The Umbrella Academy season 2 blooper reel reveals how the show managed to avoid an embarrassing Game of Thrones-style cup mistake on set. The HBO show dominated TV throughout the 2010s until ending in early 2019, though, many Game of Thrones fans believe the series suffered a major decline in quality in its later seasons. In fact, ever since the series aired its final season, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been accused of caring more about getting to the finish line than anything else. One example that is frequently used by fans was Game of Thrones season 8's infamous coffee cup moment, when a Starbucks cup was left in a shot during a key scene. The very obvious mistake was immediately spotted by fans, but seemingly, not by the entire creative team on the show. Now, it turns out The Umbrella Academy almost had its own coffee cup moment in season 2.
The hit Netflix show released its second season in late July, and was immediately hailed for taking its familiar characters in new and unexpected directions. Featuring the return of the Hargreeves family, season 2 followed the siblings as they slowly reunited in Dallas in the early 1960s. The season 2 plot took on a number of common 1960s topics, including the assassination of JFK, religious cults, and the civil rights movement.
The season 2 blooper reel, posted by AidanRGallagher on YouTube contains a brief scene revealing that David Castañeda (Diego) managed to spot a can of club soda sitting on set that would have definitely been out of place in the show's 1960s Dallas setting. He immediately starts shouting "Game of Thrones," referring to the coffee cup mistake, prompting Tom Hopper (Luther) to pick it up and take it out of frame, saving the show from either having to reshoot the scene, or keep the mistake in only for it to likely be discovered later by fans. You can watch the full Umbrella Academy season 2 blooper reel below, with the incident in question taking place at 3:35:
The rest of the blooper reel is worth a watch, as it mainly shows off the strong bond the Umbrella Academy cast have formed over the past two seasons of shooting. That was already on display in a previous video released by Netflix too, which focused on the Umbrella Academy season 2 finale rewrite that was caused by a freak snowstorm in Canada. While The Umbrella Academy hasn't quite reached the same levels of popularity as Game of Thrones either, the comparisons between the two shows do go further than a potential coffee cup mistake.
For starters, both shows are adaptations of already beloved properties, and both feature appealing ensemble casts. Notably, The Umbrella Academy's characters are going to continue growing in season 3 as well, with the inclusion of a new family of alternate timeline superheroes and the potential introduction of a new villain created by the events of season 2. In other words, the ambition behind The Umbrella Academy seems to be expanding with each new season, though there's no telling if the show will ever quite reach the scale and scope that Game of Thrones did. But no matter what happens going forward, at least The Umbrella Academy cast seems to have learned from the mistakes of the Game of Thrones cast members.
Source: AidanRGallagher