Warning: SPOILERS ahead for The Umbrella Academy season 2.
The Umbrella Academy season 2 weaves real history and crazy sci-fi together into one fantastic story. The best time travel adventures explore the past in an immersive way, blending fact and fiction together to create a stunning narrative. The Umbrella Academy season 2 is undoubtedly a perfect example, with the students of the Umbrella Academy arriving in Dallas and getting caught up in the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
The bulk of The Umbrella Academy season 2 is set in 1963, in the days before the death of President Kennedy. Amusingly enough, Diego is the only one of the Hargreeves siblings to decide to change history; when he realizes what time period he's in, he immediately begins to stalk Lee Harvey Oswald, planning to cut off his trigger finger so he can't fire a gun. Events take a sinister turn when Five overhears their father Reginald Hargreeves in a meeting that seems to be anticipating the assassination. It seems that, in the world of The Umbrella Academy, a crashed UFO at Roswell, New Mexico transformed the Space Race. America subsequently used alien technology to beat the Russians, but President Kennedy began to question this, and so had to be killed. Astoundingly, in 2011 author William Lester actually claimed to uncover a top-secret memo dated November 12, 1963, in which Kennedy apparently ordered the CIA director to organize his department's UFO files and present him with a briefing on all "unknowns" by the following February. Ten days later, Kennedy was dead.
The memo's authenticity is disputed, but this clearly shows the approach The Umbrella Academy is taking to history. The writers have done a tremendous amount of research - so what is the true story of Dallas in 1963, and how does it compare to the tale told in The Umbrella Academy season 2?
The FBI Really Did Have A Permanent Presence In Dallas
In The Umbrella Academy season 2, the apocalypse is the result of an FBI presence in Dallas. The FBI became interested in Vanya when she demonstrated her powers in an attack on a group of police officers, and they took her to their building in Dallas. Believing her to be a Russian agent, they subjected her to torture, but unwittingly unleashed her true power - causing a devastating explosion. This changed history, with the Kennedy motorcade rushing away from Dallas and the president consequently never becoming the victim of an assassination. The Russians were blamed for the explosion, and it all led to nuclear war. Fortunately, this timeline was averted when Ben sacrificed himself to save Vanya. The FBI has indeed had a presence in Dallas since as far back as 1914, when Special Agent Howard P. Wright was sent there to investigate rising food prices; they established a permanent office in 1916. There's no evidence they tortured a suspected Russian spy in 1963, though, still less that there was a mysterious bloodbath.
Kennedy's Visit Really Did Cause Racial Protests
The civil rights movement was in full swing during Kennedy's time as president. Just a few weeks before the 1960 election, the Kennedys personally intervened to help secure the release of Martin Luther King Jr., who'd been arrested in Alabama. JFK was seen as a hero to the civil rights movement for doing so, and more than 70 percent of African Americans voted for him. Unfortunately Kennedy only won by a narrow margin, and he had a very small working majority in Congress. As a result, he took a cautious and pragmatic approach, unwilling to lose the support of southern states. But pressure continued to build, and Kennedy's hand was forced when Alabama Governor George Wallace protested in defense of segregated education. Kennedy began preparing for the 1964 election, proposing a comprehensive civil rights package.
Had he not been assassinated, this civil rights legislation may well have ultimately cost Kennedy that election. The Democrats began to fracture over it, and Kennedy's Republican opponent Barry Goldwater was proving increasingly popular in the southern states. Kennedy announced a two-day tour of Texas in an attempt to ease tensions ahead of the election, and there really were popular sit-in protests in Dallas in the days preceding his visit. Ironically, Kennedy's assassination in Dallas changed the whole ball-game, with the Civil Rights Act passed in his honor.
The True Story of The Umbrella Man
In a genius move, The Umbrella Academy picks up on one of the (many) strange features of the Kennedy assassination. Photographs did indeed show a mystery man standing on a grassy knoll holding an umbrella, which seemed distinctly odd given it was a clear day. In a quirk of timing, the so-called "Umbrella Man" actually did open his umbrella, for no visible reason, just moments before the gunshot. Conspiracy theorists have long suggested the Umbrella Man was somehow involved in the assassination, popping open his umbrella as a signal to a sniper to go ahead; another popular theory suggests his umbrella could shoot a poison dart. The idea gained traction in popular culture, and was even the basis of an episode of The X-Files.
In 1978, a man called Louie Steven Witt responded to an appeal by the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations and claimed to be the Umbrella Man. As he explained it, this was intended as something of a protest against Kennedy - nothing to do with the assassination at all. A black umbrella had been associated with the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, a prominent proponent of the appeasement policy that allowed Hitler to rise to power in Nazi Germany. The Kennedy family had historic ties to Chamberlain, and so protesters against Kennedy had indeed occasionally used a black umbrella. A bemused Witt explained he hadn't even been aware of the conspiracy theories before the HSCA appeal, and seemed rather astounded to be asked whether his umbrella had ever carried a poison dart gun. "If the Guinness Book of World Records had a category for people doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place, I would be No. 1 in that position," Witt observed, "with not even a close runner-up."
In The Umbrella Academy season 2, the Umbrella Man is actually a man who works for Sir Reginald Hargreeves, who is used as a decoy to distract the Umbrella Academy. The show invents a new piece of footage from the JFK assassination called "The Frankel Footage," in which the Umbrella Man is clearly visible - and looks a lot like Reginald Hargreeves. The Frankel footage isn't real, but there is a famous piece of footage called the Zapruder film, which was a shot by a home movie hobbyist called Abraham Zapruder and captured the horrifying moment of Kennedy's death.
The Death of President Kennedy
In the end, Diego's attempt to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy was doomed to failure. Just as in the real world, on November 22, 1963, the President's motorcade drove past the Texas School Book Depository. Suddenly crowds were shocked at the sound of gunfire, and JFK was fatally wounded. Police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald for the crime, but he too was killed on November 24 while he was being transferred from police headquarters to the county jail.
Oswald's killer was a local nightclub owner called Jack Ruby, a prominent figure in the local criminal underworld who plied policemen with drink, drugs, and prostitutes in order to ensure they stayed on his side. Ruby insisted grief over the assassination had driven him to a state of "psychomotor epilepsy" in which he shot Oswald unconsciously. Jack Ruby sits at the heart of many conspiracy theories, with claims he killed Oswald so he could not reveal the truth about the assassination of Kennedy. Jack Ruby also appears in The Umbrella Academy season 2, played by John Kapelos. He's Luther's boss, who is the owner of a nightclub where Luther has been serving as a bouncer, and pays Luther to take part in rigged fights. Ruby ultimately fires Luther after he lets himself get beaten in a fight he was supposed to win, and it's unknown whether Luther's interactions with Ruby had any long-lasting impact on the timeline.