Characters / The Umbrella Academy (2019) - The Hargreeves Siblings

Character sheet for the Hargreeves siblings, the superpowered children adopted by Sir Reginald Hargreeves. These include the seven protagonists of The Umbrella Academy (2019), as well as others introduced later on.

For their counterparts in the source material, see here. Beware of marked and unmarked spoilers; all spoilers for Season 1 are unmarked.

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The Umbrella Academy

In General

From left to right: Diego, Five, Luther, Viktor, Klaus, Allison. Not pictured: Ben and Lila.

• Abusive Parents: All of them were raised by Reginald Hargeeves, who was emotionally and physically abusive towards them. As a result, they (sans Ben and Five) grew up to be, in the latter's words, "emotionally stunted Manchilds" in various ways.
• Achilles' Heel: It seems being under the effects of anything that alters brain chemistry will block their superpowers, from mild antidepressants and alcohol to heavy duty narcotics.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: The Hargreeves' appearances are much different in live-action, due to Gabriel Bá's stylized artstyle in the comic making a lot of the characters Gonk or Super-Deformed.
  • Klaus is the most prominent example◊. In the comic, he's described as looking like a extra in a Ingmar Berman film, with pale skin and a hook nose. In the show, he's played by Robert Sheehan who has a healthier skin tone, a straight nose, and often walks around in little clothing.
  • Five gets a bit of this as well. In the comic, he's often creepy, with shadowed eyelids and often has an unsettling facial expression. In the show, Five is played by Aiden Gallagher, who is more conventionally attractive◊ in contrast to his comic counterpart and even gets hit on by The Handler.
  • Diego in the comic has a generally disheveled appearance, with messy and greasy-looking hair and stubble. In the show he's played by David Castaneda, who's decidedly healthier looking◊. In Season 2, Klaus remarks that Diego's long hair and groomed beard makes him look like Antonio Banderas.
  • Luther's overlaps with Pragmatic Adaptation. In the comics, he's much more monstrous, with a normal head but the body of an actual gorilla◊ thanks to an experimental transplant to save his life. In the show, Luther's transformation is instead the result of an experimental serum which gave him a massive hairy ape-like torso and arms◊. While Luther himself is ashamed of his body, it doesn't prevent him from having a normal life or finding love, as a party girl he sleeps with while drunk finds his hairiness attractive.
  • Reginald Hargreeves is a wizened, squinty-eyed old grouch◊ in the comic. In the show, he's played by the dapper Colm Feore, who wears old man makeup that does little◊ to make him unattractive. Then again, it's just a mask to hide his alien Nightmare Face.
  • In the comics, Mother is a more traditional Robot Maid who is missing a distressing amount of her body like a biology dummy◊. In the show, Mother (aka Grace) is played by the very beautiful◊ Jordan Claire Robbins and seems human at first and second glance.
  • Inverted with Number Seven. In the comics, Vanya is tall and conventionally hot◊, even in her One-Winged Angel form (seen here◊). In the show, Elliot Page goes down the Beauty Inversion route as Viktor by dressing frumpily and looking homely. This was likely done as a contrast with his glamorous sister Allison, as well as to reflect Viktor’s shy, introverted character. Even when Viktor becomes the White Violin in the show, his appearance is more creepy◊ than attractive.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: They're considerably more functional and affectionate than their comic book counterparts.
• Aesop Amnesia: Zig-zagged for the entirety of Season 2. Despite realizing the importance of sticking together at the end of Season 1, all of them spend the entirety of Season 2 pursuing their own agendas, and even after reuniting most of them are still hung up on what they were already doing instead of stopping the apocalypse. However, they still manage to pull it together as their agendas converge.
• Badass Family: A dysfunctional and non-biological one, yes, but they were trained by Reginald to be a superpowered Sibling Team in their childhood. Although they have a harder time working together as adults, they're still a pretty formidable team when they get over their hang-ups. Even Viktor, post-powers reveal, and Ben as a ghost have their moments to show their abilities.
• Big Brother Instinct: The siblings are all the same age, but they are very defensive of each other. Five tends to invoke this a lot, being that he looks so young, which is ironic considering that’s he's actually way older.
  • Luther was designated as Number One, and therefore sees it as his responsibility to look after the team. He looks after a shitfaced Five, protects him from an incoming shootout, and defends Viktor during the attack on the academy.
  • Diego often acts as Klaus’s chauffeur, much to his own chagrin, and despite acting cold towards Viktor at first, is also ready to defend him at a moments notice. He also offers to donate blood to save Allison's life, despite apparently being afraid of needles.
  • Allison tries to be a Cool Big Sis towards Viktor, and tries to warn him about his possibly-a-stalker boyfriend. She also apparently was the closest to Klaus in their youth.
  • Klaus throws his arm out to keep Five away from a fight (though Five is less than pleased about this), and runs to pull Allison from a riot.
  • Five is an interesting case as he spent forty-five years in the apocalypse and is therefore older than all of his siblings despite looking way younger. He also spent all that time looking for a way to get back to his siblings to save them from the impending end of the world.
  • Ben is constantly trying to keep Klaus sober, with varying degrees of success, and talks him through a withdrawal-induced anxiety attack.
  • Viktor was the closest to Five as a child. It shows in their later years when he cleans Five’s wounds and worries about him when he leaves in the middle of the night, and tells Five that he doesn’t want to lose him again.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Most of the show is dedicated to exploring just how screwed-up the remains of the central family are as a result of living with Sir Reginald.
  Five: Our family is insane. It always has been.
• Butt-Monkey: Most of the main cast are pretty hapless, and they often have a tendency to involved in the worst situations.
• Child Soldiers: What they really were. Sir Hargreeves was clearly more interested in training them for some vague future conflict than treating them like children with emotional needs.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Their codenames from the comics (Spaceboy, the Kraken, the Rumor, the Séance, the Boy, the Horror, and the White Violin) are never used as aliases in the series proper, except for Claire identifying Luther as "Spaceboy" when on the phone with him. Extratextually, Viktor is referred to as the White Violin in a poster. Justified: Viktor aside, Reginald publicly acknowledged them as his children and as a superhero team making secret identities unnecessary, and Diego’s Adaptational Superpower Change means his codename of "Kraken" no longer works.
• De-power: Reginald and Allison's universal reset turns the team into regular humans, possibly as a result of Oblivion using them as Living Batteries during the reset.
• Domino Mask: When they were all still active members of the Umbrella Academy, these were part of their costumes. Diego still wears one in adulthood.
• Dysfunction Junction: As Klaus points out in Season 2, the healthiest member of the family both mentally and emotionally is Five, and he's a 58-year-old-assassin trapped in the body of a 15-year-old who carries a mannequin around and talks to it like a romantic partner.
• Establishing Character Moment: Although each member of the family gets their own, the entire family gets one to establish its dysfunctionality in Episode 1 when Luther puts on a song and everyone dances to it in different rooms. This is meant to show that this is a family that has things in common and is capable of caring for each other, but is also unable to reach out and communicate, being isolated from one another, which is a key issue between them.
• Epic Fail: The siblings ultimately fail to save the world, twice, because their instabilities and dysfunctions prevent them from acting on their full potential as a team. By the start of Season 2, Five gets to 1963 just in time to witness his siblings failing to prevent a third doomsday, even though this time they seem to have honed their powers and with Viktor and his abilities on their side this time, the world this time ended due to a nuclear war they couldn't stop or even predict, considering just 10 days before everything was right with the world. This is zigzagged in the rest of the season; they ultimately do succeed at saving the world (albeit resulting in several shenanigans that present them as people of interest by the 1960's government, and not being able to save President Kennedy), but find themselves in an alternate 2019 at the end.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: As they explain how Lila used their own abilities and Viktor makes a joking remark on the subject, they realize that she is one of the children that were spontaneously born on the first of October 1989.
• Failure Hero: As adults, the siblings have become a group of emotionally unstable screw-ups that are incapable of teamwork. Even with the threat of apocalypse looming over them, none of them are actually able to deal with it properly, either letting their own personal flaws get in the way or preferring to deal with personal matters over saving the world. By the end of Season 1, they've failed to stop the apocalypse twice over, and they barely manage to save themselves. Season 2 ends with them celebrating the fact that they actually saved the world, only to discover that yet another apocalypse is coming as a result of their actions in the sixties.
• Fatal Flaw: All of the siblings are deeply flawed people in specific ways, in large part due to their sheltered upbringings:
  • Luther is naïve and insecure with little to no social skills.
  • Diego is abrasive and reckless with the emotional maturity of a teenage boy.
  • Allison is somewhat manipulative and has trouble directly communicating with others. Her selfishness contributes to her eventual Sanity Slippage.
  • Klaus is self-absorbed and very, very prone to drug and alcohol addiction in times of distress.
  • Five is an Insufferable Genius who doesn't always take well to being in the wrong or working with people less competent than him.
  • Viktor has a critically fragile and immature sense of self-esteem, especially during Season 1.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: With their respective powers, all of the siblings can fit in either part of the trope.
  • As the fighter, there is Luther, with his Super-Strength-induced punches in addition to his gorilla-like body, and Ben, with his Lovecraftian Superpower being able to wipe out rooms of intruders.
  • As the mage, there is Allison, who uses her powers to order her enemies to get rid of themselves, Klaus, who can summon legions of undead to fight for him, and Viktor, whose sound-based powers and their destructive long-ranged effects make him the biggest Glass Cannon of the cast.
  • As the thief, there is Five, who uses Teleport Spam to surprise his enemies with his Combat Pragmatist tendencies, and Diego, who must use his powers creatively to fight stronger opponents.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: While Reginald Hargreeves' mistreatment of his children is generally played humorlessly, there are quite a few jokes about how much all seven of them hated living with him.
  Reginald Hargreeves: Fun and games are restricted to Saturdays between the hours of noon and noon-thirty!
• Incompletely Trained: All of them have very little control over their powers. Aside from Diego, who uses his to fight crime, most of them haven't even bothered developing their powers to the standards Sir Reginald expected of them when they were children. It didn't help that he never bothered to praise them, as shown by his constant disappointment in the flashbacks to their training montages. Season 3 suggests that this was at least partially deliberate, as the new timeline's Sir Reginald concludes that he's far too brilliant to have ever left the Umbrella's so poorly trained unless he intentionally never developed their powers to their fullest extent so that he could control them.
  • Klaus' mediumship is shown to be capable of summoning the dead. This makes his interactions with ghosts and humans alike, and his ability to function in normal society, a huge Morton's Fork dilemma (though his drug usage hasn't exactly helped matters). The beginning of Season 2 reveals that Klaus can summon legions of undead under his control, in addition to making them all tangible for extended periods of time. In season 3, after some guidance from the Sparrow timeline Reginald, Klaus learns to both control ghosts and his resurrection power extremely well. However, he does still have trouble manifesting tangible ghosts for long periods of time.
  • Diego's trajectory manipulation (read: ability to curve the directions of his knife throwing) is hinted to be a weak form of telekinesis, which can potentially become a predictable fighting style against an opponent stealthier and faster than him. Season 2 reveals that he's figured out how to completely manipulate the trajectory of objects fired at him and even halt them mid-air, although that requires some significant effort to sustain.
  • Luther's super strength is greater than he exerts, so he's limited to fighting smaller opponents and short periods of tanking. However, Season 2 shows that he isn't just limited to strength. He can leap from tall buildings and land with no ill effect, then takes a tank missile to the back that sets him on fire like it was nothing.
  • Five can teleport and travel through time, but he only recently unlocked the latter ability and has difficulty fine-tuning the time period he wants to get to. It's also quite exhausting for him, and stops working after a certain number of "jumps." In Season 2, after he gets some genuinely good advice from the Reginald of that period, Five learns to rewind time, although that does seem to take a huge amount of energy out of him.
