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itsthenovelteafactor · 3 years

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Vanya and the Phantom

I asked and y’all answered (special thanks to @schizoidwire and @the-aro-ace-arrow-ace and all the people who responded to my earlier post for encouraging me!), so it is time for how The Phantom of the Opera song introduction can be read as a look into Vanya’s self-narrative and also foreshadows future events in a really subtle and interesting way.

I’m channeling my inner Elliot and going into full conspiracy mode. This is gonna be a long one, y’all.

Part One: In Which I Expose Myself as a Former Theater Kid

So, for those who aren’t familiar with The Phantom of the Opera, it was originally a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux back in 1909. In 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber rewrote it as a musical. For purposes of my analysis here, I am just going to be discussing the musical because 1) the score used in the opening scene is from it and 2) I’ve never read the book. (If anyone out there has read the book and wants to weigh in, please do!)

It’s a very aesthetic show, and draws on a lot of gothic themes and imagery. The plot follows an opera house, and specifically a young chorus girl named Christine Daaé. I’m not going to explain the whole show plot in detail because wikipedia exists, but I will do a quick overview here and point out some things as they relate to things I’ll be discussing later. Also there will be a test after and it will NOT be multiple choice.

The show begins when the opera house is sold to new owners who 1) just want to make money and 2) do not respect the opera house’s resident ghost (who isn’t really a ghost, but we’ll get to that later.) When the Phantom makes his presence known, and freaks out the resident prima donna singer (who will be relevant later) Carlotta, who says she won’t sing under these conditions. It is then that Christine appears. She’s quiet and humble and has always lived in the background, but is incredibly talented. The woman who runs the chorus (also owner of the opera house’s resident braincell) suggests Christine sing the part. She does, and is amazing. Everyone is blown away, and she’s catapulted into instant fame and success.

We later learn that Christine has been studying under the Phantom, who appears to her in mirrors. She calls him the Angel of Music, and thinks that he was sent to teach her by her recently deceased father. He isn’t. He’s actually pretty malicious, and is obsessed with Christine, wants to control her voice, and doesn’t like her dating anyone. Which is a bit awkward when her childhood friend shows up and promptly falls in love with her.

Anyways, Carlotta is jealous of the attention Christine has been getting and threatens to leave prompting the new owners to cut Christine from the program. The Phantom doesn’t like it at all, sends a bunch of letters, things escalate, people are murdered, and the whole first act ends with the chandelier falling from the ceiling and crashing onto the stage (which is done with really cool effects, oftentimes beginning the show hanging over the audience. It’s a BIG MOMENT and one of the most iconic ones from the show. This will also be relevant later.)

Act two takes place a few months later, wherein no one has seen the Phantom. Shock of all shocks, though, he’s not dead. He’s been writing an opera and he wants Christine to star in it. More stuff happens, you learn the backstory of the Phantom (which is pretty sad, ngl, but in no way makes him less of a creep) and the story ends with the Phantom kidnapping Christine and giving her an ultimatum: stay with him forever, or he kills Raoul (aka childhood friend/romantic interest guy). She agrees to stay with him and he’s so moved by her compassion that he lets them both go and disappears forever.

Part Two: Casting the Characters

That’s interesting, Rosie (note sarcasm) but you said this was about The Umbrella Academy? I did, in fact. So, we meet Vanya when she’s playing a medley of songs from The Phantom of the Opera. Since it’s primarily the melodies and not one of the orchestral pieces from her performance later (I don’t think), we can assume she’s just playing it for herself (which is nice! good on you, Vanya).

Maybe she’s never seen the play and just likes the score, but for purposes here, let’s assume she’s familiar with it.

You can tell a lot about a person by the stories they connect with (for example, I like TUA because I like fun sibling dynamics, found family, music, and being sad). And I think that it makes sense that The Phantom of the Opera would be a story that resonates with Vanya. The overlooked chorus girl finds power in music, and, after years in the background, is finally given a chance to show how special she is.

So, yeah. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that Vanya sees herself as Christine. There are some discrepancies, sure, but this is Vanya’s self-narrative, which we learn pretty much immediately is unreliable. (Love her, but it’s true.) And if Vanya is Christine, then we can try and tap into her perspective to look at some other characters.

