show visible cuts or markings of how they died. But whenever Klaus sees Ben, he doesn't seem to have anything to show how he died, which only makes his death all the more mysterious and terrifying.
• So many of Klaus' lines sound funny at first and then depressing upon closer inspection.
  • "The longest I've been with someone was, I don't know, three weeks. And that's only because I was so tired of looking for a place to sleep," paints a very harsh image of what his life has been like the past years, but its casual delivery paired with the scene's abrupt and comedic ending make it sound a lot lighter than it is.
  • Another particularly worrisome line he gives is mentioning that he doesn't remember his first time. He could have meant that it was nothing special to him and he just doesn't remember which of his escapades was his first or, horrifyingly, that he was not in a state of mind to consent to it happening.
    • Or his constant drug abuse since he was a teenager affected his brain and he has memory loss.
• Despite the horrific abuse Klaus and all his siblings experienced as a child, the thought of what would have happened to Klaus had he not been taken by someone who knew he had powers is also pretty chilling. His siblings' powers are all fairly easy to prove, or otherwise harmless – someone like Diego thinking he could control thrown objects, for example, is a strange idiosyncrasy, but not alarming in the grand scheme of things. But little Klaus telling his parent that he was seeing people and hearing voices would probably have landed him on a powerful antipsychotic, and with the failure of other drugs to control his powers, one has to wonder how long that'd hold out until he ended up long-term in a mental hospital, convinced he was perpetually hallucinating.
• We get so used to seeing Number 5 as a grown man trapped in a child's body that it's easy to forget he was actually thirteen when he became stuck in a post apocalyptic world completely alone. If that's not bad enough for you, then there's also the fact that he was also thirteen when he came across the dead bodies of four of his siblings lying under the remainder of his home.
• The scene in which Five is found drunk at the library might seem funny at first; then it's revealed that Five was actually living in the ruins of the library during the post-apocalyptic future. Taking into the account that he only seems to use his room at the academy as a temporary base of operations, the library might very well be the only place Five can feel safe...
• Reginald had Viktor's cell upgraded between his stay when he was five and his confinement now, completely soundproofing the room so that he can't harness sound to boost his power. The longer Viktor stays, the more he breaks down. The silence of anechoic chambers makes people freak out.^note In the world's quietest anechoic chamber, the record for any person staying in there is 45 minutes In the dead silence of the room, a person's ears adjust and can hear the body's internal organs functioning. At the apex of Viktor's torment, the sound of his heartbeat is very loud; that's the sound he harnessed to blow the doors off.
• The scene in the first episode of everyone dancing to 'I Think We're Alone Now' is both funny and heart-warming and helps set up the characters' personalities, but it also provides a dark bit of foreshadowing. Part of the song's refrain goes: "I think we're alone now, the beating of our hearts is the only sound". Now remember how Viktor eventually breaks out of his prison.
• The scene where Diego shuts Grace down is heart-breaking enough before you remember he's a vigilante who jumps on 911 calls to try and save innocents by any means necessary. When we first see him do this, he's successful and the family escapes safely—but there had to have been some instances where the bad guys won and good people died. How many times has Diego looked into the eyes of a dying victim and said "It's gonna be okay"?
• When Klaus confronts Reginald, he mentions being locked in a mausoleum when he was 13. The actor for that flashback, though, is credited as “Klaus, age 8.” This could be a continuity error...or it could be the result of Reginald gaslighting Klaus into believing the first mausoleum incident happened when he was much older than he actually was.
  • Alternatively, it could imply that Reginald did this to him more than once.
  • In the beginning of the same episode ("The Day That Was"), as Leonard fishes Reginald's journal from the garbage, he opens it to an entry dated June 16, 2001 depicting Reginald locking Klaus in the mausoleum overnight; obviously, Klaus was only eleven years old at the time.
• In the montage about Viktor's book, we see Five reading it in the future. While the montage is pretty funny, there's also the fact that Five vanished when he was thirteen. That means this book—which describes the siblings as "never a real family" and made Diego so angry that he says Viktor shouldn't even be at the funeral—was his last connection to his siblings. He doesn't seem to have taken it personally, but it's not exactly a happy family narrative to guide an isolated teenager through growing up in the post-apocalypse. Also, since Ben was still alive when he left, but dies sometime before the main action is set, Five would not have found his body in the rubble, so 1) he might have been holding out hope for Ben's survival, 2) the book is probably how he found out Ben died.