  • Allison is hinted to only have an extremely basic grasp of her powers, being restricted to activating them through close physical contact and the phrase "I heard a rumor". This leaves her vulnerable to attacks, specifically if an opponent were to go for her vocal cords. The opening scene to Season 2 hints that Allison's power is closer to that of her comic counterpart than the first season would lead viewers to believe, as she easily causes three soldiers' heads to explode.
  • Viktor, who has had the least amount of training in combat and power control, similarly has a very rudimentary grasp of his abilities. The fact that he didn't even know he had powers thanks to Reginald suppressing them for most of his life does not help. Under Leonard's tutelage, he learns that he can voluntarily start and stop his output of energy from absorbing external sounds around him, but this is hard for him to put into practice as his powers are linked to his emotional state. Even in Season 2, where he’s more in control of himself emotionally, he still has trouble grasping his abilities.
  • The Season 2's opening scene gives an incredible view of what each of the sibling's (save for Five) full potential looks like.
• Kid Hero: The Academy, sans Viktor, started fighting crime when they were pre-teens. To be more specific, their first ever public appearance as The Umbrella Academy took place 17 years ago, which means they were only around twelve years old.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: They fought crime when they were kids, but are still reeling from their father figure's abuse and have grown into emotionally stunted adults as a result. For the bulk of the story, they're about 29-30 years old, excluding time-travel shenanigans.
• Made of Iron: Five, Diego and Luther in particular can take punishment that their sister Allison and their other brothers Viktor and Klaus cannot. Despite having the body of a young teenager, Five survives getting shot in the side and doesn't succumb to blood loss until later on, and in Season 2 he gets buried under a pile of bricks and gets up again. Diego suffers all manner of injuries including getting stabbed in the chest, strangled with garrote wire and trapped under a tractor, but none of it is enough to kill him. Luther tanks a chandelier falling on him, lets himself get beaten bloody by an opponent boxer until he falls unconscious, and in the Bad Future he withstands a missile getting launched into his back. However, in Luther's case this may overlap with Super-Toughness.
  • Technically, Klaus counts too as he is able to resurrect even after his body has been evaporated by the kugelblitz. Between that, past deaths, his 'bus ball' training, being shot by Stan and eviscerated by the Guardian, he's taken more damage than all the others put together. He actually believed his body simply adhered to cartoon logic, with him simply waking away with stars comically floating around his head after taking damage.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Seven siblings, all with divergent personalities and abilities.
• Manchild: Played for Drama. Due to Reginald's severe abuse and neglect, all of the siblings (except Five, who had time to mature outside of Reginald's influence) are, in Five's words, "emotionally stunted man-children." Even Allison, who developed a career, marriage, and became a mother herself, is hampered by her complex issues with her powers and badly wants to escape her past.
• Mirror Character: All of the Hargreaves siblings present very differently in their lifestyles, career paths, and outward personalities. However, in one of the series' most well-known scenes, all of them in their separate rooms automatically start dancing to "I Think We're Alone Now," making it clear that they're not as different as they seem. They're all victims of their father's abuse one way or another, which shapes them into the adults they are.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: Their costumes were black in the comics, and this aspect is retained in the series, where their childhood uniforms were black. In the present, Diego's crime-fighting outfit is also black.
  • During the final showdown in Season 2, all of them wear black.
• Multinational Team: Hargreeves adopted the siblings from all over the world, though besides the Russian Viktor, their exact origins are not specified. Word of God says that when Grace helped them pick out their names, they chose ones popular in their home countries.
  • The Season 3 promotional material showed the main six character's birthplaces, with Luther being from Stockholm, Sweden; Diego from Mexico City, Mexico; Allison from Cape Town, South Africa; Klaus from Pennsylvania, United States; Five from Dublin, Ireland; and Viktor from Moscow, Russia.
  • Season 3 expands a bit and shows that Ben's mother was from Seoul, South Korea, while Klaus' mother was specifically an Amish woman in rural Pennsylvania.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Most of the family had a part to play in causing the apocalypse. Though many of their actions were by accident and/or due to their dysfunctions, their mistakes all pile up and cause everything to hit the fan.
  • Luther locks Viktor in the soundproof chamber while he was already near a breakdown, causing him to fully snap and go on a rampage.
  • Klaus threw away one of Sir Hargreeves' journals to pawn its box for drug money. Said journal, which contained important information on Viktor and his powers, ends up in Leonard's hands and is the basis for his entire Evil Plan and his manipulation of Viktor.
  • Five undoes the day in which Viktor learns of Leonard's manipulations, Diego learns Grace's secrets, and Klaus manages to sober up and meet with Dave again, which causes these things to become problems later on. He also has a general tendency to withhold important details from his family, partly because he has something of a superiority complex but also because he's become so used to doing everything by himself.
  • Allison becomes frightened when an enraged and very irrational Viktor makes a terrifying show of power, and tries to use her Compelling Voice in self-defense. Having just learned that Allison used the same ability to make him forget about his powers and likely assuming she was trying to do so again, Viktor lashes out and slashes her throat. Though he didn't mean to harm Allison, Viktor is convinced for a while that he murdered his sister.
  • Viktor has a habit of assuming the worst of his siblings. At one point, he walks in on an emergency meeting Luther called when he was neither at the Academy nor reachable by phone, and instead of recognising that his choices led to this, he immediately becomes passive-aggressive and storms out, rejecting Allison's offer to fill him in. Had he stayed, he would have learned that the apocalypse was coming and he had three days left to live, which could have led him to try and reconcile with his siblings and prevented him from attacking Allison later on.
  • Reginald's abusive upbringing messed up the kids, causing them to become unstable adults who are unable to work together to stop the apocalypse — the very reason he brought them together in the first place.
• Not Blood Siblings: The Academy members consider each other family, but not so much so that Luther and Allison don't have a longstanding flirtation going on (though this is treated as somewhat weird by the narrative).
• One-Man Army: Pretty much all of them are capable of being one; even without their powers each one is highly trained in combat (though Viktor seems to be the exception thanks to Reginald forbidding them from training, and Klaus is so drugged up and panicky they avoid conflict), but with their powers, they're a remarkable force. Even Allison, who's power isn't combat-oriented, can use her Compelling Voice to make people's heads explode, and Klaus can summon ghosts of entire armies to fight for him.
• Paradox Person: They unknowingly become ones because Viktor's removal of his powers from Harlan wasn't entirely complete, so Harlan goes on to accidentally kill all of their mothers before they were born and create a Grandfather Paradox in which they need to exist in order to time travel back in time to give Harlan his powers to kill their mothers, but their timeline meddling means that they should never have been born in the first place to give Harlan his powers. Their very existence interacting with the Sparrow timeline of 2019 spawns the kugelblitz in the Academy's basement.
• Personality Powers: Some of the siblings' powers are a reflection of their own personalities:
  • Luther has super strength and is extremely headstrong — once he makes a decision, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to make him go back on it, not even Allison.
  • Allison, whose Compelling Voice makes people do whatever she tells them to, has a tendency to be very manipulative even when she isn't using her powers, as shown with the policeman in "I Heard a Rumor".
  • Five is generally evasive when it comes to interacting with the other characters, and tends to come and go as he pleases. This reflects his ability to teleport and time travel.
  • Viktor, who is musically talented and even grows up to be a professional violinist, is eventually revealed to have sound-based powers.
  • Klaus, possibly. Being the "weird one" and the Cloudcuckoolander of his family, he has the paranormal-associated power of mediumship. To a lesser extent, he's an avid drug user with no sense of self-preservation, which makes it a good thing that he's someone who can constantly come back to life after death.
• Poor Communication Kills: The kids are really aren't that different from one another, but have grown to be so distant that they lack the ability to properly interact as a team, let alone a family. In the first season, Luther plays "I Think We're Alone Now" while every family member automatically starts to dance. Thing is, they're all isolated in various parts of the house, and are completely unaware that their other family members are dancing with them.
  Look at the way we gotta hide what we're doin'
  'Cause what would they say
  If they ever knew
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The group is composed of a giant astronaut with little-to-none social skills, a masked Vigilante Man whose heroics are implied to be a by-product of his "Well Done, Son" Guy issues, a famous actress who recently got divorced, a flamboyant junkie, a physically young assassin with a 58-year-old conscience, their dead sibling who is also The Beastmaster, and a lonely violinist. Go team.
• Raised by Robots: Their "mom" is a robot Hargreeves created, seeing as he couldn't be bothered to take care of them.
• Related Differently in the Adaptation: In the comics, it's revealed that Luther and Five are fraternal twins. They're shown to have different birth mothers in season 3, making them adopted rather than biological brothers.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: They're a superhero team but only Diego is ever shown actively fighting crime while everyone else is busy focusing on their personal problems. Justified, as they're all long-since retired and disbanded, so the fact most of them don't want to do any superheroing is understandable.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Played with in the dynamic of Klaus, Luther and Diego. Klaus being the laid back, non action guy who approaches problems more emotionally than physically is definitely the most sensitive of the 3 making him the sensitive guy to Diego and Luther’s tough manly man. However Luther is actually Bruiser with a Soft Center making him the sensitive guy to Diego’s machismo oriented manly man.
• Sibling Team: A group of adoptive siblings who fought crime as kids.
• The Smurfette Principle: Allison is the only sister in a family of 7 siblings.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: As expected of a dysfunctional, vitriolic family, the snarks go flying about 90% of the time, especially with Five. Even Luther, the most earnest, socially clueless sibling, indulges in this.
  Diego: [stuck under a tractor] Hey! What took you so long?
  Luther: Well, we're here now. Do you wanna stop complaining?
  Klaus: Or, if you prefer, we could just leave you here.
  Allison: Yeah, what he said.
  Viktor: Does everything in this family have to be a discussion?
• Superhero School: Hargreeves' Academy was created for the sole purpose of helping gifted children develop their superpowers.
• Tattoo as Character Type: As children, Hargreeves made them all get tattoos of the Umbrella Academy symbol on their right arm to teach them to deal with pain. Viktor was the only one left out, and drew one on his arm in marker to fit in.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: In the present, the siblings only work together reluctantly, and their antagonism bleeds into their interactions with each other.
• They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite all their issues, they still have familial affection for one another. Some of them are just better at showing it than the others.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Their dynamic moves into this territory by Season 2. They will still bicker and snark from time to time, but they stick together and genuinely enjoy each other's company. Compare that to their relationship at the start of Season 1, where their interactions are much more aggressive and often ends with the siblings at odds.
• You Are Number 6: Sir Reginald never actually bothered to name any of his adopted children, simply referring to them as numbers One through Seven. They were known only by these numbers until Grace gave them proper names. In the present day, while mostly going by their proper names, they still make regular reference to their numbers. The exception is Number Five, who either didn't receive a name or still goes by his number for some reason. For the rest of them, Luther is One, Diego is Two, Allison is Three, Klaus is Four, Ben was Six, and Viktor is Seven. Why they've been numbered in this order is anyone's guess; in the comics Reginald claims it was in order of usefulness, with One being the most useful, but it's actually in order of power, with Seven being the most powerful.