Anyways remember Carlotta (the prima donna opera singer who always got the spotlight and tried to destroy everything good that happened to Christine because she felt threatened that someone might be as good/better than her whose entire personality and role in the story I just summarized, rendering my plot recap useless)? Carlotta is how Vanya views Allison. (Kind of all her siblings, but her relationship with Allison is the most important here.)

Think about the scene in the cabin?

“You couldn’t risk me threatening your place in the house! You couldn’t handle the fact that Dad might find me special!” - Vanya, having a mental breakdown.

This always struck me as an interesting accusation to throw, since prior to this moment, I don’t think there was any indication that Allison had ever felt threatened by Vanya. She excluded her, sure, and wasn’t super friendly at times, but the idea that Allison has been pulling strings to keep Vanya out of her spotlight is new. But that is exactly the role Carlotta plays in Phantom.

Fun fact! At one point in the musical, the Phantom enchants Carlotta so that she loses her voice right before coming on stage.

Part Three: The Phantom of the Opera is there

So based on everything I’ve said so far, the most straightforward reading is then, that Leonard Peabody/Harold Jenkins (who for purposes here I’ll call Leonard) is the stand in for the Phantom, which works... really well. Both in helping to understand Vanya and also because it foreshadows the twist of season one in a really cool way.

So, the Phantom appears to Christine first not as an enemy, but as a friend and teacher, who encourages her to be more confident in her abilities. He trains her to develop her singing ability. While the teacher-student dynamic is actually inverted initially with Vanya and Leonard, from the get go, he is showering her with compliments, encouraging her to be confident in her abilities, and, at least on the surface, supporting her in a way she hasn’t been supported before (he’s a trash human but an expert manipulator).

But, in the play, the Phantom is also very possessive over Christine and her power (er, I mean voice). He also is perfectly willing to kill and/or hurt people who he views as standing in the way of Christine and her success (see the aforementioned Carlotta incident). Which is exactly what Leonard does to Vanya. He kills the first chair violinist to help her get it, and orchestrates a whole master plan to get her to reveal her powers on his terms.

Even the part where he starts “training” her to use her powers kind of resembles the second act of the play. The Phantom wrote a play for Christine and she’s going to star in it, whether she wants to or not.

(One could even make the argument of the parallels between Christine believing the Phantom was sent by her father to teach her and Leonard showing up because of his revenge scheme against Vanya’s father, but I honestly don’t have much support for that.)

Part Three: Two Conflicting Narratives

So, as you might’ve noticed, I sort of have two different threads of analysis going on right now. 1) The Phantom of the Opera parallel is part of Vanya’s self-narrative and in it she mischaracterizes Allison, making her more suspicious of her motivations and 2) Leonard Peabody is clearly the Phantom and doesn’t bother being subtle about it. I hope that I’ve been convincing (or at least intriguing) for you to get to this point, because here is where they come together.

Vanya has this parallel going, but she doesn’t see Leonard as the Phantom. In the beginning at least, he’s her Raoul. If I had to guess, I’d say Reginald Hargreeves is the Phantom in Vanya’s self-narrative (says he’ll train her but wants to manipulate her and keep her locked away for himself, strict teacher who doesn’t really care about her well being, wearing a mask to appear more normal/human... she wouldn’t exactly be wrong). Leonard, on the other hand, is Vanya’s supporter. He validates her, and believes in her, and taker her side when Carlotta and the opera house owners (er, the rest of the Hargreeves children) gang up on her and conspire to keep her out.

This is all building to, of course, the final confrontation. The Phantom says Christine has to pick one or the other. When Allison comes to talk to Vanya, Vanya feels as if she’s been given an ultimatum and lashes out.

And that’s where everything (including this parallel) starts to crumble.

(I honestly don’t know a lot about the other characters and how they fit in. I suppose we could have Five = Raoul if we ignore romance plot and focus on the childhood friend that hasn’t been seen in a while angle? And maybe also Pogo = Madame Giry. Vanya doesn’t really have any friends to be Meg.)

Part Four: It’s All About the Moon

So that is kind of the gist of The Phantom of the Opera as a window into Vanya’s self-narrative theory, but there are a couple of other loosely related ideas I thought I might as well bring up since this thing is already ridiculously long.

