#sparrow panic

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The TUA Instagram deleted all their posts...they’re really gonna lean into this erased/new timeline thing aren’t they...I’m scared...

[kneworder]

GOD OKAY NOT TO KEEP BEING NEGATIVE BUT

anyone else feel like. extremely worried when they saw the s3 cast announcement? bc like. I guess for some reason I didn’t think the Sparrows were going to be that relevant? like I assumed they’d be antagonists, or some kind of plot device that forces the Umbrellas to think about their own childhood, and that the real plot would just be like,,, something else? finding their way back home, or confronting the versions of themselves that weren’t adopted by r*ggie? but I don’t see us getting a character rundown of each Sparrow unless they are, in fact, going to be extremely relevant.

i just. i don’t want six new characters????? like there are already so many???? and even if the show starts to focus on how the Umbrellas relate to and communicate with the Sparrows that’s still? making them? share focus? in a show where focus is already spread thin???? 

I’M JUST REALLY WORRIED LIKE. MAYBE IT’LL BE COMPLETELY FINE AND I’M WORRIED FOR NOTHING BUT. IM STILL WORRIED. 

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I mean…it’s so cool to get a look at the Sparrow’s (especially Ben) I’m definitely curious why some of them look the way they look but…*Joyce Byers voice* where’s my boy???

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Aight, now that we know filming for S3 is almost done (omg). What are your hopes/fears about S3 realistically? Your theories or anything else, I JUST WANNA KNOW :) You don't have to answer if it's too vague haha

Ahhh thank you! Honestly I’m very flattered you wanna know my thoughts. 🥺💙

I’m super excited and a tad bit nervous but I’ve definitely missed TUA content so I am kinda hyped lol. I think realistically my hopes for S3 are:

That we get to see some different sides of Five.

I hope we get to see Five do a bit more this season than just rush around and try to stop the apocalypse. Whatever form it might takes, I hope we can sorta see him in some different settings/dynamics. Like maybe an arc that deals more with his emotions/trauma or even just getting to see him do something fun that isn’t life or death. He hasn’t really been able to do those things so I hope we see something like that this season 🤞

I really want to see Ben’s room

I know that seems like kind of an odd hope but we’ve never seen his room and I wanna see how he has it decorated and then go over it with a fine-tooth comb and make headcanons about his interests 🤣

I hope we see everyone continue to develop their powers.

I feel like there’s definitely still room to develop them! Like obviously Klaus still has abilities to unlock, which I really wanna see, but I think the others have room for development and exploration. Like Allison, I would love to see her sorta get to a point where she’s at peace with her rumors and possibly even explore the reality-altering aspects of them. And Diego, just how powerful is his projectile manipulation and can he actually breathe underwater?? Then there’s Luther, I mean his powers have had almost no exploration. He’s strong and he’s durable but is there anything else to it than that? Just how fast is his metabolism? What was his physiology like before the accident? Luther definitely deserves some development lol. And then there’s Lila, I feel like there’s still more to learn about her powers and some stuff that could be clarified, so I hope we see some of that.

As for my fears, honestly they mostly have to do with the Sparrows and how the show will handle them. I think my biggest one is—

Sparrow Ben

I’m so excited to have a living Ben but I’m also so scared. We really got very very little development for our Ben over the past two seasons and almost all the development he got was tied in with Klaus somehow because that was his tether. I really want to see more of his character and his powers but...this is sparrow Ben. I guess I just really hope they don’t mess up his character. It’s always sort of been a pet peeve of mine when they do this sort of thing with a character. Plus...like...I personally don’t really wanna see Ben have a new family?? I just want him to be with the umbrellas. But, that being said I am still hopeful that this whole thing is for his overall development and that they’ll do right by him.

The Sparrows

Honestly I’m just really nervous about the sparrows. I’m feeling the sparrow panic lol. Ultimately I guess I just hope they don’t try to do too much with them and it ends up overcrowding the season and impacting the main characters’ development. The sparrows are an interesting concept but I’m personally here for the umbrellas so I hope the show doesn’t lean too heavily into the ‘new team/family’ idea.