Luther

Luther Hargreeves / Number One

Portrayed By: Tom Hopper, Cameron Brodeur (young Luther)

"I didn't really feel like a superhero up there, but those few moments when my whole world was glowing, I felt like maybe I was meant to be there."

The first child to be adopted into the Umbrella Academy, Luther was born with super strength. He developed a hulking, gorilla-like torso after a mission gone wrong. Because of this, he was sent to the moon to collect data, only to return for their father's funeral.

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• Adaptational Mundanity: In the comics, his huge physique was the result of his head getting transplanted onto the body of a Martian gorilla. Here, it's the result of being injected with a life-saving serum which makes him a biological hybrid of human and simian DNA.
• The Aloner: Luther spent four years alone on the moon on Reginald's orders. At first, he downplays it, treating it as a neutral experience. While trying to bond with Five, Luther admits that his time on the moon was pretty difficult and couldn't imagine what it was like for Five to be alone for decades in the future. He ends up breaking down and regretting his mission after he finds out it was All for Nothing and Reginald just didn't want him around after his transformation. A season 3 flashback shows the full extent of this, showing as Luther slowly broke down into a serious depression during his time there.
• Aloof Big Brother: Definitely comes across as this when it comes to his interactions with Diego and Klaus. It's likely due to the fact he spent four years in what amounts to solitary confinement, which is proven to have disastrous effects on a person's ability to relate to others.
• Appearance Angst: He's severely self conscious of his post-serum body, hiding it with sweaters and long coats and keeping it a secret from the rest of his family.
• Ape Man: In order to save his life, Sir Reginald injected him with a serum that caused him to regress into one of these. Pogo even comments at one point that Luther's blood is now more compatible with his own than with a human's.
• Backup from Otherworld: In season 3, he's murdered just prior to the final episode, but during the finale, Klaus is able to use his powers to bring Luther back just long enough to tackle the final guardian of the Hotel Oblivian.
• Bad Liar: Due to Luther's honesty, he's not particularly good at lying which Five points when Luther fails to hide the fact that Older Five is trying to kill him.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Luther is generally sweet-natured, polite, and gentle; but he's not above resorting to using violence on occasion, especially on his family members. He even chokes out Viktor after he accidentally slices Allison's throat and nearly kills her.
• Big Brother Instinct: Quite literally. He's not actually any older or younger than the rest of his siblings (at least, not before time travel shenanigans), so his protective urges really are just an instinctual need to lead his siblings and protect them if he can.
  • In the first episode, he tells his siblings to get behind him when facing Five's time portal.
  • In "Run Boy Run", after a disheveled Five shows up at the Academy at an extremely late hour, an obviously concerned Luther asks "Are you okay? Can we help?" and even tries to stroke his cheek. Unfortunately, Five rejects him, but hey, points for trying.
  • In "Extra Ordinary", Luther really starts laying into Hazel when he slaps Viktor. He even turns his back on Hazel just to check if he's okay. Afterwards, he pushes Allison and Diego out of the way of a falling chandelier and takes the brunt of the impact willingly.
  • In "Number Five," when Diego angrily confronts Five, Luther picks him up off the ground and holds him until he calms down.
  • In the beginning of Season 2 when they inadvertently start another apocalypse, Luther jumps from a building and uses his body to block a tank missile from hitting Klaus. During the final episode, where the Handler rains a fire of bullets on his family, Luther immediately grabs Allison and Klaus and shields them. He also worries for Five after the other pushes him out of the way of a cave-in.
• Big Damn Heroes: Enabled by Klaus' powers, he comes back in the world of the living just in time to save an injured Sloane from being killed by the Warden with the kusarigama.
• Big Eater: He can get through ten hot dogs like they're nothing. In Season 2, he packs away a whole carton of eggs and can be seen eating two trays' worth of ribs with other dishes still on the side. Given his powers, it's likely he has to eat a lot to keep his muscles up.
• The Big Guy: He's by far the largest and physically strongest of the team.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Has this dynamic with Five. Five calls the shots due to his savviness, whereas Luther follows Five's lead due to his naivety.
• Blind Obedience: Luther followed his father's orders unquestioningly and stubbornly believed that everything Reginald did was for a good reason. However, it becomes clear that it's just his way of coping with the abuse he endured along with his siblings, as well as the genetic mutation that he didn't consent to. When he finds his letters to his father unopened, Luther realizes that his four-year mission to the moon was just a wild goose chase. The knowledge that everything he did for his father's sake was completely meaningless causes him to have a breakdown.
• Broken Pedestal: While the pedestal was ambiguous to begin with, Luther loses a lot of respect for Reginald when he discovers that his years in isolation on the moon were just a wild goose chase to get rid of him after his body was forcibly mutated, meaning that all the suffering he went through was just for nothing.
  • It's thoroughly obliterated in Season 2 when Luther meets the 1960's version of Reginald, who tells him in no uncertain terms that he hates children and would never adopt one, let alone seven. Tom Hopper should be credited for selling the disillusionment in Luther's eyes as he comes to the realization that the man he'd defended and apologized for really was the Abusive Parent everyone thought he was. After that, Luther finally catches up with his siblings in wanting nothing to do with him.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Luther is the loyal, lovable and sensitive strong man of the group. Despite his flaws, he can be very honest and polite, deeply cares for his family, and usually wants to seek people's approval, especially his father. After he sheds his father's terrible life lessons, he shows the soft center way more often.
• Butt-Monkey: He suffered by having his body modified without his consent and being sent to the moon for years. As a result, he's an insecure and socially awkward sad-sack who's too inept and vulnerable to lead his siblings to victory, and comes across as weak despite his strength. He also has a major meltdown when he realizes that their father, whom he looked up to and tried very hard to love, hardly appreciated his efforts.
• Calling the Old Man Out: While he doesn't go about it in the way Diego or the others do, Luther angrily tears his shirt to show 1960's Reginald what he did to him while yelling, "Look at what you did to me!" It's clear that even after all this time, he's still bitter about what Reginald did to keep him alive.
• Can Not Tell A Lie: Partly due to his social awkwardness, and partly due to his values as hero, he really can't lie. Even if the situation calls for it.
• Character Development: The first time that it shows he has changed for the better is when he meets up with an amnesiac Viktor and actually thinks before acting. Instead of shooting him as planned, he apologizes to him when he says if he did something terrible, he's sorry. Later, he's honest when telling Viktor that he ended the world the first two times, but acknowledges that the situation was super-complicated. They then have a laugh over how Five is an arrogant "asshole".
• Childish Older Sibling: He often tries to be the level-headed and rational big brother of the group, but it often ends in failure because of how impulsive, stubborn and childishly naïve he is.
• The Comically Serious: Luther is the headstrong leader of the Umbrella Academy, and is earnest, dedicated and stubborn by nature. He's also often more malleable to people who are older and more authoritative, with a hilariously dorky and awkward side to his personality.
• Control Freak: Luther's need to be leader makes him feel the need to control the situation involving Viktor to the point that he refuses to listen to everyone else, which he comes to regret later due to his actions furthering his breakdown.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Groomed to be The Leader of his crew by Hargreeves, Luther desperately wants to prove himself as a capable Number One to the family. Unfortunately, he was so isolated from much of the world for most of his life that he lacks the social skills to lead properly. His eagerness to please authority figures makes it hard for him to act tough and commanding, and his adoptive siblings resent him for constantly defending their abusive and neglectful father figure. He can't read a room to save his life, easily gets flummoxed during confrontations, lacks the confidence to maintain morale, and quickly falls apart when under significant amounts of pressure. He also inherited Reginald's tendency to go for practical options over merciful or emotional ones, which creates a lot of drama with his siblings; in particular, he imprisons Viktor in the same confinement cell he was placed in as a child, when simply talking to him to calm him down would have been both more effective and more humane. Ironically he becomes more of a respectable team member in Season 2 as he's more interested in building legitimate bonds with his siblings rather than being a stoic soldier. He’s not totally there yet as he still has Daddy Issues, but because he stopped trying, he fits the mold better. He even quits being the team leader because it no longer had any meaning to him.