Remember how I mentioned the chandelier is like, THE scene from The Phantom of the Opera back in part one, and said it’d be relevant later? Bringing that back now, because I’m going to pull a Luther and connect everything to the moon.

So, to get the obvious out of the way, the moon exploding and the chandelier coming crashing to the stage are similar because something falls, breaks into a bunch of pieces, destroys a bunch of stuff, and creates a powerful and memorable image to close off before an act/season break (the next installment of which begins with a time jump).

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that The Phantom of the Opera is told out of order. The opening scene shows a grown up Raoul at an auction for the items left behind after the opera house closes, and it switches to the past as the remains of the chandelier rise upwards to the ceiling, Phantom’s theme swelling (it’s a really cool moment, tbh). Following the prologue of The Umbrella Academy, we switch to the present with two images: Vanya alone on the stage, and then Luther alone on the moon. Which has a kind of symmetry that might mean nothing, but is still kind of cool.

(Also the item that Raoul buys from the auction is a music box with a monkey crashing symbols on top of it. Which might mean nothing.)

Part Five: How is she STILL talking about this? (AKA Conclusion)

To be honest, this is more a very tangled “things I noticed and thought were interesting” discussion than a formal essay with any clear thesis. While there is a chance that this was all coincidental and I’ve gone full Pepe Sylvia, the music selection in The Umbrella Academy is one of the things that they seem to be really deliberate about.

I would love to chat with anyone about this theory, so feel free to reach out in the notes or message me! My inbox is always open. Much love, and thank you for reading, if you got this far! ❤️

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dogbearinggifts · 5 years

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“Dad Sent Me to the Moon” vs. “Because Dad Made Me”

How Luther and Vanya Talk About Trauma, Part Four

This is the fourth installment of my series examining how Luther and Vanya address their own trauma and respond to the trauma of others. My goal is to look at each significant mention of Luther’s time on the Moon/ his forcible mutation and Vanya’s exclusion, compare and contrast, and see how these instances line up with the common fandom perception of these characters.

If this is the first time you’re seeing this series on your dash, I’d definitely recommend starting with previous installments.

Part One Part Two Part Three

Episode 5: Number Five (aka The One That Made the Fandom Look at Klaus and Say “Somebody Give Him a Hug”)

Our first trauma mention of this episode comes when Luther and Five sit in Diego’s apartment. This mention is a little tricky, because, while Five does indeed mention the trauma of losing his siblings, the conversation is focused on how that future might be avoided, what Five has tried so far, and why it hasn’t worked. Nevertheless, I’m including it, because I feel it gives insight into how Luther handles the trauma of others.

Luther: When’s it supposed to happen? This…apocalypse? Five: Well, I can’t give you the exact hour, but from what I could gather, we have four days left. Luther: Why didn’t you say something sooner? Five: It wouldn’t have mattered. Luther: Of course it would. We could’ve banded together and helped you try to stop this thing! Five: For the record, you already tried. Luther: What do you mean? Five: I found all of you. Your bodies. Luther: We die? Five: Horribly. You were together, trying to stop whoever it is that ends the world. Luther: How do you know that? Five hands Luther the glass eye he’s been carrying. Five: This was clutched in your dead hand when I found you. You ripped it out of their head right before you went down. Luther: Whose head? Five: Like I said, I don’t know. Luther: Well, there’s a serial number on the back. Think maybe you can track it— Five: That’s a dead end. It’s just another hunk of glass.

This is not the first time Five has shared his trauma with another sibling. In the second episode, he explains to Vanya how he got stuck in the apocalypse, all the awful degrading things he did to try and survive, and why he couldn’t come back. Vanya invalidated his trauma—though as I pointed out then, I don’t think she did so intentionally or maliciously, and she apologized after.

Here, we see Luther giving a very different reaction: unquestioning acceptance. He doesn’t ask Five to fill in any plot holes he saw; he doesn’t let on that he thinks the whole thing is unbelievable. I don’t point this out to bring Vanya down or show how awful she is, because I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing. Rather, we see that Luther is far more inclined to believe doomsday predictions, which was a prominent factor in why he didn’t question Reginald’s choice to send him to the Moon. He went because he thought the world needed him. Dad always said the apocalypse was coming, so of course he was needed on the Moon to watch for threats. Now that Five is back from the future with a tale of an apocalypse that, to him, already happened, Luther’s only question is “How do we stop this thing?”

