The Darkest Easter Egg Everyone Missed On The Umbrella Academy
The series may be a mere 10 episodes old, but with its first season on Netflix, The Umbrella Academy has provided no shortage of wildly original, vividly realized characters. That's not entirely surprising, as the series is based on an award-winning series of graphic novels about a group of "gifted" kids who were raised from birth to become a super-powered crime-fighting force. But even as The Umbrella Academy revels often in the children's less-than-normal upbringing, it focuses more on the emotional damage such a tumultuous youth levied on the Hargreeves kids as adults.
As such, the adult version of the Hargreeves family unit remains the most compelling incarnation of the group, and therefore the focus of Netflix's The Umbrella Academy. Still, the series' creative team was careful to surround the Hargreeves with some colorful characters throughout its inaugural season. With personalities like time-traveling assassins Hazel (Cameron Britton) and Cha Cha (Mary J. Blige), the devious meddler Leonard Peabody (John Magaro), and the genetically advanced chimp Pogo (Adam Godley) in the mix, it's almost too easy to overlook one of The Umbrella Academy's most intriguing supporting players — the robotic mother figure (Jordan Claire Robbins) who helped raised the kids.
To the Hargreeves kids, she was Mom. To Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) and Pogo, she was known as Grace. But to a few eagle-eyed viewers of The Umbrella Academy's first season, she may also have been a prophet of sorts.
That fact was evinced by a dark Easter egg seen on the show's third episode. The moment, which concerns a revelatory bit of cross-stitching, implies Grace may have known more than we though about the world-ending doom her children were out to stop.
How much did Grace know about the apocalypse on The Umbrella Academy?
For the bulk of The Umbrella Academy's first season, fans know nothing about how the apocalypse came about. Viewers don't full scope of it until the season's final episode, around the time Vanya (Ellen Page) completes her turn to the dark side and exerts enough sonic energy to break the Moon, thus sending lunar debris raining down on Earth and ending mankind.
Getting back to that episode 3 moment, it finds the Hargreeves kids debating what to do with Grace after discovering that, for some unknown reason, she'd done nothing while their adoptive father was dying of a heart attack. It also found their home under assault by Hazel and ChaCha, with the powered crew eventually fending off the attack. As the house lay in shambles, Diego (David Castañeda) discovers Grace quietly sitting and embroidering — apparently unaware of the ruckus.
Not only was Grace unknowingly stitching through her own synthetic skin, which is disconcerting in its own particular way, but she was stitching something ominous: a clear image of the moon with an enormous chunk broken off.
The question then becomes not just how Grace might've known a key detail of the impending apocalypse, but why she never mentioned her troubling vision to her super-powered children. The first of those questions remains a mystery that may or may not be addressed on The Umbrella Academy's upcoming season. The second is easier to answer, as Diego, upon seeing his beloved Mom is clearly not operating properly, takes the moment to power her down for the big robot sleep.
Unfortunately, Diego is so distraught in the moment that he doesn't seem to notice what Grace is stitching. Either way, the moment remains a stark little Easter egg on a series that's already featured some real doozies.