• Demoted to Comic Relief: In Season 1, Luther was generally an uptight, myopic and rigid stick-in-the-mud who took things too seriously. He mellows out a bit by Season 3, where he becomes more of an emotional, goofy, and clumsy Butt-Monkey.
• Did You Just Have Sex?: He and Sloane are very happy with each other after Their First Time, with Luther happily walking down the street and wanting to announce to a random guy and Diego that he is now sexually active. Diego correctly guesses that it has something to do with Sloane's gravity powers in the bedroom. Luther later takes every chance to say that "he and Sloane were very busy" with a big smile.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: Although he's technically the same age as his siblings, Luther is treated like the eldest because their father appointed him as the leader. Despite this, he has extremely poor leadership skills and fails to gain his siblings' respect. His lack of real world experience due to being isolated from the rest of the world is also a huge hindrance. This is downplayed, however, because his siblings all have serious issues as well.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Despite Luther and Allison being raised as siblings, he has always been romantically devoted to her.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Does this after learning that his mission on the moon was a farce. In Season 2, he tends to shovel food in his mouth when he's particularly sad, especially when he finds out Allison is married to Raymond.
• Dumb Muscle: Luther can be a very naïve, pathetic, and impulsive manchild despite being the self-proclaimed leader of the family but to be fair, he can also be quite clever and rational when he puts his mind to it. His emotional stuntedness and his obliviousness at times are because of being stuck on the moon for a few years, therefore making it impossible for him to explore the world or gain social skills.
• The Dutiful Son: Deconstructed. His complete dedication to his father resulted in him having no relationships outside of the Academy and being turned into an Ape Man without his consent after a mission gone awry. Even after learning that his mission on the moon was a Snipe Hunt and that Reginald's death was just a Thanatos Gambit, he still chooses to trust Reginald's judgment about Viktor and refuses to let him out of his old anechoic chamber, forcing him to relive a ton of suppressed trauma all at once and furthering his breakdown.
• Dyeing for Your Art: In-Universe. In Season 2, he starts shaving his entire upper torso and arms for when he needs to show them off while boxing, which makes him look more like a bodybuilder with grey eczema instead of a sasquatch. It's also implied he paints and shapes his nails, as they no longer appear like gorilla claws.
• The Eeyore: Luther often tries to keep a strong demeanor, but underneath that, he's very insecure, mournful and emotionally sensitive. In Season 2, for the most part, he struggles to deal with his depression after being rejected by his father, forced to live with his mistake of being responsible for the apocalypse, and getting fired by his boss because he threw a fight after finding out Allison was married to another man.
• Extreme Doormat: Due to being raised by a father figure that made him into a feeble and weak-willed person that's strictly loyal to age and authority, he's not very good at leadership and tends to fold under pressure.
• Fanservice: He's normally very modest due to having a gorilla torso, but we get two lovely flashbacks to pre-transformation Luther as he does a bunch of push-ups and another while he lies in bed in his underwear as the camera scrolls down Tom Hopper's chiseled body.
• First Love: For Allison, who never quite got over him even after marrying and having a kid. On Luther's end, it's implied Allison is his only love so far. In Season 3, Luther finally moves on after meeting and falling in love with Sloane, to the point he even refuses to be used by Allison at that point.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: He and Sloane fall for each other in less than a week, and they decide to get married with the apocalypse right behind the corner. Luther even saved a piece of moon rock to make her an engagement ring.
• Conspicuous Gloves: He always wears a pair of fingerless gloves to hide the hairiness of his hands. They don't, however, hide his discolored fingernails.
• Gentle Giant: While he can be violent on occasion, he's generally one of the more sweet-natured, emotional, and sensitive people in the family. Come Season 2, he's frequently compared to a puppy in terms of demeanor.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: It's indicated that his years alone on the moon was not kind to his sanity, hence why he's so awkward and withdrawn in season 1; season 3 expands on this with a montage of Luther's increasingly bizarre behaviour over the course of his time in exile, concluding with a shot of him lying half-naked on the floor in a Troubled Fetal Position.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Has blond hair, is the most naïve and idealistic compared to his hardened siblings, and is one of the most dedicated to moralism.
• Heroic BSoD: After learning that his mission on the moon was a sham, Luther sinks into depression and self-loathing, believing that he's a failure and not worthy of being Number One.
• Hidden Depths: In a Blink-and-You-Miss-It moment in his first appearance, it's shown that he writes poetry. He also has an extensive music collection and seemed to love building model airplanes.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Luther stands 6'5 next to his sister Allison, who is 5'8.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In Season 2, while it's clear that he is a bit depressed, he congratulates Raymond on his marriage to Allison and just wants to know that she's happy with someone.
• Jerkass Realization:
  • In "Run Boy Run", he has one about accusing his siblings of patricide after Diego finally reveals that he was at a boxing match (read: trying to earn an actual living) the night their father died.
  • In "The Frankell Footage", Luther confronts an amnesiac Viktor with the intent to kill him in case he's still dangerous and remembers him enough to want him dead. Instead, once he makes it clear he isn't a threat at the moment, Luther gives an honest and heartfelt apology to his brother and makes it clear he never intended to hurt him, realizing it was wrong to imprison Viktor and that his mental breakdown was at least partially his fault.
• Leader Wannabe: Luther is supposed to be The Leader of the team, but he's been so out of place due to spending so much time on the moon that he has become completely inept, resulting in him making some very bad decisions at the end of Season 1. With this in mind, it's perhaps no surprise that he willingly relinquishes the role of leader in season 2 in favor of either going solo or following Five's lead.
• Like Father, Like Son: Like Reginald, he locks Viktor up because he believes his brother to be a threat due to the destructive nature of his powers. However, this time, Viktor has enough control over his abilities to bust his way out after he starts hallucinating his bitter childhood self encouraging him to rage against his siblings. By Season 2, Luther has dropped a lot of this behavior and reflected on how toxic it was, not only to his father but to himself.
• Love Makes You Dumb: When Viktor accidentally nearly kills Allison, Luther is so angry that he refuses to listen to reason and locks him in a soundproof chamber to keep him from further using his newfound powers.
• Manchild:
  • Due to never developing social skills and having spent his entire life on missions under Reginald's orders, Luther's emotional growth is extremely stunted for an almost 30-year-old man. Like an insufferable child, he's stubborn, naïve, and impulsive to the point that he can't handle being under pressure or being seen as not good enough. It's especially ironic since he often tries to come across as level-headed and rational, when in reality his plans fail more often than not and his siblings — especially Diego — hardly respect him enough to listen.
  • As of season 2, Luther is still a bit on the immature side, but Character Development has made him a much more welcome example: overall, he comes across as a big kid who wants to be everyone's friend and cause as few upsets as possible - to the point that he's the first of the Umbrella Academy to warm up to the Sparrows, thanks to the offer of breakfast.
• Mighty Glacier: One of the downsides of being as large as Luther is his mass itself. Despite his strength, he's also quite slow, leaving him open to smaller, faster opponents like Diego. It's implied he used to be faster before the transformation.
• Mirror Character: While Luther and Diego butt heads constantly and are the most likely to feud, they are both fiercely headstrong, childishly impulsive and are overly committed to their hero complexes and insecurities
• Muscles Are Meaningless: He's a very tall Ape Man with muscles so large he has trouble fitting in cars. But he had Super-Strength before the change, and they don't seem to add any additional power.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He has this reaction after waking up next to a girl he met at a rave during a despair-induced bender, especially since it was his first time having sex.
• My Greatest Failure: Making the executive decision to lock Viktor up after he attacked Allison backfired horribly and was responsible for one version of the end of the world. By Season 2, he regrets his actions beyond words, and personally apologizes to Viktor when he gets the chance.
• Mythology Gag: He often wears an aqua hoodie, which alludes to the aqua hair his gorilla-body has in the comics.
