Why The Umbrella Academy Fans Are Scratching Their Heads At This Lila Line

Netflix's The Umbrella Academy is ostensibly the story of the superpowered, adopted Hargreeves children, but they're also pretty clearly a part of a much bigger story. As interesting as Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Five (Aidan Gallagher), Ben (Justin H. Min) and Vanya (Elliot Page) are, they're but seven of the 43 mysterious children who were born to women who hadn't been pregnant at 12:00 p.m. on October 1, 1989. 

With the upcoming season 3 introducing the Sparrow Academy in the mix, it seems that the show might intend to delve deeper into the mystery of these births — but the Sparrows won't be the first non-Umbrella Academy members of the 43 that we've met. After all, season 2 introduced us to Lila Pitts (Ritu Arya), the power-mimicking adopted daughter of the Handler (Kate Walsh). Lila's affiliation with the Handler's Commission makes her an enemy of the Hargreeves for much of the season, though she has a soft spot for Diego, and even tries to recruit him in the Commission to work with her. To achieve this, she lets the Handler know what an asset Diego could be for the organization — but the way she goes about it has some fans of The Umbrella Academy scratching their heads.

According to Reddit user u/autsims, Lila should have absolutely no idea about Diego's fighting prowess, yet she has no problem praising his talents to her adopted mother. "I just always find it funny how Lila tells the Handler, 'I've seen Diego in the field and he's better trained than most of the a*****es here,'" they wrote, and went on to point out that Lila has actually only seen Diego fight twice: "1. When he was bleeding to death on the ground after a fight with his father, and 2. when he was at the Mexican consulate getting beat tf [sic] up by the Swedes."

Considering that Diego was pretty firmly on the losing end in both occasions, it's indeed pretty amusing that Lila would be willing to praise his field skills. Then again, other redditors point out that just because Diego happens to get wrecked in both fights doesn't necessarily mean that he's bad at what he does, since the Swedes did ambush him, and there were mitigating circumstances in his battle with Sir Reginald (Colm Fieore), as well. "I mean, that fight with Reginald was pretty skillful," u/Catluver81 wrote. He only got stabbed at the end because he hesitated a final hit. He was doing pretty freaking well before that." So, regardless of the odds Diego was up against in those two battles, it's possible that Lila could've made an educated guess ... or maybe she just played up Diego's abilities in order to keep him beside her.