Episode 3 of The Umbrella Academy opens five years ago. Vanya sees Umbrella Academy comic books in a pawn store window, along with a typewriter. She goes in and purchases the typewriter and writes her autobiography about life growing up in the Academy. All of her siblings read it, including the hurtful things she says about them. They were never a family, not really, and after Ben died they had no reason to stick together. The books was a success, at first, but like everything with Vanya, it turned out to be nothing special.
Grace
Allison shows Luther the tape of Mother visiting Hargreeves’s room the night he died. Luther thinks that she poisoned him. The two question Mom the next morning at breakfast. Though she remembers things like the time of the sunrise on the day that Dad died, she can’t recall visiting his room that evening.
Extra Ordinary
Vanya decides to visit Leonard’s woodworking shop. He lets her inside and shows her his real treasures beyond the restored antiques in the front. He has an uncanny skill for wood carving. Leonard carved a figurine of Vanya playing violin and gifts it to her. Leonard invite Vanya to dinner that night, and she accepts the invitation before Allison finds her and tells Vanya that she is needed at the Academy for a family meeting about Mother.
Stakeout
Five sneaks out of the house and runs into Klaus outside, going through the dumpster looking for the contents of Hargreeves’s box. Five steals a van for a stakeout on the medical prosthesis company. Luther finds Five and tells him he’s needed at home for a family meeting. Luther knew where to find Five because Klaus stowed away in the back of the van. Luther tells Five it’s important, but Five counters that Luther has no idea what’s important right now.
Five stays instead of going to the meeting. Throughout the day, he carries on a conversation with Dolores the mannequin, suggesting that time travel might really have messed with his head. That evening, Five spots the manager exchanging a duffel bag for a manila envelope with a nondescript car that pulls up in front of the building.
Beauty In The Mundane
Hazel and Cha Cha have had their pay docked because of the delay in finding and killing Five. Hazel is tired of the bureaucrats and the work. He’s decided that as long as they’re going to be here, he’s going to indulge in normal life and find beauty in the ordinary, like TV and donuts. Hazel and Cha Cha question Agnes at the donut shop about the boy who was in the shop the night of the shooting. While Agnes doesn’t know much, she does remember seeing the Umbrella Academy tattoo on Five’s forearm.
Mother
Luther and Allison show the family the video. Diego points out that Mom didn’t poison Dad, she just took his monocle, which Diego took from among her things and threw in the river? Why would he do that? Diego was protecting Mom from Luther’s suspicions. Diego bonded with Mom as a child because she was the only one to show him kindness. Mom was programmed both to be maternal but also for protection. If Hargreeves’s life was in danger, she would have intervened.
The group is split on what to do with Mom. It can’t have been easy on her being in the house with Dad after they all left. If she’s running down and malfunctioning, Luther suggests, then they should shut her off. Allison agrees. Diego and Vanya vote that they shouldn’t shut Mom down. Klaus votes with Diego and says that if Ben was here, he would too, though Ben tells Klaus he agrees with Luther. They decide to do nothing until Five returns and votes.
The Umbrella Academy
Hazel and Cha Cha find the Academy and break in. Though the closest they get to finding Five is seeing his painting on the wall, which lets them know they are in the right place, they do encounter and fight with Luther, Diego, Allison, and Vanya. Klaus has headphones on to drown out the dead spirits yelling at him and misses the shoot out. Mom continues sitting beside the paintings and cross-stitching through it all. Though the siblings are able to drive Hazel and Cha Cha away, things are changed by the invasion.
Diego tells Vanya that she is a liability to have around because she has no powers. Vanya leaves and goes to Leonard’s house because she doesn’t want to be alone and has nowhere else to turn. Luther has his shirt ripped away when an iron chandelier falls on him, revealing his hairy, chimp-like torso to the others. Diego asks Mom whether she heard the fighting and discovers that not only did she not hear the fighting, but that she has stitched into her own hand and hasn’t noticed. Struggling with sadness, Diego unzips Mom’s arm and shuts her down.
Back at the hotel, Cha Cha is mad that Hazel left and went for donuts. He figured that since the kid never arrived, they’d regroup back here. Cha Cha is mad that the attack turned up nothing of value. Hazel says that’s not true and shows her a bound Klaus in the trunk of the car.
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