• Nice Guy: In Season 1, while not a massive jerk, Luther was an intensely stubborn, weak-willed and self-righteous man who struggled to relate to his siblings. In Season 2, however, after he realizes the mistakes he's made, he becomes more of a sweet-natured, caring and sensitive idealist and grows to be more thoughtful of other people's feelings.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Noble to Diego’s Roguish.
• No Social Skills: Due to being lonely and isolated on the moon, he's socially awkward, emotionally fragile and oblivious at times.
• Not-So-Badass Longcoat: In Season 1, he often wears a longcoat to hide the effects of Reginald's serum from his siblings, and it only ends up making him look even more awkward and clumsy than he already is. As such, when he does away with it in Season 2 favour of more casual gear, it's a sign of his maturation into a much more relaxed, easy-going character.
• Only Sane Man: Subverted. Luther tries to act like the composed and well-adjusted goody-two-shoes and seems more well-mannered than most of his brothers but he's also childishly stubborn and incompetent to the point that he makes impulsive decisions.
• Parental Favoritism: He seems to have gotten more quality time with Reginald than the other children. For example, he knows Hargreeves had a favorite spot in the courtyard because they used to sit there together when he was a kid. As a result, Luther is the only one with any positive feelings about the man. Note, however, that being Reginald's favorite child is still not a good thing, as it seems to mean he was just the most susceptible to being manipulated into a perfectly obedient Tyke Bomb. All positive feelings get thrown out the window when he discovers Reginald only sent him to the moon to get rid of him after the serum fiasco.
• The Perfectionist: In Season 1, due to a fear of feeling like a failure and constant desire to be the devoted and loyal son. He grows a lot less rigid when he realizes how callous Reginald was and no longer looks up to him as a father figure.
• Pet the Dog: Luther was one of the few siblings (aside from Allison) that tried to treat Viktor as an equal member of the Umbrella Academy despite his supposed lack of powers. Everyone else, from Diego to Klaus, were either hostile or dismissive towards him.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The calm Blue to Diego’s reckless Red.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • He was right that Reginald's death was not all that it seemed, but he was wrong to suspect foul play — Reginald killed himself.
  • Also, ironically enough, the moon turns out to have a role in the impending apocalypse, though not in the way Luther expected.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Out of all his siblings, Luther alone stayed behind, therefore making him Hargreeves's longest disciple. Unfortunately, this also means that he has the poorest social and the least basic skills out of all of them. As Diego notes, he has never had a job, doesn't know how to pay bills, and can barely interact with anyone outside of the family.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Twice in the second season, he resorts to quitting out of depressed anger and frustration ever since his father rejected him and he lost a need to contribute in saving the world.
  • When Five tells him the world ends again in 10 days and has no idea how to stop it, Luther tells him plainly that he doesn't care.
  • When Five tells everyone that they need Reginald's help, Luther quickly leaves and thinks that instead of going to their father for guidance, they should all grow up and quit while they're ahead. Five even tries to stop him from leaving but Luther immediately tosses him out of the way.
• Self-Harm: Tom Hopper and members of the production crew have stated that Luther would tear his skin off while isolated on the Moon, leaving scars across his torso. This same interview confirms he often felt suicidal during this time. In Season 2, after realising Allison is married, Luther becomes depressed and later during a bar fight, he demands that the other fighter keep hitting him so he could feel all the physical pain in order to feel his emotional distress.
• Shot to the Heart: Was on the receiving end of this after being near fatally wounded in a mission gone wrong.
• Small Name, Big Ego: In Season 2, Luther acknowledges that the reason he didn't succeed in the world the first time was because he greatly overestimated his importance as a leader. With this in mind, he eventually humbles and decides to no longer be the team leader as he's too scared to mess up again.
• Socially Awkward Hero: He tells his siblings he suspects one of them of murdering Reginald, which does not go over well. He apologizes after realizing this was not a good thing to do.
  • He becomes more of a Dork Knight in Season 2 after living on his own and gaining some independence away from his father's influence. He still has Daddy Issues, but he's noticeably more confident.
• Stepford Smiler: A rare male example. Luther projects calm and confidence around his siblings, but in reality he suffers from low self-esteem, body image issues, and a fear that he isn't capable of handling new challenges. When he learns that Reginald sent him to the moon for no reason, his self-confidence collapses like a house of cards and he tells first Allison, and then Klaus, that he's not the right person to stop the apocalypse.
• The Stoic: In Season 1, he was more rigid and less emotional unless he was intoxicated or relating to Allison as more than just a sister. He becomes more expressive in Season 2.
• Super-Strength: His main power. He's way stronger than a normal person, and was able to lift and throw a grown man with ease when he was only 12-years-old.
• Super-Toughness: Played inconsistently. He seems to have superhuman endurance, as shown by him shrugging off a ton of Hazel's punches and being only dazed when the assassin drops a full-sized chandelier on him. However, the chandelier did cut his back deeply, and a trained boxer can absolutely beat the shit of him if he doesn't fight back. A groin attack will also thoroughly slow him down. To add to this, a future version of him can No-Sell a missile to his back.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After finding out that Viktor has powers, he resorts to locking him up in the isolation room and refuses to listen to everyone else's pleas to let him go (Allison included). When Viktor escapes, he is willing to use force to incapacitate him, still refuses to listen to Allison when she objects, and gets dismissive of Klaus (whom he had earlier drunkenly choked and pushed across the room when he didn't comply with his commands). In Season 2, he no longer cares about saving the world, blames Five for getting everyone stuck in the past, and criticizes him for bringing Viktor along because he thinks that he's probably the cause of another apocalypse. All of that said, he takes a level in kindness when he realizes that part of the reason Viktor acted out was because he let him down and saw him as a threat instead of simply trying to help him.
• Top-Heavy Guy: A rare live-action, less exaggerated version. After his injection with the serum, he grows a hulking, hairy gorilla-like body.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Allison. In their youth, they had a budding romance (Childhood Friend Romance) which was cut short due to Reginald's interventions. Even now, after Allison has had a kid, she and Luther clearly never really got over each other.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Despite having Super-Strength, he's not nearly as skilled in combat in comparison. This is shown when he and Diego fight in the first episode, where Luther's strength is pitted against Diego's quick movements. He starts getting better in Season 2 when he trains as a boxer.
• Virgin-Shaming: He never had sex due to his dedication to heroism well into adulthood, along with spending the past four years on the moon. Both Diego and Klaus tease him about this — Diego in private, Klaus in front of a woman he just slept with after an angst-and ecstasy-fueled bender.
• Virginity Makes You Stupid: To Diego, Luther's virginity is just one more piece of evidence that he has no real-world experience.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: It's clear that much of Luther's actions, especially his desire to be a hero and a leader, are motivated by an intense desire to be seen as a proper "Number One" in his father's eyes. He breaks down hard and goes off to a rave, even as the apocalypse looms over his head, when he discovers Reginald never once read any of his reports during his four-year stay on the moon.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: After learning of Viktor's devastating powers and that he's responsible for slashing Allison's throat, Luther decides to lock him up in his old anechoic chamber. When he breaks out and the siblings realize that he is the one catalyst for the apocalypse, Luther's willing to take Viktor out by force if necessary. In both cases, it only contributes to pushing Viktor away and causing the end of the world.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Is on the receiving end of three notable ones: the first of which is when he accuses one of the siblings of killing Reginald, the second when he locks Viktor in the soundproof chamber despite his obvious remorse and his siblings insisting Luther let him go, and the third when he and Diego ruin Allison's apparently successful attempt to reach the unstable Viktor during the concert, directly leading Viktor to become the Apocalypse Maiden.
• White Male Lead: Subverted. He would be this in a more classical superhero story: he is the blond, conventionally handsome Hunk (at least before everything below the neck was replaced with the body of a gorilla) with Super-Strength and Thou Shalt Not Kill principles. As Number One, he was designated as the leader of the family by Reginald Hargreeves. However, he is not a skilled or particularly charismatic leader, has deep insecurities and clear body dysmorphia, and doesn't express any pleasure in being a hero, rather engaging in superhero antics out of a sense of duty.