Those are just my thoughts. Thank you again for the ask! 💕

[kneworder]

I’ve seen a few TUA 3 wishlists but I’ve been disappointed by my favorite shows a few too many times, so here’s everything I’m literally begging them NOT to do in TUA 3:

- Spend a lot of time on the Sparrow Academy. Not because I don’t think that would be interesting, but, as I’ve seen other people say, there’s so much I want to see out of the Umbrella cast. Honestly, I care so little about the Sparrow Academy members -- they’re not the characters I’m attached to. I’m terrified that Umbrella development and plotlines are going to be sacrificed in favor of the Sparrows, or even worse, neither group will get anything meaningful because the show is spread so thin balancing 6 new characters. 

- Spend a lot of time deeply developing relationships between Sparrows and Umbrellas. Again, I literally do not care about the Sparrows outside of them being side characters/antagonists/plot devices. I swear if we get Five or Allison bonding with random new Sparrows when they’ve barely had any scenes together I’ll be furious. 

- Vanya starts the apocalypse again. Or actually? The apocalypse is a conflict at all. It was great round 1, it was fine round 2, it’ll be repetitive if it happens yet another time. I know Vanya is supposed to always be the bomb, but p l e a s e give them another conflict, I’m begging. 

- Fan favorites never face any repercussions for their actions. This is a smaller one that mostly comes from a place being annoyed that Klaus got to start a cult and cut Ben off from the rest of the family and never got seriously called on it, and that Vanya straight up ended the world (understandable given the circumstances, but still) and then got amnesia-ed out of a real conversation about that. I don’t hate these characters, I’d just appreciate it if the gravity of their actions was examined, I guess? 

- Adding onto that, PLEASE no outrageous fanservice at the expense of character. I love contrite himbo Luther as much as the next person, but we only got that because of the fan reaction to his character. And while that isn’t necessarily a problem, I’ve seen shows that try so hard to please their audiences by putting fan favorites in more prominent positions and sticking with the same team-ups people already liked and, in doing so, reduce their characters to the one-note that the loudest part of the fandom already has (sorry, but I’m looking at you, ST3). Extremely worried that between the new influx of characters and the precedent for (slight) fanservice, they’ll go overboard and flanderize all the characters we know and love into bastardized and simplified versions of themselves. This especially applies to Five  -- he has very specific traits (small, angry, violent) that he can easily be flattened into, and hasn’t gotten to experience an arc heavy on character rather than plot -- and to Klaus -- similarly specific traits (hedonist, funny, angsty) he can be and in some ways already has been flattened into. 

- Five gets a love interest, please that would feel weird and wrong on literally every level.

- Actually, personally, I don’t really want to see any of them get love interests. This is a show that’s supposed to focus on family, and straying too far from that theme will just turn it into an ensemble show. I had no issues with Lila, Ray, and Sissy! But the reason they worked was because the time skip allowed for the conceivable formation of relationships between them and characters cut off from their siblings. There (probably) won’t be a significant time skip this time around, so new romantic relationships would be little out of left field. 

- Soundtrack that bangs but is irrelevant, or, far worse, a boring soundtrack. S2 had a good soundtrack, but S1 had a soundtrack that fit each scene specifically. The music felt like a character, and I’d hate to see the show move away from something so unique and interesting! (Plus the soundtrack makes up some of my most listened to music so. Please guys, I need new music.) 

- Allison (& Claire) get shelved. Allison’s daughter was just literally unmade. Please give Allison a solid and central plotline. (Ideally, Allison would drive the action because she has the most skin in the game, while Five would get to take a break from being the connector since all of his key motivations have been accomplished, but that’s just me!). 

So that’s just. A few things. tbh I’ll probably think of more, this genuinely makes me so nervous. 

tl;dr, All I want is for them to keep the focus on the siblings, remain character driven, and stay away from repetitive story arcs. Please, I am begging for TUA to stay good,,,,,,

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What are your thoughts on the sparrow pin on Five’s uniform from the poster?