• Although Luther's time on the Moon has become a running joke among fans, some easy-to-miss details paint a much darker picture. One of the packets Luther sent down, for instance, bears the words "REMINDER: PLEASE SEND MORE FOOD" on the label, implying Reginald had not been the most diligent about providing for his son's basic needs despite knowing Luther was entirely dependent on him. And since solitary confinement can have devastating effects on the psyche, the fact he spent four years with very little human contact places his aloofness and aggression toward his siblings in a far more tragic context.
• It appears being under the influence of any psychoactive chemicals will block superpowers, as Viktor was on, by all indications, just regular antidepressants. What if such a person did have mental health problems that are greatly helped by medication? Or even other kind of health problems where they regularly take medication that has some mild side effect on the brain. Imagine having to weigh your own wellbeing against the ability to help people like that.
• As seen in the first couple of episodes, Diego keeps a police radio for his vigilanté work, but that is likely not his only reason for doing so. Based on their interactions, Diego and Klaus were the only living siblings who remained in contact before the funeral, and it is likely as such that Diego had to rescue Klaus from a bad drug deal or similar brutal actions against him on multiple occasions. How many times did Diego hear on the police radio about an overdose or a dead drug addict and think the worst? It is probably one of the reasons why Diego was so concerned that Klaus was quiet, and later lashed out at the veteran inside the VFW.
• When Diego brings up Klaus' accident resulting in eight glorious weeks of bliss, it is the only time that Diego refers to their mom as "Grace." This could be a scripting or actor error, or it could be Diego emotionally distancing himself; particularly since not only had he shut her down but then he lost Eudora, for which he blames himself as well.

Season 2

• While it's played off as comedic, Klaus seeing the dead Swede on Allison's couch and then nonchalantly rolling up his sleeves and asking if they were going to bury or burn him makes it sound like he's done this more than once. It's entirely possible that part of Reginald's Training from Hell including forcing his children to learn how to hide evidence, even human remains.
• Ray finding out Klaus is his alleged brother-in-law is a little terrifying when you consider his perspective and how Allison was when she arrived in the sixties. Two years ago, a woman shows up in Dallas with no ID, no money, no friends or family, and nowhere to go. She's lost and terrified and, even more horrifically, she has recently had her throat slashed. Even after the community takes her in and helps her, the most she gives about her backstory is that she has "family up north" with no other details. Now, after being unjustly arrested, Raymond strikes up a conversation with a man who seems visibly spaced-out, and turns out to be a cult leader who just arrived in town. Said cult leader then gets him released because he has "friends in high places", he gets very touchy with Ray and claims to be Allison's brother even though she's never mentioned having one, let alone a brother who's white. From that perspective it would be really easy to think that Allison escaped a cult and the leader tracked her down. Then, within days, the largest white man he's ever seen appears, at his address, also claiming to be Allison's brother. While the sheer discomfort of his interactions with Luther are Played for Laughs, Ray would have very legitimate reasons to feel intimidated here. After all, he's a black man, and a civil rights leader who's been thrown in jail on trumped-up charges, and repeatedly harassed by the police - there's no possible way he'd be truly comfortable having a large white guy that found his address in his home.
  • The most wanted news report adds another layer of horror to it. While Allison almost certainly gave Ray a rundown of each of her siblings and he would have enough first hand knowledge to recognize the bias in report (calling Allison a violent rioter), the accusations against the other siblings are much harsher. Now the brother who Ray has watched talk to thin air and have no reaction to a dead body is beyond a doubt a cult leader, the giant white boy who somehow found his address works for the mob, and the third brother he only briefly met after he miraculously appeared in Ray's house has been revealed to be an escaped psych ward patient that is now believed to be a Cuban spy. No to mention the other two siblings are believed to be a KGB terrorist and a child they took hostage. Even with what Allison told him, seeing them labelled as such (with some of the accusations being true), would be terrifying. The other members of their movement who had no context for what's been happening would no doubt be horrified and have little reason to think the bulk of what the report claimed was anything but accurate.