Diego

Diego Hargreeves / Number Two

Portrayed By: David Castañeda, Blake Talabis (young Diego)

"Guns are for sissies. Real men throw knives."

The second child to be adopted into the Umbrella Academy, who is currently a vigilante/mercenary. His power is trajectory manipulation, which he mainly applies as throwing knives with supernatural precision.

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• 24-Hour Armor: Implied and joked about by Allison and Luther. True enough, Diego never takes his suit off throughout the entire first season. It's especially noticeable since his other siblings — sans Five, who has just gotten back from the future and therefore has no other clothes aside from his old Academy uniforms, and Luther, who hides his new gorilla-body with tons of layers — change outfits after every scene. Justified by the fact that The End of the World as We Know It is happening in little over a week, and enough stuff happens to Diego in that time frame that he figures there's a lot more to prioritize than changing his clothes.
• Abled in the Adaptation: Diego in the comics has his right eye missing for some unknown reason so far, and his domino mask reflects this by having only a single eye hole. Diego in the series has his sight intact, however.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Unlike in the original comic, there's nothing hinting towards the fact that he can hold his breath for longer than normal humans and his ability instead seems to be superhuman proficiency with thrown objects, with knives as his weapons. Season 2 clarifies that it's a form of telekinesis that's specific to moving objects (called trajectory manipulation).
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • In the comics, it's largely implied that he and Vanya/Viktor had some mutual feelings towards each other. In the show, Diego is the most dismissive and abusive towards him of the siblings, indicating that he doesn't particularly see him as anyone special (though he becomes more protective of him as the show goes on).
  • Also in the comics, Diego is suspicious of Grace and wants to monitor her for any signs of malice, with very little indication that there's anything else on how he regards Grace. Diego in the show is easily the most affectionate for Grace; he took Reginald's monocle from her to avoid her possible implication in Reginald's death, defends her at every turn, and wants to run back and retrieve her when the mansion collapses at the end of Season 1 after everyone else has accepted her fate.
• Afraid of Needles: To a hilarious extent. When Klaus's blood is considered "too polluted" to give a dying Allison a blood transfusion, Diego offers to do it instead. However, once Grace shows him the needle, one look causes Diego to faint on the spot, with a terrified squeak to boot.
• Amateur Sleuth: Diego is an excellent investigator but never made it into the police force because he didn't like following orders.
• Anger Born of Worry: In Season 1, it's practically how he expresses his love for his siblings.
  • After Hazel and Cha-Cha shoot up the Academy, Diego (who has just deactivated their mother, to boot) angrily chews out Viktor for actively placing himself in danger, which could have put them in danger as well.
    Diego: What are you still doing here?
    Viktor: I'm just trying to help.
    Diego: No, you could've been killed! Or gotten any of us killed. [to Allison] She is a liability.
  • Upon discovering Eudora Patch's dead body in the motel, Diego angrily scolds her before he punches the floor and succumbs to his grief.
• Angrish: Prone to stuttering when under extreme emotional stress. In Season 3, this crops up in a major way when Lila admits that Stan isn't really her son and is just a kid she borrowed from a friend in an attempt to see if Diego could be a good father; Diego is so angry that he can't even finish his sentence, and is reduced to screaming and throwing chairs at the wall.
• Batman Parody: While he has little in common plot-wise or costume-wise with Batman, he's still an intense, aggressive, and short-tempered Vigilante Man. This is lampshaded in Season 2 when Elliot asks Five who he is.
  Five: Imagine Batman, then aim... lower.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Seems to have this in regards to Klaus, often driving him around and being the only sibling who at least tries to look after him.
  • Despite having insulted Allison's marriage in the first episode, Diego angrily tells Hazel to "Let! Her! Go!" when he sees the assassin choking his sister, with every word punctuated by a blow. And when Allison almost dies after getting her throat slashed, Diego immediately offers to donate his blood to save her, even though he's extremely afraid of needles.
  • Also to Viktor. He quickly calls Five out on prioritizing the Apocalypse over Viktor's well-being and in Episode 9, he's adamant about letting him out of the chamber Luther locked him in.
• Blade Enthusiast : Uses knives as his weapon of choice, due to his power being trajectory manipulation. Logically enough, he has multiple knives hidden on his person.
• Bromantic Foil: The brooding tough guy to Klaus’s happy-go-lucky junkie.
• Calling the Old Man Out: An excerpt from Viktor's book mentioned that he once "cursed out the old man for good".
• Character Tics:
  • He has a habit of playing with his knives, especially when he's brooding.
  • When he's feeling particularly affectionate, Diego tends to hold his family members' faces — and later on, Lila's face — between his hands.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Season 2 deals a lot with Diego's necessity to prove himself to be a hero and having a Hero Complex even medically diagnosed. He spends the season obsessed with the idea that he needs to save JFK from his assassination in order to prove something. It's constantly made clear that despite his denying it, this has to do with him trying to prove to himself or his father — and his underlying self-esteem issues — that he is a hero, and all the suffering he went through as a child wasn't utterly pointless.
• Combat Pragmatist: If he's left with little options, he will resort to fighting dirty, such as biting Hazel's ear.
• Cowboy Cop: Deconstructed. His flagrant disrespect towards authority and desire to do things his way just got him expelled from the force.
• The Cynic: Always the first to look on the negative side of things.
• Dare to Be Badass: When The Commission attacks the farmhouse in the finale of Season 2, Diego offers to cover Five's escape back to the farmhouse; while doing so, he manages to use his powers to slow down and redirect hundreds of bullets being fired AT him, not by him.
• Dark Is Not Evil: In the first season, Diego is always wearing black and is the only Hargreeves sibling who still does superhero work.
• Deadpan Snarker: Given his jaded attitude, he's prone to making a ton of snide remarks.
• The Ditz: Definitely has his moments, such as when Viktor comes out and gives his new name Diego initially mistakes Viktor to be a second person and tries to figure out why he's never heard of him, or mistakenly calling the Hadron Collider a "Hard-on Collider" or when he believes that Stan is his and Lila's son despite Stan being white.
• Entertainingly Wrong: When the Frankel Footage reveals that Reginald Hargreeves is present at the grassy knoll on the day of JFK's assassination in Season 2, Diego immediately latches onto the idea that Reginald had a hand in the event somehow, which is further reinforced by Five finding Reginald's invitation to the Mexican consulate where the Majestic 12 group are gathering, whom Elliot establishes aren't happy with JFK's work in the government. However unbeknownst to Diego, the season finale reveals that part of Reginald's deal with the Majestic 12 was to specifically not kill JFK.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite his hostility towards Viktor, he’s still appalled at Luther locking him up in an anechoic chamber and repeatedly insists that they free him.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Diego's hair is nearly to his chin in Season 2 and he's gained a scruffy beard. Justified since he had been locked up in an asylum nearly his entire time in the 60's, and the staff was probably too scared to bring a sharp object anywhere close to him, given his proficiency with throwing knives. Even after he escapes, however, he doesn't bother to shave.
• Fights Like a Normal: At close range he is merely a very well-trained martial artist. He can easily take out groups of Mooks and puts up a really good fight against the much bigger and superhumanly strong Luther. He also boxes for a living.
• Foil: To Luther. Diego contrasts him in appearance, personality, fighting style, and attitude towards their father.
• Freudian Excuse: His fear of needles stems from Reginald forcing him to get a tattoo when he was just a minor.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has two noticeable ones: one above his left eyebrow and another on the right side of his head. Knowing his job as a prizefighter, plus his weapon, it'd be more surprising if he didn't have any.
• Handicapped Badass: Two of his fingers get chopped off by a Hotel Oblivion guardian. Diego proves capable of still putting up a good fight without them when he comes back with the others.
• Heartbroken Badass: After Patch's death.
• The Heart: He becomes this towards the end of Season 2, which ends up saving everyone. Diego wins over Herb and joins La Résistance in the Commission, as well as requesting to go back in time to save Viktor after learning he will cause doomsday by accident (again). After explaining the situation to Allison and Klaus, he gets them into the FBI building; when he can't make it to the torture room, Diego gives a Rousing Speech to Klaus that he can do it and says it's All Up to You. Klaus manages to summon Ben and sends him to the room, which stops doomsday and they make it out of there. Later on, he's eventually willing to go rescue Sissy and Harlan because Viktor requested it. As Lila moves in for the kill with Five, Diego talks her down, saying she's their sister. He also lets her go when she wishes, because he wants to give her what none of his siblings had: a choice of what to do with their life.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: The tough guy of the siblings, who traipses around in leather and harnesses the entire story.
  Diego: It's not spandex, it's leather. And you used to like it. A lot, if I recall.
  Patch: God, please unremember that.
• Heroic BSoD: He needs a few hours to grieve when failing to save Kennedy and knowing he was so close. It takes Viktor needing their help to rouse his spirit.
• Hidden Depths:
  • For all his moodiness and grim vigilante act, he shows himself to be a rather enthusiastic and skilled dancer in Episode 1, is an affectionate Momma's Boy, and suffers from a stutter when he's particularly emotional.
  • In Season 2, he cuts a nice figure and enjoys dancing with Lila at the Mexican Consulate party. He's also surprisingly one of the most likely characters to end up in heartwarming moments with his siblings, especially noticeable when he's being compassionate towards Luther when he sees him being very affected by their father's treatment. This is a far cry from his behaviour in Season 1, when he was easily the cruelest of the siblings.
