Allison: “I assume you’re going to bed?”
Klaus: “I’m tagging along…I’ve been eating speed for the last three days and every time I close my eyes I see centipedes.”
Allison: “That’s great.”
I love revisiting this series so much, especially now that I know the story and can take in all the details, and more importantly the sincere moments, and really see how they culminate into this beautiful story. This issue starts with one of those sincere moments. 18 years ago Pogo overheard Vanya run to her room with her busted violin. Once again she felt frustrated and broken feeling like the only child there that doesn’t belong…that’s useless. Abut there was pogo to stand beside her and come to comfort her. HE tells her she is right, she isn’t like the others…she doesn’t need to destroy things to prove herself. But that frustration has built up and festered and continued to grow, with no help from Diego, and it has led to the moment she is stuck into a machine by the orchestra Verdammten and transformed into the killing machine she has always had the potential to be. Turns out the conductor killed a few people to get her father’s notes on her, and knows exactly how to make her the pure being the need to bring about the end of the world. Right as the machine lights up and Vanya explodes with white and musical notes…she promises that she will kill the conductor. We see from Vanya’s perspective as she goes through the painful process,not fully understanding where she is or what she is looking at…until she finally breaks, she hears the music…the sound of angles suffocating…and she loves it.
Elsewhere Five and Pogo are using the levitator belts to go around the city searching for any sign of the apocalypse. Pogo wonders and suggests to five, what if during his years trying to get back he went insane? What if there is nothing? Five has thought the same thing…but on the other hand, what if it was all real? What’s the harm in trying to save the world from a false alarm vs the end of it as they know it? From the fight at the fair, Luther, Allison, and Klaus get back home via the televator…only to find Diego already there patching himself up. After some heavy handed words about the artificial love of their father and the way Diego acts towards Vanya…Diego stormed off. Leaving the three we came in with to head right back out the door on patrol, no time to slew on the edge of the end of the world. Pogo and five on the other hand ended up stopping at a diner. Seeing the newspaper it’s clear that the public has had enough of the umbrella academy and their claims about the end of the world. It seemed an order of black coffee was exactly what they needed…only for a few very oddly dressed individuals in gas masks and hazmat uniforms to come in looking for five. Now as I already know who they are, lol, I love the angry look on five’s face that he has to deal with these clowns now.
We now conclude this issue at the Icarus theater for the conductor’s grand reveal of La Viole Blanche aka The White Violin! Vanya steps out, now completely white…almost porcelain looking with the strings and air openings of a violin engraved on her body. She is handed a white violin and instructed to do what she was born to do. So of course she immediately uses her new insane power to split the conductor apart! This is her show now, and she commands the orchestra. Tonight they shall end the umbrella academy and tomorrow the world!