Now, it’s worth noting that finding a solution to Five’s problem—preventing the apocalypse—directly benefits Luther. If he can help Five prevent the apocalypse, then he will not die horribly. So Luther isn’t quite helping Five out of nothing more than the goodness of his heart.

However, this exchange establishes an interesting reversal from how he handled Allison’s trauma. When she told him all the awful details of her divorce and how she might lose custody of her daughter, Luther simply listened, offered a bit of encouragement, and didn’t downplay her trauma at all. Here, with Five, he attempts to solve the problem. These are two very different situations, calling for two very different approaches, and it appears Luther is well aware of that. He also seems to be aware of the fact that his advice and input are not always needed or welcome, or appropriate for all situations. Here, there is a problem to be solved, and Luther attempts to solve it. Allison only needed a sympathetic ear, and that was what Luther offered.

**********

Later, when Allison pays a visit to Vanya’s apartment, Leonard enters the conversation.

Allison: Well, how well do you know him? Vanya: Enough to get breakfast, if that’s what you’re asking. Allison: It’s just that after yesterday, I don’t….I have a bad feeling. Vanya: Allison, I haven’t seen you in twelve years, and all of a sudden you’re giving me dating advice? Allison: I’m still your sister, and I’m concerned about you—and him. Vanya: What are you concerned about? Allison: Leonard seems perfectly charming, perfectly thoughtful—perfect, really. But I’ve been around long enough to know that when something seems to perfect, it’s usually anything but. Vanya: Like a woman who’s based her whole life on rumors? Some people actually mean what they say.

Now, you can make the argument that Vanya is unaware of just how deeply the divorce is affecting Allison. Her sister has, after all, remained somewhat tight-lipped about it around her siblings; the only one she openly shares all details with is Luther, and she does so in private. However, I’d argue that Vanya is well aware of just how devastating this divorce is for Allison. She’s heard the tension and trembling in her sister’s voice as she begs to speak to her daughter. She’s seen just how upset the refusal made her.

In addition to that, Vanya has surely read the tabloids, or at least skimmed the covers at newsstands. We see in an earlier scene that these magazines are painting Patrick and Claire as the victims and Allison as the villain, if the title “We’re Doing Fine!” accompanied by a picture of father and daughter smiling with a smaller inset of Allison is any indication. If Vanya read any of these stories, she would have known the person behind the headlines. She would have been able to imagine her sister reacting to all of this press coverage, imagine what things were like behind the scenes. No, she and Allison weren’t the closest growing up—but Allison was her sister. Vanya might not have known her as well as siblings in healthy families know each other, but she knew her better than those tabloids do. Allison wasn’t just a character in some ongoing tabloid drama; Vanya would have known her as a person with hopes and dreams and struggles and everything else.

And here she is, turning all of that trauma into a verbal jab meant to knock Allison off her feet so Vanya can continue doing what she likes without interference.

Yes, Vanya is an adult; and yes, she is free to choose her partner without input from her family. She is free to tell Allison to keep her thoughts to herself. But Vanya could have said as much without bringing Allison’s painful divorce into it. Like so:

“Allison, I’m fine. Leonard treats me well. If he starts acting creepy, I’ll come and ask you for advice, okay?” “Look, Allison, I know you’ve had some bad experiences with guys in the past, but you’re famous. I’m not. I don’t see any reason why he’d want to get closer to me other than the fact he’s genuinely interested.” “I’ve only known him a couple of days. There’s plenty of time for me to learn how imperfect he is.” “C’mon, sis. This is the first guy I’ve met who makes me feel like a star. Give him a chance?”

Point is, Vanya didn’t have to take Allison’s advice; but she didn’t have to bring up Allison’s painful divorce with a smile, either.

*******

Shortly after, Allison takes her research on Leonard to Vanya’s apartment in another attempt to get Vanya to hear her concerns.

Vanya: You are unbelievable! You’re trying to dig up dirt on a guy I like? Who does that? Allison: Look, I’ve had my fair share of stalkers and creeps. I don’t trust him. Vanya: You mean you don’t trust me. Allison: What? No! That’s— Vanya: This is not about you. And for the first time, someone thinks I’m special. Allison: I’m just worried about you. Vanya: Well, you’re not my mother. Worry about your own daughter. Allison: That’s not fair.