  • In the background of his childhood bedroom a bass guitar can be seen, implying he plays it. Doubles as a Shout-Out to the comics, where he was in a band with Vanya/Viktor.
  • During the flashback where Grace helps him with his stutter, a full-to-bursting bookcase is one of the most prominent things in Diego's bedroom.
• Hot-Blooded: The most likely out of the rest of his siblings to jump into a fight or situation with very little planning.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: He blames himself for Eudora Patch's death for the rest of the season, and it's a major motivation for him to go up against the Commission.
• Irony: Diego, who is the most bitter and aloof about their upbringing, is the only one who still does acts of vigilante heroism that his father instilled in him. This is lampshaded by pretty much everyone in Season 2.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Justified, since his superpower allows him to manipulate the trajectory of objects. He can throw his knives in a curve and still manage to hit his targets.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • His description of Reginald Hargreeves at his funeral is incredibly inappropriate and disrespectful, but it's also a painfully accurate and fitting description of the man.
  • He blows up at Viktor after he stumbles into a fight—albeit accidentally—without having any proper training. Despite the harshness of his words, it's obvious that he's only concerned for his brother's safety and the rest of the family's as well.
• Jerkass Realization: In the episode where Hazel and Cha-Cha attack the mansion, Diego yells at Viktor for getting in the way due to being untrained in self-defense. In Episode 9, he's a lot kinder to Viktor upon learning that Reginald brainwashed him into forgetting his powers, which means he was never taught control. He knows exactly what it's like to be at their father's mercy.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Typically aloof, brusque, and rude even to his family members (especially Luther and Viktor, though he's significantly mellowed out towards them by the start of Season 2), but it can't be said he doesn't care about his family at all. Look at how disgusted he is when Luther locks Viktor in the soundproof chamber.
  • In Season 2, Diego is the only one who cares enough to try and give Elliot a proper burial. He also easily forgives Viktor when he apologizes to him for his mistakes from Season 1, despite Diego borderline threatening him by playing with a throwing knife only moments before.
• Knight in Sour Armor: He may be an abrasive, cynical jerk, but he seems to genuinely care about keeping his city safe, and is the only one of the siblings who is still an active superhero at the beginning of the story.
• The Lancer: Luther was designated leader, and Diego was designated Number Two. In the present, when the siblings are barely a team, he falls into this role as well. He and Luther contrast each other a lot and the two of them spend a lot of time disagreeing, Diego questioning Luther's leadership skills in particular. However, he also psychs Luther up when the brothers go to find Allison and follows his lead in the final confrontation.
  • In Season 2, Diego and Luther actually do work together, though it's more a team of equals than leader and lancer.
• Manchild: Diego pretty much behaves like a rude, reckless, and rebellious teenager, but has an emotionally vulnerable side. He grows out of it in Season 2.
• Mind over Matter: He is able to bend the trajectory of his knives, allowing him to hit easily unsuspecting targets, though more often than not he prefers to use Good Old Fisticuffs. During the first and last episodes of Season 2, it is shown that his ability isn't restricted to his knives: he can stop dozens of bullets shot at him and redirect them, making him much more powerful than previously thought, though the actual extent of those powers remain unknown.
• Mirror Character: While Luther and Diego butt heads constantly and are the most likely to feud, they are both fiercely headstrong, childishly impulsive and are overly committed to their hero complexes and insecurities
• Mistaken for Gay: A stranger misinterprets him and Klaus as Five's two dads when she invites Five to Kenny's party. Diego seems more insulted by the idea that he'd shack up with Klaus.
• Mistaken Nationality: A news reporter refers to Diego as "a Cuban exile". While Diego is not specified to be from any particular country, he responds "Cuban?" to hearing this, implying that he is not from there. (Plus, David Castañeda is Mexican and the briefcase in the season three posters say "Mexico", so it's pretty safe to assume that Diego is Mexican too.)
• Momma's Boy: He has the closest relationship with Grace, which makes it worse when he secretly shuts her down after he realizes she's broken for good. A Blink-and-You-Miss-It look in his apartment at the gym even shows a piece of embroidery made by Grace framed up on the wall in clear view.
• Mr. Fanservice: The first three episodes of Season 2 include multiple scenes where he is shirtless. After Lila saves him from a would-be fatal stabbing, Diego constantly asks for his clothes.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Roguish to Luther’s Noble.
• Never My Fault: He tends to shift the blame towards others (Luther, specifically) instead of himself.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the third episode of the third season, Diego fails to notice Five carrying the two briefcases, despite knowing their importance to Viktor and Allison. Had he inquired about them, he would have learned that they didn't work and that Lila had taken the one from the Sparrows. Otherwise, he could have notified the others, thus preventing Viktor and Allison from meeting with and lying to Ben and Fei, and likely avoiding the confrontation at the Hotel Obsidian ending in Harlan killing Jayme and Alphonso.
• Number Two: Quite literally. Diego was meant to be second-in-command to Luther, though he isn't too keen on following the latter's lead as an adult.
• Odd Friendship: After getting hired at the Commission in Season 2, Diego becomes fast friends with Herb from analysis and they help each other out. Later when Herb arrives to excitedly tell Diego about his promotion, Diego is genuinely happy for him and the two share a complicated secret handshake.
• Race Lift: In the comics, Diego is a blond white man. In the show, he's a Latino played by Mexican-American actor David Castañeda. Young Diego is portrayed by Blake Talabis, who is of Filipino descent.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Diego only wears his vigilante suit in Season 1, either never changing his clothes or owning several of the same outfit, showing how dedicated to the job he is. As he grows closer to his siblings and shows more depth, Diego adds a dark jacket over it. In Season 2, Diego has lost the suit and wears pedestrian clothing that he changes regularly, even a patterned orange shirt at one point.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The hot-blooded, reckless Red to Luther’s composed blue.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The tough, no-nonsense Manly Man to Klaus’s flamboyant Sensitive Guy.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Gender-Inverted Trope. When Five asks him about what he loved about Patch, he responds it was how she saw the best in everyone.
• The Snark Knight: Deconstructed. He's a very cynical, intense and emotionally troubled man with authority problems. His hurtful remarks are not-so-much "playful ribbing" as angrily pointing out other people's flaws, verging on verbal abuse, with clear intentions of making his words hurt them as much as possible.
  Diego: All right, I guess I'll see you guys in, what, ten years? When Pogo dies?
  Allison: Not if you die first.
  Diego: [sarcastically] Yeah, love you too, sis. Good luck on your next film. Hope it turns out better than your marriage, huh?
• Speech Impediment: He had a stutter as a child. As an adult, it appears when he's under extreme emotional duress.
• Stealth Pun: A Vigilante Man named Diego has an on-and-off-again relationship with a cop named Eudora. Of all the things to make reference to...
• Took a Level in Dumbass: In Season 1, Diego was a stubborn and reckless vigilante, but in Season 2, he becomes more single-minded in goals he sets for himself and is more prone to making impulsive decisions to the point that the other characters constantly call him an idiot, especially Five. Justified by how in a small amount of time Diego went through a Trauma Conga Line that also broke Luther.
• Trauma Conga Line: It's implied to be the reason why Diego is more obsessive in Season 2 and acting like Reginald, despite his insistence to the contrary. The woman he loved died while trying to rescue Klaus (who went missing and triggered Diego's Big Brother Instinct), he got arrested for said woman's murder despite Patch's partner knowing that he's innocent, one sibling ended up in the company of a dangerous criminal and another got her throat slashed, necessitating Diego to donate blood despite his fear of needles, and Luther locked up his little brother, who surprise surprise, has powers! Then the world ended thanks to Viktor, and Diego was helpless to do anything but cling to Five and hope that his plan to time-travel would work. His doctors at the asylum even acknowledge that Diego is lashing out in response to his past, and that he would do better if he faced it.
• Vigilante Man: Diego's the only one who's still pursuing heroics in some fashion, albeit in an illegal manner.
• Visual Development: In the beginning, Diego exclusively wears his vigilante uniform, representing his brooding lone hero mindset. As he reconnects with his family and becomes more of a team player, Diego starts wearing a much more casual jean jacket.
• Weak, but Skilled: Diego doesn't have Super-Strength or a Compelling Voice, but as the one most active in vigilantism, he's the most combat ready of the bunch besides Five. This is highlighted when him and Luther fight in the first episode — even though Diego doesn't have Super Strength like Luther, he's painted as the one who's winning by landing more hits, dodging more attacks, and ending the fight with a well-thrown knife. Season 2 makes it clear that Diego's trajectory manipulation could become much more powerful if he sets his mind to it.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Due to a traumatic incident in his childhood, Diego is scared of needles.
• Would Hurt a Child: Deconstructed, seeing as Five isn't actually a child, but several times throughout the series Diego must be held back by Luther — or in the second season, asylum guards — from beating the crap out of Five.
• You Can't Fight Fate: When learning that if Viktor explodes the FBI building, he will cause doomsday but Kennedy will live, Diego immediately conspires to get history back on track. Only when Viktor's safe does he try to save Kennedy. Sadly, he fails due to targeting who seems to be Reginald, rather than figuring out where the bullet is.

