The Umbrella Academy S4E3: The Squid and the Girl
Last week the Umbrellas went to small-town Maine, to find a missing woman named Jessica. Ben befriended her just in time to discover that the town was entirely populated by heavily-armed thugs working for Reg Hargreeves, the team’s estranged father. Just as his kids manage to pull off the rescue and get away, they’re ambushed by Jean and Gene, this season’s villains, who take Jessica away.
But we open this week on an 80s newscast. It’s a feel-good story about two fishermen who caught the largest squid ever discovered. But as the reporter is chatting with them, something starts moving inside the squid. They cut it open to find a young girl — a young Jessica, to be specific — who emerges and says only two words: “The Cleanse.”
The Keepers, Jean and Gene’s cult, the ones with theories about alternate timelines, spoke of a coming Cleanse. And standing in the background of the news report? Sir Reginald Hargreeves, who seems to have constructed an entire folksy small town just to keep Jennifer under surveillance. It’s been pretty safe to assume from the start these things were all connected, but we’re starting to see the edges of how.
As do the Umbrellas. But before they dust themselves off and get back into action, they make time for a little more family drama. Last week, Gene and Jean killed Klaus, and Allison (at everyone else’s urging) brought him back to life by giving him back his powers. He’s less than appreciative. In the original timeline, he became a drug addict to cope with seeing ghosts everywhere. After three years of sobriety, he feels like regaining his death-related powers are puttng him back on the same old road. And then the resentments come out. Allison’s had to pick him up over and over again and resents having to care for a neurotic grown man who’s been living in her basement. Klaus fires back that she loves having him around to feel superior to, after her husband left her (which we didn’t know about) and her career was in the toilet (which we did). He storms off.
And the rest of the family split up. Lila and Five follow up with the Keepers, with Diego in tow, as he’s suspicious of how close the two have become. Ben, fed up with the rest as ever, vows to track down Jennifer on his own, having felt a connection with her last week (he also has a glowing scar on his forearm which also seems to be connected to her). Which leaves Viktor, Allison, and Luther to confront dear old Dad.
While exploring the Keepers’ headquarters, Diego finds Jean & Gene’s files in the trash. They have a file on Jennifer, and it makes reference to both the Umbrella Academy, and the date in 2006 when Ben died. (The Ben the other Hargreeves grew up with died in an accident they refuse to elaborate on; the Ben with them now is from last season’s alternate timeline).
That currently-alive version of Ben is confronted by Sy (David Cross), the one who sent them to find Jennifer in the first place. He knows the two of them have some kind of connection, and urges Ben to use it and find her. And he sees her in flashes, and gets glimpses of the llama farm where two aggressively folksy kidnappers are holding her. They’re convinced that Jennifer can somehow bring about The Cleanse — destroying all the “false” timelines and leaving one “true” one. They show her their collection of artifacts from the other timelines… including the squid she was found in. The sight of it sends her into a panic.
But before we find out why, we get a reunion with Reginald. This isn’t the same abrasive, distant father who raised the Umbrellas in another timeline, but he’s the same old callous schemer. (Although he’s softened a bit by the presence of his wife, who he kept in stasis on the moon in the original timeline and based the Umbrellas’ robot mother on). He admits he set up the town around Jennifer, not to imprison her, but to keep the world safe from her. She’s more powerful than the other Umbrellas put together (which says a lot, given Viktor singlehandedly ended the world in the timeline the Umbrellas set out to prevent in season one).
Diego, Lila, and Five arrive with the news that Jennifer’s connected to Ben’s death, and the siblings realize none of them can actually remember how Ben died. They each just repeat a Manchurian Candidate-esque phrase about how Ben was the best of them and they failed him as a team. Their father brainwashed them into forgetting. This version of Reg isn’t the one who did that, but he might be able to reverse the process. (The one person who might remember is Klaus, who was in regular contact with Ben’s ghost for years after his death, which might explain why Klaus was sidelined for most of this episode.)
But we’ll have to wait until next time to see the family secrets unearthed. Last week’s episode was a thrilling adventure that worked from start to finish; this one’s mostly setup. But it’s intriguing setup. Trying to present a world-ending threat every season gets old quickly for a lot of shows, but Umbrella once again brings those stakes down to Earth by rooting it in the family dynamics that are the show’s heart.
Stray thoughts:
• The two squid fishermen in the cold open are such broadly-drawn hicks I’m not sure whether to be offended on behalf of fishermen or the viewers.
• Diego’s take on the Keepers: “Sex cult. Once you get to the top, it’s always a sex cult.”
• Klaus turning into a desperate junkie immediately after regaining his powers is too abrupt to work, but that might be a symptom of the season getting cut down from ten episodes to six. He gets a side story where a vengeful biker he owes drug money to kills Klaus, sees him immediately come back to life, and schemes to make money off Klaus’ powers. It doesn’t really connect with the rest of the episode or add much.
• We discover a bit more of Jean and Gene’s motivations. In the timeline they consider the “real” one, she teaches at Harvard and he’s a MacArthur fellow, instead of being kicked off the faculty at Golden Mesa Community College for their crazy theories.
• We also get this season’s obligatory dance number, but it’s Jean and Gene line dancing to Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves.” Frankly, they don’t have the moves the Umbrellas do.