First off, Vanya’s frustration and anger are definitely understandable. I don’t necessarily agree with her*, but I can see where she’s coming from: She’s worked hard to build a life for herself, and she works hard to maintain it. This is the first guy she’s met who hasn’t treated her like a pale imitation of her more famous siblings, she’s happy, and she’s feeling the full depth of emotion for the first time since she was four. Whatever Allison has to say will hit her twice as hard, and since she’s not aware that her medication had been dampening her emotions, she probably has no idea that she’s going to be a little volatile.

That said….I honestly have a hard time sympathizing with her in this scene.

Once again, we see her bringing up Allison’s trauma; and once again, we see her using it as a means to try and get Allison to leave her alone. If Vanya displayed a thicker skin around her siblings, I could excuse this by saying that she just expects everyone to be as tough as she is; but that isn’t the case. In the first episode, we see how hard she takes Diego’s “You don’t belong here” remark. In this very scene, we see her taking well-intentioned (if intrusive) concern on Allison’s part as a personal insult (”You mean you don’t trust me”) twisting the narrative to make it seem Allison has self-centered motives (”This is not about you”) and finally reminding Allison of the ongoing custody battle as a means of shutting down a conversation she doesn’t like (”Worry about your own daughter”).

There was no need whatsoever for Vanya to bring Claire into this. Had Vanya left it at “You’re not my mother,” that would have gotten the point across just as well. “Worry about your own daughter” was a cheap shot meant to give Vanya the upper hand, and it worked. Vanya wins this round, using the most underhanded tactic available to her.

And again, I understand she’s upset. I understand she wants to be left alone, and I understand she’s dealing with strong emotions she’s never felt before. I understand that Leonard has been reminding her at every turn that her siblings didn’t treat her right while they were growing up. Her remark was still unnecessary because, as in the previous example, there are other ways Vanya could have gotten her point across.

*******

Later, as Five and Luther wait for Hazel and Cha-Cha, Five brings up his time with the Commission.

Five. You know, I never enjoyed it. Luther: What? Five: The killing. I was good at my work, and I took pride in it, but it never gave me pleasure. I think it was all those years alone. Solitude can do funny things to the mind. Luther: Well, you were gone for such a long time. I only spent four years on the Moon, but that was more than enough. It’s the being alone that breaks you.

I’ve seen some fans point to this scene (and others, but more on that later) as yet another example of how Luther’s constant whining about the Moon causes him to ignore his siblings’ trauma. Which is odd, because in this scene, Luther does almost the exact opposite of what these fans accuse him of.

Yes, he does bring up the Moon without being explicitly prompted; and yes, he does respond to Five’s trauma with a comment about his own. However, he does not bring up the Moon apropos of nothing. When Five says “Solitude can do funny things to the mind,” it reminds Luther of how he spent four years with zero human contact in a sealed vacuum out on an airless hunk of rock careening through the void, so he contributes that to the conversation.

More importantly, Luther’s mention of his time on the Moon is used not to invalidate Five, but to validate him. Pay attention to the wording here: “I only spent four years on the Moon, but that was more than enough.” He’s aware that Five spent upwards of 30 years wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and he remembers how difficult those four years on the Moon were. With that line, Luther compares his four years on the Moon to Five’s 30-plus years as the last man on Earth and acknowledges that Five had it worse. Here, he seems to be admitting that he would not have been able to handle over three decades of pure solitude.

Furthermore, his next line, “It’s the being alone that breaks you,” is an attempt to commiserate with Five—similar to how Vanya commiserated with Leonard earlier. Luther isn’t saying, “dAd SenT mE 2 tH mOOn aNd i HaD iT woRSe sO ShUt UP”; he’s saying, “Yeah, man, I get it. I was alone with no way out and no idea why I was there, and I was only on the Moon for four years. I don’t know how you lasted as long as you did.”

