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[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 2 finale of Umbrella Academy, "The End of Something."]

Umbrella Academy Season 2 is going to stick with me for a multitude of reasons, but one component I can’t quite shake (and hope I never do) comes at the very end of the season - Allison’s (Emmy Raver-Lampman) note to Ray (Yusuf Gatewood). After the Hargreeves siblings manage to defeat The Handler (Kate Walsh) and get their hands on another suitcase, it’s time for them to leave the 1960s, and they can’t take any of the folks they grew close to with them, including Allison’s husband Ray.

The note she leaves him is a deeply personal and powerful message about her love for him, his impact on her and how he has to keep fighting. But, as you’ll hear in this clip, I find that current events do tend to amplify particular themes and ideas and, given what the country is going through right now, that note felt a whole lot like Allison was speaking to viewers in the real world as well; “I need you to hold on, keep faith, believe that good things will happen, because the fight for a better world is never over.” It’s a sentiment well worth keeping in mind always, but it’s something I really needed to be reminded of right now. 

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Image via Netflix

During her episode of Collider Ladies Night, Raver-Lampman addressed whether or not that final note was updated to hit especially hard in light of recent events. Her response to that question illuminated an even more profound point about Allison’s storyline in Season 2 overall:

“It was actually always written that way. I did ADR for it a while ago, while we were in quarantine, but it was before George Floyd, it was before this Black Lives Matter global moment that we are in and movement that we are in. I think that is the biggest takeaway for me and hopefully for so many viewers this season of just, we didn't have to rewrite a lot of Allison's storylines to make it current because systemic racism has been present and current in our country and all over this world, but especially in our country, for 400 years. And I think it has taken on different faces, it has taken on different names, the fight against that has different movements and different moments, but it is the same thing that is being fought. It is the same struggle that Black Americans and people of color and Black people and people of color all over the world are fighting. And I think it's just really crazy how even more relevant this season has become. It felt relevant to me when we were shooting it, but I'm now rethinking about some of these scenes and then some of the things that Allison says. In her last conversation with Ray, she says, ‘You have to stay because the fight is not over even in 2019.’ They wrote that a year and a half ago, you know what I mean?”

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Image via Netflix

Raver-Lampman emphasized that point further:

“I just hope that it is shedding just a brighter light on the fact that we just lost Congressman Lewis who dedicated his life work to the fight against injustice and for social equality. We just lost him, so that is just further proof that that was not long ago. That was our grandparents' and our parents' lifetime. And Ruby Bridges who was the first Black child to integrate an all white school, just turned 65. These are not problems of the past. They are problems and struggles of today. And I just think that the show is really just shedding a light on that and hopefully on a massive platform, which is really encouraging and inspiring."

If you’d like to hear even more from Raver-Lampman on her experience working on Umbrella Academy, be sure to check out her full episode of Collider Ladies Night right here or below.

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