bigger than Stranger Things season 1. The Umbrella Academy was later renewed for a second season, but an official release date hasn’t been revealed yet.
The Umbrella Academy follows the dysfunctional family of adopted siblings, the Hargreeves. All of them, the Umbrella Academy”. One of the Hargreeves children, however, grew up thinking she was ordinary, and wasn’t allowed to her siblings on their many visions: Number 7, a.k.a. Vanya.
The big twist in The Umbrella Academy season 1 was that Vanya wasn’t ordinary at all, and her powers were actually dangerous, which is why Reginald chose to medicate her and have Allison use her powers to make her believe there was nothing special about her. As it turns out, the series dropped a couple of clues to this revelation, but they are all very subtle.
Umbrella Academy: How It Foreshadowed Vanya’s Powers Twist
The Umbrella Academy hinted at Vanya’s twist from the beginning. Vanya’s powers are linked to her emotions, and has the ability to harness sound and convert it into energy, and can also manipulate the weather to an extent. In episode 1 of The Umbrella Academy, when Vanya finds out that her father died when she watches the news on a TV in a store, it starts raining. Not long after, when the camera pans over some of Reginald’s possessions, there’s a brief look at his notebook, which is open on a page about his observation of the kids’ sleeping patterns. The parts of the notes that can be read say “#4 - No activity this time”, “#6 - Seems to be crying in sleep”, and for Vanya, it says “Astonishing! Absolutely astonishing. Seems to exhibit real force and power”. This is later confirmed when Reginald is monitoring their brain activity while they sleep, and Vanya has more activity than the rest.
Another clue is when Five is in the post-apocalyptic future: the power lines are all bent, and when Vanya is off her medication and her powers are beginning to unleash, her emotions and powers do exactly that to the lamp posts (and, of course, it also starts to rain). These are all very subtle details that are easy to miss when watching The Umbrella Academy for the first time, and they also make the series more entertaining and interesting, and definitely make it worth rewatching a couple more times, as Vanya’s powers are not the only things foreshadowed throughout the first season.