Another, smaller thing of note: This is the first time we see Luther addressing his time on the Moon as a negative experience. Up to this point, he has either spoken of it fairly positively or neutrally. This conversation with Five, where he compares those four years to Five’s time in the apocalypse, is the first instance where Luther hints that his time on the Moon was actually very difficult to cope with. “It’s the being alone that breaks you” paints a far, far less rosy picture of the Moon than, “In those moments, when my entire world turned to white glass, I felt like I was meant to be there.”

**********

Running count of trauma mentions (cumulative of all episodes thus far)

Own Trauma: Vanya 4, Luther 4 Trauma of Others: Vanya 3, Luther 3

*Let’s just say I was encouraged to get into and stay in a bad relationship. When I later broke it off, the same people who encouraged me to ignore my own misgivings told me that they’d suspected there was something wrong with my partner from the beginning. Gee, thanks. Couldn’t have used that advice before everything went sour.

Read on to Part Five

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hufflepuff-ravenclaw-reviews · 5 years

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The Umbrella Academy Season 1 Episode 5

We start off the episode, not with a flashback, but with a flashforward. To when Five jumped ahead to the future. He's mainly just walking around a lot, carting Deloris and various things in a wagon. Deloris goes through various fashion statements depending on what time of the year it is (a fur muff hat in the winter, sunglasses and a tanktop in the summer). He does seem to have a sort of make-shift home when he's older.

One day, he's approached by a woman from the time traveling agency that Cha-Cha and Hazel work for. She tells him that the agency works to keep history on the right track. Five asks why didn't people stop the apparent apocalypse, but she laughs and says that it was meant to be. It's not the end of everything... just the end of something. She then offers him a job as an agent.

He worked there for a long time, but not as long as he should have according to the contract he made. Which is why Hazel and Cha-Cha are currently after him: for breach of contract. When he was supposed to...??? Assassinate JFK, I guess? He finally figured out what it would take in order to return to his own time. And then he jumped back to the academy the day of his father's funeral. And you know the rest from there.

He tells all of this to Luther back in Diego's boiler room bedroom. Luther takes it a lot better than Vanya did, and wants to help stop the end of the world.

Diego comes in and says about how his friend died, and demands that Five start talking. Five briefly mentions that he knows the people after him, but that they'll kill Diego if he tries to go after them, too.

Meanwhile, I guess Klaus accidentally time traveled. Back to the 1960's, for a year. And he was drafted, apparently, because he comes back with an army tattoo, dog tags, and a “military uniform”. Five later finds him, and says that he recognizes the symptoms of time travel “jet lag”. Klaus brushes him off, and leaves the house, but runs into Diego as he's leaving to get revenge on Hazel and Cha-Cha. Klaus is oddly silent in the car, which is something Diego remarks upon, because it's so strange. Klaus asks to be dropped off, and then goes into a “veteran's only bar”. There, he wanders around a bit before he starts crying before a picture up on one of the walls. The other vets, who are older, are getting kind of upset about the entire thing. Diego comes in before any vet can say anything, and asks Klaus what's going on.

Then, one of the vets tells Klaus that he has to leave, because this bar is only for veterans. Klaus gets upset and defensive, and says that he is a vet. He also tells the older vet to “fuck off”. Diego tries to defuse the situation by saying that his brother is drunk, and just wants to be on his way. The other vet says that he'll let them go when he gets an apology... from Klaus. Which Klaus gives to him... sort of. “I'm sorry... that you're such a stick in the mud!” Or something like that. This leads to a bar fight... which is both worrying and comical, considering that all of the bar patrons are older.

While that's going on, Hazel and Cha-Cha are in deep shit because Klaus took off with their time-travel what-have-you. And their bosses know it, because every trip is recorded in some office somewhere (somewhen).

There's this really bizarre scene where Hazel flirts with the doughnut shop waitress. This has been going on for some time now, but I feel like it reached a weird peak with this episode, where he activly hung out with her while she was on a break.

As he's leaving the shop, Diego and Klaus see him leaving. Diego I think recognizes the suit that he's wearing, and maybe the build. Klause recognizes him because he was unmaked during the second half of torturing him. They follow them back to the new motel that they're staying at, where Diego puts a tracker under their car.

However, Cha-Cha sees Diego outside. They get a message from the motel manager; it's from Five, saying that he has the briefcase, and wants to meet them. They sneak out the back, but Diego is on to them. However, while he and Klaus are away from the car (and Klaus shows some life-saving moves he learned during the war), one of the two slash the tires on Diego's car.

