Whether they're meant to give us clues about season 3 or to simply give us all a reason
to rewatch once we're done with our first binge, here are some of the small details
you probably missed in The Umbrella Academy's second season.
Spoiler warning for season two of The Umbrella Academy.
At the end of season 2, the time-traveling team successfully returns to 2019, only to
learn the Umbrella Academy seems to have been replaced with the Sparrow Academy, apparently
led by a not-so-dead Ben.
"I-I'm just happy that we're home and together again."
"Home?
This isn't your home."
These sparrows aren't the only birds flying around the second season, though.
While you may not notice them before the Sparrow Academy reveal, the official Umbrella Academy
Instagram page posted that there are exactly 43 sparrows in season 2 a significant number
since there were said to be exactly 43 superpowered children born on October 1, 1989 in the show's
mythology.
Perhaps the easiest example to remember is Harlan's sparrow toy, which we see him levitating
in the back seat of his mother's car towards the end of the finale.
In "A Light Supper," eagle-eyed viewers can spot a sparrow logo on the piece of paper
the Handler gives Five with the location of the Commission's executive board a logo that
mysteriously disappears when Five looks at it in the following episode.
Other examples of sparrow logos show up on the dairy truck the Swedish assassins steal,
on the front door of the liquor store that Klaus visits, on the room service menu Lila
looks at, and on yet another on a piece of paper in Old Man Five's briefcase.
We haven't discovered them all yet, but the prospect of finding them isn't a bad motivation
to rewatch season 2.
One of the bigger surprises in the season 2 finale is the crazy reveal that Lila is
one of the superpowered children born in 1989, just like the seven members of the Umbrella
Academy.
Similar to Mimic of Marvel Comics' X-Men, Lila can use other people's powers to her
own advantage.
And we see her gift on full display at the Coopers' farm.
While at first it looks like the Academy has slam-dunked the Commission in the season finale,
Lila is able to use their powers to even the playing field.
"How are you doing this?"
"Anything you can do, I can do better."
But what you may not realize is this isn't the first time in the series that she's used
her powers.
At the end of the episode "Valhalla," she fights Five in a factory, and the melee [MEY-ley]
ends with Five's foot on her throat and with the Handler revealing herself.
However, three times during their fight, Five expects Lila to be one place, and she appears
in another.
Initially, we're supposed to assume she's just unbelievably sneaky and fast.
But when you rewatch the scene with the knowledge of Lila's superpower, it becomes clear she's
mirroring Five's teleportation.
The camera isn't on her when she uses it, so we never see the ripple effect, thus keeping
her power a secret until the big showdown.
In "The Swedish Job," we get a quick look at an unnamed character who's a pretty clear
reference to one of the most acclaimed graphic novels of all time Watchmen.
Just after Luther starts off on a morning jog outside his rooming house, an elderly
man carrying a placard reading "The END is NIGH" appears and starts walking in the opposite
direction.
So what's the reference here?
Well, carrying a placard that warns of the end of the world is just about all the vigilante
Rorschach seems to do in Watchmen when he's out of costume.
And while the man in "The Swedish Job" doesn't look at all like Rorschach, with his long
hair and full beard, he does have a passing resemblance to Alan Moore, the author of Watchmen.
And it's a fitting reference for a couple of reasons.
For one, just as the escalating tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union provide
Ozymandias' motivations in Watchmen, it's an apocalyptic conflict between these two
superpowers that Five is struggling to avoid in The Umbrella Academy.
For another, just like Watchmen's Ozymandias, Five employs some pretty reprehensible tactics
in saving the world, like traveling to 1982 and assassinating most of the Commission's
executive board with an ax, paving the way for the Handler's takeover of the organization.
"She sent you, didn't she?"
"Does it really matter now?"
In the show's first season, we met Pogo, a sophisticated chimpanzee butler with human
intelligence who is sadly killed by Vanya.
If you've ever wondered about the ape's origin story, the second season has got your answers.
"Valhalla" opens with a flashback of the younger Pogo as a part of an early project to see
how chimpanzees would be affected by space flight and, by extension, what might be in
store for human pilots.
And two episodes later in "Öga for Öga," there's an easy-to-miss detail that could
point to Pogo being much more famous than we realized.
When Five travels to 1982 Wisconsin to kill the Commission's executive board, he stops
at a vending machine for a candy bar.
The one he winds up with is called a Fudge Nutter, but right next to that bar is one
called Pogo Gogos.
And above the name on the wrapper, it reads, "Take flight with..."
It's a small detail, but it says a lot.
For Pogo to have a candy bar named after him suggests the intelligent chimp was much more
of a Space Age icon than we realized.
In the season premiere, while all the members of the Umbrella Academy arrive in the same
place, they don't arrive in the same year.
"They're gone, like a fart in the wind.
Poof."
They fall from the portal into the same Dallas alley, one at a time or two, in the case of
Klaus and the ghost of Ben between 1960 and 1963.
Interestingly, right across the street from the alley is a movie theater, and in at least
three cases, the theater marquee is advertising a very specific kind of movie.
When Klaus and the ghost of Ben appear in 1960, the marquee is advertising the 1959
film Curse of the Undead.
As Allison arrives in 1961, the theater has apparently caught up with its releases, and
the marquee announces that year's The Curse of the Werewolf.