• Although it's Played for Laughs throughout the season, it's still messed up that Klaus convinced hundreds of people to abandon their former lives to join his cult, like Jill, who gave up a scholarship in Berkeley just to follow him, and Keechie, who had a law practice. It makes you think how many lives Klaus screwed over in the sixties, either by accident or to fulfil his selfish need for attention, and how it affected the timeline - or how this may come back to bite them in the butt in season 3. Plus, there's the whole line where Jill tells Ben-in-Klaus'-body that Klaus had a threesome with her and Keechie a week ago. Considering that Klaus is their cult's leader and that he scammed them into thinking he's a wise prophet, the whole thing screams Questionable Consent on Klaus' part.
• At first glance, it's kinda sweet that Reginald modeled Grace after a former girlfriend of his... until you remember that he programmed Grace to be a subservient, Stepford Wife type homemaker (which is a stark contrast from the original woman, who's a scientist on pair with Reggie himself and who even leaves him after discovering all the shady stuff he's been involved in). Plus, he eventually turned Pogo into his personal man-servant.
• The Ben-possessing-Klaus scenes are also Played for Laughs, but it is disturbing as well to see the physical effects it has on Klaus. During the light supper Ben is inside Klaus for only approximately ten seconds, but that is enough time to incapacitate Klaus for the remainder of the evening; the siblings' assumption that he is seizing or overdosing adds some brief darkness to what is otherwise intended to be a funny scene. Then, of course, the following day Diego tells Ben to stay in Klaus' body as he needed "someone responsible behind the wheel"; we see the ultimate implications of that. While it may have been wrong for Klaus to lie about Ben, it is also somewhat understandable: had the others known about Ben and that he could possess Klaus, they likely would have wanted to talk to Ben as much as possible, which would pose as a serious health risk to Klaus.

Season 3

• If the numbering convention of weakest to strongest is true, and Sparrow Ben is now #2 instead of #6, then the Sparrow siblings a whole are much more powerful than the Umbrella siblings.
• Robot!Grace's existance in the altered timeline could be a hint that at least one of the Sparrows had the same Troubling Unchildlike Behavior of killing their nannies that Viktor displayed.
• Assuming Christopher was born in the same Bizarre Baby Boom as the other Hargreeves children, he has a human mother. That implies that either he was born as a normal human and had to watch himself slowly degenerate into his current limbless, eyeless, mouthless shape over time, or he was born in a form resembling his current one and his mother had to force a cube made of flesh through her birth canal.
• Klaus's immortality casts the events of the original apocalypse of season 1 in an incredibly depressing light: despite being capable of coming back from the dead, the dead Klaus that Five encountered after his first big time jump into the future remains very dead indeed. The final episode of season three demonstrates that once he becomes conscious of it, he can prevent himself from coming back; so, it follows that in this version of history, Klaus had the time and the inclination to realize the full extent of his powers, and could have returned from the dead if he'd wanted to... but after seeing his family and the entire human race killed in the apocalypse, he didn't want to come back.
• Back in season 1, Sir Reginald keeping Viktor in the Academy despite being depowered might have pointed to some kind of redeeming quality to his character - a parental impulse on his part, or maybe the intent to restore Viktor's powers in the event of some Godzilla Threshold. As of season 3, however, it's made abundantly clear that Reggie kept Viktor around because he didn't want to miss out on fuel for Project Oblivion.
  • This leads to another fridge horror. It may seem odd that the billionare Reginald adopted only 7 of the 43 children (16 in the Sparrow Universe), until we learn that it takes seven of them to fuel the Project Oblivion, meaning that once Reginald achieves his goal, all of them will be dead. So Reginald adopted seven superpowered children and emotionally abused them their entire lives in both universes not to raise superheroes, but just to kill them to create his own universe.
  • Even Reggie's reasons for making his adopted children into a superhero team are cast in a disturbing light. Assuming that his goal was always to use the Academies as fuel for Project Oblivion, the true purpose of them being pitted against criminals wasn't to benefit the public good, but to get them honed and ready to fight the guardians... which, come to think of it, might explain why the young Umbrella Academy are so casual about using lethal force against hopelessly-outmatched bank robbers.
• Other than when he connected to Viktor in Season 2, Harlan likely couldn't speak until the Bizarre Baby Boom, which also was the first time that he emitted orange powers. Although as a child he accidentally killed the rabbit with his blue powers, he didn't kill the bullies, indicating that like Viktor he learned how to control them, at least until he accidentally killed the 27 women.