The Umbrella Academy season 2 ended on a major cliffhanger with the reveal of the Sparrow Academy taking the place of the title team in the present day, and among the Sparrow members is Ben. Another surprise was that the Sparrow Academy has a big portrait of Ben where Five’s used to be, but why? The Umbrella Academy is a series of comic books written by Gerard Way and illustrated by Gabriel Bá that made the jump to the world of streaming thanks to Netflix in February 2019. The first season was a big success, and it didn’t take long for the show to be renewed for a second season, which arrived in July 2020.
The Umbrella Academy follows the Hargreeves, seven adopted siblings who, along with other 36 babies around the world, were born on the same day, at the same time, and to women who weren’t pregnant when the day began. This event caught the attention of scientist and billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves, who set out to adopt as many of those babies as he could but only got seven of them. As the kids developed unique superpowers, Reginald trained them and formed the team “The Umbrella Academy”, but the kids ended up parting ways as years passed. After not seeing or talking to each other for years, the Hargreeves reunited for Reginald’s funeral and to stop the apocalypse, but they failed to do so, and their only solution was to jump to a safer place and point in time. The Umbrella Academy season 2, then, reunited with the Hargreeves in Dallas, Texas, in the 1960s.
The team had to join forces once again in 1963 to stop another apocalypse, and they truly did it this time, but all their actions in the 1960s had major consequences in the present day. When the Hargreeves finally returned to their present, in 2019, they were shocked to learn that Reginald was still alive and there’s no such thing as the Umbrella Academy, as he instead formed the Sparrow Academy with different kids, with their only connecting link being Ben (Justin H. Min), who is alive in this timeline. The Umbrellas were initially confused and shocked to see that, on the wall where Five’s portrait used to be, there’s now a portrait of Ben, who then appeared and asked Reginald who the others were. In the Umbrellas’ original timeline, a portrait of Five was placed after he “disappeared” when he jumped to the future and couldn’t return, so it was initially believed Ben’s portrait was there as he was the only member of the team who had died, but his appearance a few seconds later shut that down.
The question, then, is why Reginald and the Sparrow Academy have a big portrait of Ben hanging on the wall if he’s alive and well in this new timeline. Fans have come up with different interpretations and theories on this, such as Ben from the Sparrow Academy being a twin and the portrait being that of his deceased brother. Others have suggested that Ben went missing at some point and his portrait was placed there during his absence and kept when he returned, while some think he might have died too (which would also explain the scars on his face) but was resurrected by one of his Sparrow siblings, similar to what Vanya did with Harlan in season 2. It was also believed that Ben was the Number One of the Sparrow Academy and that’s why his portrait was placed there, but the announcement of the Sparrow cast revealed Ben is actually Number Two.
It’s also possible that Sparrow Academy Ben is Reginald’s favorite, for some reason, so he chose to put his portrait on the wall even though he’s not the leader and he’s alive and well. Ben’s portrait hanging where Five’s used to be is a detail that Umbrella Academy fans have been discussing since season 2 came out, and hopefully, this will be solved in season 3, along with many other mysteries about the Sparrow Academy.