Netflix binges: The Umbrella Academy season 1 recap

The Umbrella Academy season 1, episode 8: “I Heard A Rumor”

The Umbrella Academy ‘s latest episode gives us a look at Allison’s relationship with her daughter, which leads to some animated scenes as Allison tells Claire a story. Claire has a lot of interest in the Umbrella Academy, but we see Allison use her power on Claire to get her to go to sleep. We then hear a slew of other times she used her power on Claire.

Back in the present day, Allison makes her way to the Jenkins cabin. Leonard is in a hurry to get out of the hospital, but Vanya asks about the other men. Two are dead and one is in critical condition. You can see that she’s feeling some sort of guilt about it.

Klaus calls a family meeting while Luther is hung over and both Allison and Diego aren’t around. He tells Luther and Five that he conjured their father, but they don’t take him seriously at first. However, Pogo comes in and admits that he and Grace both helped their father commit suicide.

Leonard continues to push Vanya to use her powers and he wants to see if they can figure out how to control it. Allison finds herself stuck in traffic right by the crime scene. She talks her way into tagging along with a local cop so she can figure out what’s going on. Diego is still stuck in jail for a murder he didn’t commit, but Detective Beaman pays him a visit, giving him a way out.

In a quick flashback, we see that Reginald knew about Vanya’s powers and it’s likely that he suppressed them for fear of what she could do. We get another one where she shatters glasses and it cracks Reginald’s monocle. Leonard tells her that her emotions control her power and she’s curious as to how he’d know that, but she’s back to having no clue that he has Reginald’s book.

Diego, Five and Klaus find Luther and once he knows that Allison is in trouble, he’s back on board with helping. Allison finds out that the lone survivor of the “accident” was hired by Leonard to rough him up in front of Vanya. He’s been manipulating Vanya’s feelings from the moment he made an appointment to take violin lessons from her.

Cha-Cha made her way out of the motel and she’s dead set on tracking Hazel down. Agnes closed up her donut shop, but she left behind a map of the bird sanctuary that she and Hazel are going to.

We’re seeing way more of Vanya’s backstory in this episode. “I Heard a Rumor” gives us a deeper look at how she was treated as a kid, in ways that her siblings never knew about. Leonard disappears from the cabin and Vanya starts playing her violin in order to calm down, but it just activates her powers instead.

Allison shows up at the cabin while Vanya is still playing. She tells her that Leonard is actually Harold. Allison remembers the time when Reginald claimed that Vanya was sick and that’s why she had been isolated. They were so young that no one questioned it at the time, but Allison is putting the pieces together now. Allison was told to use her powers on Vanya to tell her that she thinks she’s just ordinary.

Vanya reacts with so much anger that when Allison tries to use her own powers, Vanya cuts her throat. We also see that Leonard killed the one remaining guy he had hired. The brothers arrive shortly after, but Allison is on the brink of death. This is a big blow to the family, especially Luther. It’s hard to lay all of the blame on Vanya since the guilt flows out of her as soon as it happens. Leonard is the one who is easy to hate for it because he just tricked her from day one.

With two episodes left, I have a ton of questions running through my mind. How will Leonard spin this to blame it on Allison instead of having Vanya own up to her actions? Will Vanya harm anyone else in the family? There’s a lot left to unfold before the day of the apocalypse arrives.