Lol I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t sure at first what pin people kept referencing because it wasn’t on the character posters or any of the other promo posted on Instagram. But yeah, I found it. 🤣

Personally? I think it’s a nice touch but I don’t know that it necessarily is meant to hint at sparrow five...idk, I’m not *personally* sold lol

The thing is, the promotional department is not the writer's room, and while they usually do a pretty good job at making meaningful promo material, some of the material for S2 was kind of all over the place and didn’t really have much significance. And I’ll be honest, this poster feels kind of all over the place as well and like there isn’t much symbolism 😅

I think what they were trying to do here was sorta incorporate all the elements of S2 (in a big umbrella) and group alike things together.

So like Lila, the Swedes, and the Handler (the commission) are all at the bottom with the briefcase. Reginald, Grace, and Pogo are all grouped together. All the new characters (Ray, Sissy, and Elliot) are grouped together and not near anyone they actually have significance to in the plot.

The scenes in the background aren’t near the people they have relevance to.

The closest thing to foreshadowing is Vanya by the Soviet flag and the newspaper article, but again that could just be all the apocalypse things grouped together.

As for the sparrow symbol, Five is the only character with an academy symbol/uniform so it’s possible they just wanted to group the Sparrow symbol with the Umbrella symbol because of their relevance to each other.

The other thing is, if they were gonna foreshadow, I personally think it would seem a little odd to foreshadow Five when S3 wasn’t written or confirmed yet, but not foreshadow Ben when he was a confirmed Sparrow Academy member by the end of the season.

Idk, that’s just me. I could be totally wrong and it actually is foreshadowing. But it just seems a little odd to me and it’s not on any of the other promo material, so I’m not 100% convinced it’s meant to hint at Sparrow Five as of right now lol

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What if the only outfit change Five gets next season is a sparrow uniform? 😭 you’ve probably talked about the evil!Five theory before and yeah I get that he looked up to Reggie in S2 and that his advice saved everyone’s life but I just can’t see how it would work. Five loves his siblings too much.

Anon that is literally my

ONE FEAR

Like seriously. If he gets a costume change and it’s just a freaking sparrow uniform I’m probably gonna go feral unless it’s a damn good uniform but I’ll probably still have a teeny tiny meltdown

But honestly? Unless it’s done a particular way (like brainwashing or mind control or it all being an act) I just can’t see Five joining the Sparrows and abandoning his siblings. He’s literally fought his entire life for them and has defied time itself for them, so I just don’t see him realistically betraying them or leaving them at this point. Not unless it’s against his will or to somehow save them.

And truthfully, I don’t think that Five’s opinion of Reginald is that much better than that of his siblings. I think that how he was toward Reginald in S2 was just a way to reflect that even though Five doesn’t really acknowledge Reginald that much, he’s still affected by him and their messed up childhood. He still unconsciously seeks his approval because it was engrained in him like it was everyone else.

“We all wanted to be loved by a man incapable of giving love.”

Five wants to be loved, he wants to be forgiven. He feels guilty for what happened. Not only as a child but also because he scattered his siblings. Honestly, now that I really think about it, I think Five going to Reginald was ironic and sad and poetic and just speaks of how damaged he actually is.

Five messed up and got stuck in the apocalypse and Reginald was the original person that TOLD HIM HE WOULD. Five kept messing up, and it was one thing when it just affected him and his body but then it affected HIS SIBLINGS and he couldn’t deal with that. So he went to Reginald, and perhaps it was less about Reginald and more about Five’s personal healing?

Reginald gave him advise that helped him get over his original problem/trauma, which was failing to be able to correctly time travel and failing to save his siblings. And Five also apologized and as much as I hate anyone apologizing to Reggie, it was something that had been eating at him for DECADES.

So maybe it was just something he needed to get out of the way so he could finally let go of his past failures? Maybe his encounter with Reginald was just apart of his arc and a way to bring his original mistake full circle to his success.

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Honestly until I see something about S3 that makes me excited and not nervous for the characters/sibling relationships I am here for, I’m simply going to Pretend I Do Not See It. What even is a sparrow? Have you ever seen one?? I don’t think I have. Birds aren’t even real. They’re just a conspiracy perpetrated by the government. I’ve never seen a bird and neither have you. Anyway, can’t wait for my 10 episodes of pure umbrella sibling bonding where Five gets multiple hugs and has a nice day.