Does The Umbrella Academy's season 2 marketing hold the key to where (or more accurately, when) each character will be once the Netflix series returns? At the end of a hugely positive debut season, The Umbrella Academy's Hargreeves siblings fail to stop the apocalypse. Realizing too late that the cause of the destruction was their own sister (Ellen Page's Vanya), Number 5 gathers up the gang and hurls everyone back through time, leaving The Umbrella Academy season 1 on a tantalizing cliffhanger as Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, 5, Ben and Vanya head to the past and must find a way of preventing the end of the world in 2019.
With plenty of time to speculate before season 2, The Umbrella Academy fans have been theorizing over when in Earth's history the Hargreeves siblings might land, especially since Number 5's time travel is notoriously unpredictable. One popular theory is that The Umbrella Academy season 2 will be set largely in the 1960s. The original comic books by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba feature a storyline where the Academy prevent the apocalypse by influencing the assassination of JFK, and this is something that could be worked into season 2. However, some suggest that each character could wind up in a different era altogether, with Number 5 rounding his brothers and sisters up over the course of the season.
Mysterious new posters for The Umbrella Academy season 2 appear to support that second theory. Each of the siblings get their own image but with all faces obscured by umbrellas. Curiously, the 7 characters are dressed in era-specific outfits that they usually wouldn't be seen dead in, and the posters were also released in a very deliberate order that doesn't correlate to the Academy's usual numbers. The posters were unveiled in the following way: 6, 4, 3, 1, 2, 7, 5.
Although the posters' meaning can only be guessed at for now, it's possible the images were posted in order of the time period each sibling has arrived in at the beginning of The Umbrella Academy's second season. Working on this basis, each costume appears to get progressively more modern. First, there's Ben, who is dressed exactly as he was in season 1. This is likely because Ben is a ghost - not only is he stuck wearing the clothes he died in, he doesn't need to change outfits to blend in. Next is Klaus. This makes sense as Klaus is haunted by Ben, so the pair would naturally end up in the same time period. The Clairvoyant is wearing a frilly, magical number that doesn't really fit neatly in any era. Clearly, time travel hasn't changed Klaus' unique sense of fashion.
Allison comes next, and her costume is far more helpful - The Rumor's yellow and white dress looks like something straight from the 1950s. The fourth poster is the Academy's leader, Luther, who is in another old fashioned getup. The high-waist trousers and belt combo along with biker gloves are in line with the late 1950s; something that might've been worn by an extra in Grease. The knife-wielding Diego is up next and appears in an unashamedly 1970s ensemble. With a tucked-in wallpaper design shirt and cringe-worthy goatee, Diego looks retro, but closer to the modern day than Allison and Luther. That trend continues with Vanya, who is wearing a plaid shirt and double-denim, giving off a 1980s or 1990s vibe and looking like she's just about to go and see Pearl Jam. Finally, Number 5 is still in his usual uniform, perhaps signalling that he's either not restricted to any specific time period, or he's close enough to 2019 not to need a disguise.
Whatever the hidden message, the focus of the new poster release is firmly on the specific order and the old outfits. There could be a correlation between the two but the theory isn't water-tight, with Klaus not fitting neatly into any specific era. Consequently, The Umbrella Academy season 2's time travelling remains a mystery, but it certainly seems like the Hargreeves gang will be taking in multiple eras upon their long-awaited return.
The Umbrella Academy season 2 premieres July 31st on Netflix.