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Updated TUA Timeline
A little over a year ago, Aidan posted a timeline for the events of the Umbrella Academy on his Instagram. I posted it on this blog at the time and promised I was going to update my TUA Timeline post with that info. Never did. But I am now! So, here it is. The updated TUA Timeline.
Also, there will obviously be spoilers, so don’t read this if you haven’t watched season 1.
October 1st, 1989 - The Umbrella Academy kids are born.
1993 - Grace Joins the family. This is according to Aidan’s Timeline. Depending on the time of the year, the kids would be 3 or 4 when this happens. This may or may not be when the kids get names.
1993/1994 - Vanya forgets about her powers. Vanya also trains with Reginald and is subsequently made to forget about her powers around this time. Though we don’t get a specific date or length of time that Vanya trains, the flashbacks don’t appear to show her training for a super long time. I think a good guess would be less than a year for this training, putting Vanya’s age at 4. (This also matches up with the casting for the young Vanya and young Allison roles, which I used previously to estimate this age/date)
1997/1998 - Klaus is locked in the mausoleum for the first time. I am basing this on the casting for the role of young Klaus, which has him at 8 years old. However, it’s not quite that simple, because when Klaus is talking to his dad in episode 7, he says that his dad locked him in the mausoleum when he was 13. Complicating matters even further, there is a post somewhere out there that took a screen shot of Reginald’s journal with notes about locking Klaus in the mausoleum. (I have not been able to find that post again, so if anyone knows the one I’m talking about and has a link, I would love to put it in here). The date recorded on those notes is 2001. (I don’t remember the month, but I think it was summer) That would have made him 11 years old. It’s possible that this was just an inconsistency in the writing. Or it’s possible that Reginald locked Klaus in a mausoleum on at least 3 different occasions at age 8, 11, and 13. Possibly more.
2001/2002 - The Umbrella Academy stops a Robbery I’m basing this on the fact that all the same actors were used for these scenes as were used in the scene where Five leaves, so they can’t be much more than a year younger than that.
November 10, 2002 - Five leaves the Academy According to Pogo in episode 1, Five has been gone for 16 years, 4 months, and 14 days. The date in that episode is March 24th, 2019 (according to Vanya). That means that Five disappeared on November 10th, 2002, a little more than a month after the Umbrella Academy kids all turned 13. (This date is also confirmed on Aidan’s timeline)
(Side-note. Remember when Klaus mentions being locked in the mausoleum when he was 13? That means it probably happened not too long after Five disappeared. Holy Fuck Regi!)
2006(?) - Ben Dies OK, this is only a guess, BUT it’s a good one and if you scroll down to the additional notes at the bottom, you’ll see why.
2014 - Vanya publishes her book In episode 3, we learn that Vanya wrote her book 5 years earlier. (when they were 24) At this point, Ben is already dead and Luthor has not had his accident yet.
2014/2015 - Luther has his accident We’re not sure how long it takes Regi to send Luther to the moon after his accident (days? weeks? months?) so all we really know is that the accident happens sometime between Vanya publishing her book and the moon trip.
2015 - Luther goes to the moon In episode 6, Luther says that he was on the moon for 4 years, making him about 25 years old when he left. Aidan’s timeline also confirms that Luther went to the moon in 2015.
March 24th, 2019 - Reginald’s Funeral We know this because they tell Five the exact date.
April 1st, 2019 - Apocalypse (Dear Commission: Worst April Fools joke ever).
This Brings us to the present. The members of the Umbrella Academy are all 29, except for Five, who is 58, and Klaus, who spent 10 months in Vietnam and is therefore 30 now.
Additional Notes on the Timeline:
Five in the Future Five finds Delores pretty soon after the apocalypse (again, same actor, so I’m figuring a year leeway at most). He tells Klaus that he was with Delores for 30 years. That would make him about 43 when The Handler shows up. When Five gets back to the present, he gives a very specific amount of time he has been gone: 45 years. This means he spent 15 years working for the Comission, making him 58 at this point. Five also traveled through history extensively while working for the commission. His last mission had something to do with the Kennedy assassination, which would put him in 1963. (Quick note on this one - Someone commented on this post a while back with a correction and I was going to go back and do more research so I could correct these numbers, but now I can’t find the post and it’s been so long that I can’t remember what the correction was. So, if these numbers look off, let me know and I will fix it)
1968 - Klaus travels back in time to the Vietnam War Historical Context: This is 3 years after the first American troops arrived in Vietnam and 5 years after Kennedy was assassinated. Nixon was elected in 1968. This was also the year of the Tet Offensive, a massive campaign by the North Vietnamese Army to push the US troops out of the country and ferment rebellion among the South Vietnamese people. This was the big turning point in the war and marked the beginning of the US troops’ defeat. This was also the year of the My Lai Massacre, where the US Army murdered more than 500 civilians in the city of My Lai. This incident was covered up for a year before the American press found out about it.
Finally, the reasoning behind my guess that 2006 is the year Ben died:
Klaus mentions that Ben died “young and tragic”
Everyone left the house after Ben died, according to Vanya.
In episode 3, Alison says that they left their mom alone for 13 years. (13 years ago, they would have been 16) We don’t know how quickly everyone left, if it took days, weeks, or even years, so it’s possible that 13 years ago was when Alison left specifically. It could be that everyone was gone by that date. Or it could be that this is when everyone started leaving.
Diego mentions moving out at 17. Again, everyone left after Ben died, so it would have happened before that.
Ben’s statue does not have a date on it, but obviously he would have had to be at least the same age as he is depicted there.
We also have the following portraits sequence in episode 1 that was used to show Five’s disappearance and Ben’s death. Here are all 4 portraits.
Portrait 1 is done when they are all 12 or 13 years old. Everyone looks about the same age in portrait 2, so I’m assuming it Reginald had it commissioned right after Five disappeared. It would therefore make sense that portrait 4 was done right after Ben died. There are clearly several years age difference between portraits 2 and 3. It also looks like there may be another year or so age difference between portraits 3 and 4. Because of this, I would argue that the children are at least 15 years old in the final portrait. Therefore, Ben dies at age 15 or 16.
Last bit of evidence is Aidan’s timeline. Now, the year for Ben’s death is blacked out, BUT we can see the general shape of the numbers. The first number is clearly a 2, so we know that it’s not just a bunch of 0′s as a place holder. The last two numbers are rounded at the top and the bottom. In the font they are using, that gives us these possible years: 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009.
The placement between 2002 and 2015 is just a little past the middle point, so at first I figured that would mean the year was 2009. HOWEVER, that would mean he died at age 20. The other kids definitely don’t look 20 in the portrait after Ben dies and this doesn’t match up with the comments Allison and Diego make about leaving when they were still in their teens. Also, if you look at the timeline for earlier years, the same space between dates is used across the board, whether those dates are 4 years apart or 9 years apart.
Conclusion: I think Ben died in early 2006 (making him 16).
And that’s all I’ve got so far.
If anyone else has more clues for the timeline, please add them to this post.
bunch of tua resources i use for stuff
wanna see merch before it comes out? well ur in luck
screencaps? here you go
the pilot script? no problemo
transcripts for episodes in general? ofc (note: we only see each other at weddings and funerals is the pilot script too, idk if they have the actual transcript for that one)
definitely not links to the comics online. no. no. no.
heres were ive found a few behind the scenes/deleted scenes pics