Back at the academy, Luther finds Five scribbling all over his walls with chalk. He asks what Five's doing, and Five says he's pin-pointed four individuals who he should kill in order to prevent the end of times. Luther asks about the first guy on the list, and is horrified when Five says that he thinks the guy is a gardener. Five says that it's the difference between one life vs billions... which when you've literally seen the wasteland, that's kind of a big deal. He pulls out a gun that used to belong to their father, which only upsets Luther more. Luther then grabs Deloris and hangs her out the window, and says that Five has to pick. Five picks Deloris, which means that Luther ends up with the gun.

They go out to the meeting spot, and Luther insists that he be the one to hold onto the fake time travel briefcase. Hazel and Cha-Cha show up, and Five asks for a meeting with their boss; he refuses to tell them why. Cha-Cha makes a call on a nearby payphone, and they all settle in to wait.

However, before any time traveler can show up, a creepy rendition of Ride of Valkyries starts to play. It's Diego and Klaus in a stolen ice-cream truck that was by their car in the motel parking lot. They crash into Cha-Cha and Hazel...

And all time stops, except for Five. The same agent as before shows up and chastises him in his efforts to save the world. She then offers him a job... in time travel management. Because he's a good agent. He scoffs over this, but he does make a deal with her: that he only just wants his family to survive. She promises to see what she can do. Before she unstops time, Five tosses Hazel's gun away, and moves a bullet so that it's not going to hit Luther.

Time unfreezes, the bullet hits the car, and the truck crashes into Hazel's and Cha-Cha's car. Luther tosses the briefcase away, which Hazel runs over to grab. Luther then grabs Diego and Klaus from the now ruined ice-cream truck, and they speed away, abandoning the time traveling duo in the middle of nowhere. (Five meanwhile, left with the lady. Luther seems baffled by Five's disappearance, but he rolls with it.)

While that's going on, there's a subplot with Allison, Vanya, and Leonard. Allison keeps insisting that Leonard is creepy, but Vanya is angry at her sister, stating that she doesn't get to just be out of Vanya's life for so long, and then come in and say weird things like “don't date this guy!”

Vanya goes to meet Leonard for breakfast, where she tells him that the first chair violin player (the nasty bitch from an earlier episode) has “mysteriously” disappeared. (We'll get to this in a moment.) Leonard encourages Vanya to try out for the first chair spot, because it's her time to shine. Vanya is happy because nobody has ever actually encouraged her before.

Meanwhile, Allison looks through microfiche at the library, in search of Leonard. (At the same time, across the table from Allison, Cha-Cha does research on the Umbrella Academy, and ends up reading Vanya's book, but I don't know how much good that actually researching did either of them...) Later, Allison goes back to Vanya's apartment to tell her that she tried to look up Leonard in the paper, and couldn't find much of him. Vanya scoffs over this as actual evidence, because most people aren't in the paper on a daily basis, Ms. Super celebrity.

Allison still isn't convinced over this, so she breaks into Leonard's house. I don't know if she found anything in the main part of the house, but before she's about to pull down the door to the attic, Leonard comes home, so she sneaks out. (And we'll get to the attic in a moment, too.)

Vanya goes to her audition, where the conductor still doesn't know who the fuck Vanya is. However, as Vanya starts to play, a weird energy drifts out from her, and falls over the conductor and two ladies who are sitting behind him.

She later goes to Leonard to tell him that she got first chair (and the solo being first chair comes with). She says that she was uncertain about it,because it's the first time that she's ever played without her medication. Which is something that we've seen her taking throughout the series so far. In the previous episode, after Leonard made breakfast plans with Vanya, he was seen dumping out her pills into the sink. They kiss, and start to get hot and heavy on the sofa.

As they're doing that, the same strange energy radiates from Vanya, through the house, and up to the attic. There, we see what Allison did: the shitty violinist, wrapped in plastic and clearly dead. Reginald's journal that Klaus threw away. And probably a bunch of other stuff like that that I can't identify.

The energy leaves the house, and travels to the academy. I think Pogo senses it. He then turns to Grace, who he has repaired. He asks that she keep something a secret from the children.

#the umbrella academy #The Ravenclaw mod

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