Mysterious billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) adopted seven of the 43 children born that fateful 1989 day and founded the Umbrella Academy in his sprawling New York City mansion to study them and train them into being a superhero team. Emotionally cold and even cruel, especially to Viktor, he wasn’t exactly a source of comfort to his family, something we see in season one’s extensive flashbacks. The nurturing was left to the kindly robot Grace, aka Mom (Jordan Claire Robbins), and Pogo (Adam Godley), an intelligent chimpanzee who’s Reginald’s assistant. We meet younger versions (or in Grace’s case, the human woman who inspired her appearance) of all three in season two. In the 1960s, we learn Reginald is part of a group called the Majestic 12 that’s plotting the Kennedy assassination, an event that ties into The Umbrella Academy‘s second apocalypse.
Meanwhile, season two introduces us to another one of those 43 kids: Lila Pitts (Ritu Arya), who was raised by the Commission’s devious, flamboyantly stylish Handler (Kate Walsh) after her parents were murdered (by Number Five, while he was working as an assassin for the Commission). Sent on a mission by “Mum” to keep tabs on the Hargreeves, Lila — whose superpower is revealed to be that she can imitate anyone else’s superpowers — has a love-hate relationship with Diego. At the end of season two, Lila learns the truth about her mother’s hand in her tragic past, and manages to escape with one of the Commission’s time-traveling briefcase devices; as The Umbrella Academy‘s marketing has made clear, Lila returns for season three.