What Really Happened To Dave On The Umbrella Academy Season 2?

Contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy season 2

Time travel is messy.

One minute you're traveling back to 1985, the next minute you find yourself in 1885. Unfortunately for show-stealer Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), he has a big appetite when it comes to time travel and tends to overestimate his abilities. Season two places The Umbrella Academy's Hargreeves in 1960s Dallas. While stopping yet another apocalypse from occurring is the main goal, shooting back to the '60s also gives Klaus Hargreeves (Robert Sheehan) the opportunity to reunite with his lost love Dave (Calem MacDonald).

Dave and Klaus' relationship dates back to season one when Dave, a fellow soldier during the Vietnam War, and Klaus were lovers. Dave tragically passed away during combat in season one, and Klaus took it pretty hard. After appearing in the decade that made bell-bottoms famous for a second time, Klaus tries to stop a younger Dave from enlisting in the war to — fingers crossed — possibly save him from his not-so-inevitable demise. 

Klaus' diner conversation with a younger, closeted Dave doesn't go great. Klaus comes off as a crazy person, earning him a punch instead of the kiss he was hoping for. Wounded and bereft at his failure, Klaus returns to his cult, where Dave later shows up and apologizes for the diner incident. Dave tells him his uncle pushed him into enlisting, and so it begins again. Or does it?

With the timeline subtly altered, and Dave now aware of his death, Klaus' hope that events will yield a still-living Dave at the end of the war. Instead of seeing him die on the screen, the audience sees him — still alive — getting on the bus to join the military. That begs the question: Is Dave still doomed?

As an eagle-eyed Reddit user posting by the name of u/InhumanDeviant points out, Dave was in the Army in season one and it would appear he's joining the Marines in season two, as a man calls him a Marine when he gets on the bus. This could be very significant.

Dave isn't shown dying on the screen in the second season, which is always a good sign. If the show writers want to bring Dave back for the third chapter, then they can as he is still technically alive at the conclusion of the second season as far as we know. If he still died, well, Klaus is in a unique position to confirm it. 

The Hargreeves family's actions in the past have serious consequences for the future. Case in point: Season two ends with everyone's favorite dysfunctional superhero family returning to the academy in 2019 to find the academy for which the show is titled changed to the Sparrow Academy. Plus — wait for it — their father and previously deceased brother Ben (Justin H. Min) are still alive. But that's a bigger question for a different time. The point being, if what occurred throughout season two in 1960s Dallas can change the future at the end of the season in 2019, then surely Dave enlisting at a later date — and quite possibly with a different branch — holds some time-altering weight. Dave could still be alive after all. We'll just have to wait and see.