The Umbrella Academy Season 3 poses some big questions in its early episodes. Why are the team in an alternate reality, and who is the strange old man calling himself Lester Pocket (played by Callum Keith Rennie)?

Lester Pocket initially seems like just an excuse for the Netflix show's writers to bring together a lot of strange character quirks. Lester carries around tapes of random recordings, for example, and likes to listen to his own digestion with a stethoscope.

The Netflix show, however, eventually reveals that the character is key to what's going on in The Umbrella Academy Season 3—and that we have seen this character before in the show.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the entirety of the new season of The Umbrella Academy.

Towards the end of the Netflix show, we learn that Lester is in fact a grown-up version of Harlan Cooper (Justin Paul Kelly), the child that Viktor (Elliot Page) befriended in the last season.

In case you have forgotten, Harlan was the non-verbal, autistic child of Sissy Cooper (Marin Ireland), the woman Viktor was romantically involved with when the Umbrella Academy traveled back to 1963.

In Season 2, Harlan hears Viktor and his mother having an argument, at which point he runs away from home. By the time Viktor finds him, Harlan had drowned in a lake. Viktor brings him back to life with CPR, but this causes some of Viktor's powers to transfer to him. Viktor later tries to take these powers back, but towards the end of the season, we learn he has been unsuccessful.

The fact that he got his powers from Viktor explains why Lester later has the tapes—his powers too are reliant on him being in contact with sound.

By the time Harlan is living as Lester Pocket, he has control of his powers, but that was not always the case. He killed his father, for example, after he deflects a shotgun shell into his chest.

It is his lack of control over his powers, in fact, that leads to the alternate timeline. After his mother dies of cancer in 1989, Harlan emits energy in his grief that is strong enough to kill many of the mothers of the superpowered children all born on the same day. This explains why most of the Umbrella Academy do not exist in the Season 3 timeline—Harlan accidentally killed their mothers before they could be born.

In the alternate timeline, Lester has been stalking the Umbrella Academy, which means he is there when they take on the Sparrow Academy. He is able to protect the former group with a surge of energy, which kills the Sparrows Jayme (Cazzie David) and Alphonso (Jake Alphonso).

Viktor is able to finally remove all of Lester/Harlan's powers, but it is too late to save Harlan. The Umbrellas and Sparrows make a deal that the Umbrellas can have the time-traveling briefcase if they give the Sparrows Harlan. However, Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) kills Harlan in revenge for him killing her mother.

The Umbrella Academy Season 3 is streaming now on Netflix.

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