Curate, connect, and discover
Is Mr Poe an ex vfd volunteer?
We know that the baudelaire parents threw parties with very specific friend(s), Poe being one of them. All other friend(s) of the baudelaire parents are implied/stated to be ex/current vfd volunteers. Why would they be friend with just a random banker?
Adding on to this, Poe is always there when misfortune falls onto the baudelaire children. As if his presence there causes it. What if it actually did?
Think about it, what startles the baudelaires that leads to Dewey Denoument's death? Poe. Who gets Jacques Snicket arrested and killed? Poe. He is always there.
Who gets the news first? Poe. Who tells the baudelaires about the fire? Poe.
Adding on to @femmefatalegoth Poe is a villain theory, if he wasn't an ex-volunteer, why else would he insist on never listening to the baudelaires? He only listens when indisputable evidence is shown.
Mr Poe gets treated horribly by Olaf when they 'meet', yet he speaks of the count kindly while talking to the children.
If he was an ex-volunteer– he must've left vfd. Why, you may ask, would he have a reason to leave vfd as a volunteer? Easy.
His children. To protect them from vfd recruitment.
Also, what reason would he have to be at the Vile Village? He says he's "running with this crowd!" A vague answer. Likewise, he's familiar with the rules of the VFD village— an old vfd station.
This all makes sense if Poe is an ex-volunteer. Why he knows so much about the baudelaires personal lives? He knew their parents very personally.
A cause for his cough? One theory from popsugar.com suggests it could be from fires he might've helped set. Another personal theory of mine is that it could be to do with the medusiod mycelium. We know it makes you cough a lot as by what happens to Sunny when she ingests it.
Could a younger vfd volunteer Poe be on a mission when he was exposed to the medusiod?
In both the book and the show, one of the lines in "The End" is "at this time Mr. Poe was better known as his stage name" suggesting that he was an actor at some point. Acting is a profession that a lot of vfd volunteer take on.
It is also stated that the baudelaire(s) smell smoke around figuratively (and sometimes literally).
We know that sometimes ex-volunteers that join the 'evil' side of the schism will put on a dumb act as to not be caught. Could this be why Poe is always so stupid?
Anyways.. thats just my two cents!