The Umbrella Academy Season 3 premiere, “Meet the Family,” sets up two big obstacles for its heroes with the introduction of the Sparrow Academy and the reality-gobbling Kugelblitz growing in the Sparrow’s mansion basement. But in between the Footloose dance battles and Sparrow vanishing acts, another possible danger is lurking: Lester Pocket (Callum Keith Rennie). The mysterious character — an older man in a tightly buttoned collared shirt — is first shown trying to quiet a ringing in his head. He packs a suitcase full with cassette tapes of sounds like windmills and ominous bees and plays them one by one to drown out the noise. The audience is left wondering: Who is this man? And more importantly, is he a friend or foe to the Umbrella Academy?

Warning: Major spoilers for Season 3.

Well, as the third episode, “Pocket Full of Lightning,” confirms, Lester isn’t Lester at all: He’s Harlan Cooper, the superpowered son of Sissy Cooper (Marin Ireland), Viktor Hargreeves’ (Elliot Page) Season 2 love interest.

Let’s backtrack: When we meet Harlan, a small, nonverbal child, in Season 2, it’s 1963 and he’s a regular, non-superpowered human who lives with his mother on a farm in Texas. Viktor, who’s suffering from amnesia, shows up, and eventually falls in love with his mother. A few episodes later, Harlan drowns in a nearby lake and dies. When Viktor attempts to save him, he unwittingly infuses Harlan with an untested Hargreeves super energy. Harlan regains life, but with an unstable power growing inside him that’s much like Viktor’s own. Harlan’s strength boils over in the season finale, trapping him in a whirling tornado of unsafe power of his own making. At the end of the season, Viktor attempts to withdraw all of the power he’d accidentally given to Harlan, and the transfer seems to work... until we see Harlan levitating a bird figurine from the backseat of his mother’s car in his final scene.

And that’s how we leave off: Harlan, a kid in the ’60s, still has powers, and a distinct connection to Viktor. Fast-forward about six decades, and the Umbrella Academy is now fighting another apocalypse, and at the very moment the Sparrows and Umbrellas are going head-to-head, Harlan, currently using the fake name Lester, unleashes his power onto the Sparrows to save the Umbrella crew.

Season 3 also explains what happens in the years between the near-apocalypse on the Cooper farm and the present. Sissy and Harlan remain on the run, due to the danger of Harlan’s powers, until Oct. 1, 1989, the day the special children of the Umbrella and Sparrow Academies are all born. On that day, Sissy dies of cancer, and Harlan explodes with grief and rage. Out in the world, he suddenly feels his connections to the Umbrella Academy members reignite, and he attempts to reach out to them. Instead, he connects with all of their mothers, to such an overwhelming degree that the energy accidentally kills them.

“They were terrified about something growing in them. I could feel their pain,” Harlan says. “Their screams [were] so loud, like a storm in my head, tearing me apart. I tried to break the connection. I couldn’t.” Thus, their deaths create a paradox. After all, it’s impossible for the Brellies to now exist in a reality in which they were never born. 

It’s this temporal contradiction that puts the fate of the universe in danger in Umbrella Academy Season 3. But Harlan’s fate is far from safe.