Prior to the debut of The Umbrella Academy season 2, showrunner Steve Blackman promised Den of Geek that there would be plenty of Easter eggs.
“There are tons,” he said. “We specifically wanted to sit down and say, ‘Here are the Easter eggs we want to put in, let’s make a list of them.’ They’re everywhere. I think the fans will get a real kick once you start realizing what we’ve put in.”
We did our best to find as many Easter eggs as we could over here. But according to a new tweet from Netflix, the scope of The Umbrella Academy season 2’s hidden gems was far bigger than anyone realized.
That’s right. There are 43…FOUR-THREE sparrows hidden throughout The Umbrella Academy season 2’s 10 episodes. Some attentive viewers have already begun pointing out the birds. Sparrows pop up on The Handler’s bath towel, on a bar tap, in Hargreeves’s notes, and even on a Pogo candy bar in Five’s ‘80s excursion.
Both the number 43 and the sparrow imagery are significant to the show. 43 is the same number of extraordinary children born on Oct. 1, 1989. Seven of these children would be adopted by Reginald Hargreeves and go on to become The Umbrella Academy. Season 2 introduces an eighth Oct. 1 baby in the form of Lila. But then it goes further and introduces a whole new team.
That, of course, is where the “sparrow” part of the equation comes in. In the final moments of the season, The Umbrella Academy arrives back in the present but it’s not their present. Instead of Hargreeves founding The Umbrella Academy, he founded The Sparrow Academy, featuring all new members of the original 43 extraordinary children.
We went deep on the implications of The Sparrow Academy for the show over here, but the long and short of it is that Reggie Hargreeves met his “children” in the 1960s and likely decided he wasn’t all that impressed. The world was in need of a more effective evil-fighting team. At least Ben Hargreeves made the cut.
The Sparrow Academy was also a part of The Umbrella Academy comic book series, though they don’t turn up until the end of the show’s third volume. Blackman explained his decision to introduce the Sparrow Academy early thusly:
“I have a wonderful collaboration with Gerard and we talk a lot about where he wants to go with the different volumes of the comics. I had an idea for the end of this season, a little similar to what the Sparrows were. When I heard he was doing the Sparrows, I got super excited.”
In taking a feather out of The Haunting of Hill House’s ghost book, The Umbrella Academy season 2 foreshadowed its own ending a bit. It also gave fans something to look forward to on a rewatch, so get bird-watching!