The marquee during Luther's arrival in 1962 isn't really visible enough to read, but the
same film is playing during Diego's appearance in 1963, when Vanya shows up a month after
Diego, and when Five arrives in November 1963 The Kiss of the Vampire.
Of course, in Five's case, the fighting between the US and Soviet forces has blown most of
the letters off the marquee, and we doubt the theater is still selling tickets at that
point.
It may be that the marquees are meant to reflect the heroes' collective doubt expressed throughout
the season about whether or not they're heroes, superpowered freaks, or as the marquees reflect
monsters.
In other words, it's not exactly the kind of thing you want to see when you're suddenly
lost in the past and struggling with self-esteem issues.
In the Umbrella Academy comics, the heroes' hometown is left intentionally ambiguous.
In fact, it's referred to only as "The City."
But it looks like season 2 of the series has revealed the location of the Academy's HQ,
at least as far as the TV adaptation is concerned.
In a flashback in "Valhalla," we learn that as soon as he could, Luther gets on a Greyhound
bus in the hopes that he can find his father.
During the trip, there's an overlay revealing the bus' progress on a map, showing that Luther
gets off somewhere in or around Indianapolis.
It's an interesting choice for a superhero HQ.
Maybe the writers simply didn't want yet one more superhero team hailing from the Big Apple.
Maybe it just seemed far enough away from Dallas to be a long trip but not too long.
Or maybe Reginald Hargreeves is a big basketball fan and just wanted to be near the Hoosiers.
When it comes to powers, Diego has a pretty unique skill set.
The dude is a master of knives, able to make blades spin through the air with the greatest
of ease and fly in any direction he chooses.
In the season finale, however, Diego uses his powers in a way that we've never seen
before.
When the Commission's goons are firing on him and Five, Diego buys Five the time he
needs to make it to the house by jumping out from behind cover and stopping the hail of
bullets mid-air, a la Neo from The Matrix.
Speaking to Den of Geek, showrunner Steven Blackman said that this is an extension of
the powers we've already seen before, explaining:
"If you think about Diego's power, he can, with his mind, control the trajectory of objects.
Basically, he likes throwing, so he can throw his knife, and he can make it go in weird,
odd curvatures and directions."
Blackman went on to say that the aftermath of Ben's death hurt the chances that most
of the members of the Umbrella Academy would reach their powers' full potential early on,
and that fans should expect for the heroes to keep learning more about their abilities.
"Everybody wants to see powers all of a sudden."
Looking back on season 2, we've already seen some of that.
For example, before season 2, Klaus has no idea it's possible for a ghost to possess
him, and when spectral cowboys save him from falling in the season finale, he seems as
surprised by it as anyone else.
Likewise, even before she lost her memory, Vanya had no idea she could use her powers
to resuscitate someone — as she does with Harlan after he drowns — or that doing so
would transfer her powers to him.
With every episode, the Umbrella Academy grows stronger and stronger, and we can't wait to
see what weird directions their powers will go.
One of the potential differences between the Umbrella Academy show and the comics is that
in the source material, Diego has the ability to hold his breath indefinitely.
So far, we haven't seen this power expressed in the TV series... or have we?
A Reddit user going by the name high_arcanist noticed something strange in a funny scene.
In "A Light Supper," the Academy members all cram into an elevator on their way to meet
with their father.
Nobody is exactly looking forward to the meeting, and at least one of the heroes is especially
anxious.
During the trip up, almost everybody on the elevator reacts in surprise and disgust as
we soon learn Luther experiences some unpleasant flatulence.
But there's one person who doesn't react as negatively as the rest Diego.
While everyone else is scowling and covering their mouths and noses, Diego is smiling,
seeming amused at the whole thing.
At no point does he seem to be suffering from the stench as his brothers and sisters are.
This, high_arcanist believes, is because the Diego of the show shares the breath-holding
ability of his comic book counterpart, and so he's able to avoid most of the negative
aspects of the experience and enjoy the discomfort of his adoptive siblings.
It certainly seems possible, though it could also be that Diego just has a stronger stomach
for his brother's "nervousness."
In "The Seven Stages," Five enlists Luther's help to do something that he warns is very
dangerous to contact an earlier version of himself.
Doing this, Five warns, is incredibly risky because of what he calls Paradox Psychosis,
which is a kind of psychosis a person may undergo when encountering themselves in another
time.
There are seven stages of paradox psychosis, and we watch both Five and Old Man Five go
through all those stages.
"You just itched your neck.
That's stage two of paradox psychosis."
"No I didn't.
I didn't itch my neck."
"Denial is stage one."
It's possible we see someone else go through them earlier in the season.
Two of the seven stages are excessive gas and homicidal rage, and in "A Light Supper,"
we see Luther exhibit both, on the elevator and at dinner with their father.
"Look at what you did to me!
Look at it!"
And that kind of anger especially directed at his dad is pretty unusual for our hulking
hero.
Blackman has said to expect things in season 2 to hint toward the future.
Could it be that another Luther maybe one from a future season is lurking somewhere
nearby?
Of course, that would lead to the question of why he isn't exhibiting the other symptoms.
Although it could be that wherever the future Luther is hiding, perhaps he isn't as close
to the 1963 Luther as the Fives were to each other or for quite as long.
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