Allison

Allison Hargreeves / Number Three

Portrayed By: Emmy Raver-Lampman, Eden Cupid (young Allison)

"I've been around long enough to know that when something seems too perfect, it's usually anything but."

The third child to be adopted into the Umbrella Academy, now a renowned actress. She has the ability to control people using the Trigger Phrase "I heard a rumor."

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• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Although she and Luther were childhood sweethearts who still have Unresolved Sexual Tension, Allison married a man named Patrick when Luther was on the Moon. It looked like she and Luther would get back together after he came back and her husband divorced her, but once they get sent back to the sixties and separated, she pretty quickly finds herself another husband. Fortunately, despite his heartbreak, Luther doesn't hold this against her.
• Abled in the Adaptation: In the comics Allison has a cybernetic left hand because the villain Dr. Terminal ate her real one when she was young. In the show Allison appears to have both of her natural hands.
• Action Girl: Besides her Compelling Voice, she's also a skilled fighter.
• Action Mom: During the attack on the Academy, she doesn't let her brothers have all the fun and lands a couple of good hits on Cha-Cha. She also has a daughter named Claire that she loves a lot. Unfortunately, she is currently unable to see her, due to her husband catching her in the act of using her powers on their daughter.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: In the comic books, after the Apocalypse Suite arc, she is quite nasty to Vanya/Viktor for slicing her throat, and takes her anger out on him for a while. In the series, she never holds it against her sibling, and is the nicest of the Hargreeves towards him. This is subverted in season 3, where Allison fully takes out her anger on Viktor.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Was a Reality Warper in the comics who could say anything following "I heard a rumor that ..." and it would come true. In the show, her powers seem largely relegated to just a Compelling Voice. It starts to become closer to her comic book powers in the second season, where it's shown she still can blow up people's heads using her power.
• Affectionate Nickname: In Season 2, she calls her husband Raymond, "Ray".
• The Alcoholic: Season 3 has her excessively drinking, including taking a chug from her flask in the morning after awakening from a nightmare.
• Always Save the Girl: In season 3 she chooses Raymond and Claire over her siblings, sacrificing the Hargreeves to create a new timeline where she, Raymond, and Claire can be a happy family.
• Almighty Janitor: Once a member of the world-renowned Umbrella Academy, Allison is now a rom-com actress with a failed marriage.
• Ambiguous Ending: It's not actually shown nor explained what she did with Reginald's timeline reset machine, and considering she's not with the rest of her family and she still has her injuries sustained during the events of Hotel Oblivion while Five got his arm back, Diego regained his fingers, and Luther came back to life, it's unclear if she even survived.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Non-romantic example when she confesses to, at Reginald's behest and without understanding what she was doing, Rumoring Viktor into forgetting his powers.
• The Atoner:
  • After realizing how much she and her brothers excluded Viktor as kids, Allison attempts to be a better sister in the present by apologizing and actively looking out for him.
  • Due to frequently abusing her powers, she's committed to never using them again, at least without extreme circumstances. The fact she had used them to punish and control her daughter, and also possibly abuse her previous lovers, pushes her to try and make up for those instances.
• Betty and Veronica: A particularly dark take. She briefly forces her way as the Veronica to Sloane's Betty for Luther's Archie. Note that by that point Luther is completely over Allison and happily falling in love with Sloane, only for Allison to try to rape him via her Compelling Voice out of jealousy and to rebound from losing Ray.
• Big Sister Instinct:
  • After she meets Leonard she is immediately distrustful of him, making note of how he acts like a stalker towards her brother and tries to dissuade Viktor from starting a relationship with him because she has had experience with people like him before. Out of pure concern, she even delves into further research on Leonard. Once she finds out he is not who he says he is, she tries to convince Viktor, but by then, it's way too late.
  • In the first episode she is the only one concerned enough to ask Klaus about rehab. She also lets him borrow her clothes, and it was mentioned in Viktor's book that she used to paint his nails for him when they were children. For Season 2, Allison immediately jumps into a pool to hug him when they meet again and she is visibly saddened to see that Klaus has fallen off the wagon, he allows him to spend the night at his house and even covers him up with an afghan after he passes out on her couch.
• Calling Your Attacks: She has to announce "I heard a rumor" in order for her powers to work. It almost gets her killed when she tries to use it on an unstable Viktor, who lashes out the moment he hears Allison say it. Harlan inadvertantly removes this limitation while trying to interface with Victor.
• Celebrity Superhero: She has superpowers, but pursued an acting career instead.
• Character Development: Allison in Season 1 was in Never My Fault mode until the end and ruminating on how everything she wanted, she was able to get easily because of her powers. Season 2 has her join the Civil Rights movement with her husband Raymond, and she tells Klaus when reuniting with him that she likes how earning things on her own merit feels good.
• Child by Rape: It's implied that she used her powers on her ex-husband to make him fall in love with her ("I heard a rumor that you loved me"), effectively raping him and making their daughter this trope.
• Children Raise You: Is perhaps the most emotionally mature of her siblings (apart from Five, who has his own issues), because she became a mother herself.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: She is shown smoking one in Episode 2 after Patrick forbids her from speaking with her daughter.
• Cool Big Sister: Tries to be this to Viktor as a way to make up for neglecting him when they were children.
• Compelling Voice: Deconstructed. She has the power to brainwash people by saying "I heard a rumor that...", and she implies that because she was encouraged to use her powers as a child, she had a hard time adjusting to not using them to get her way. Her husband divorced her because she used her powers to control their daughter more than once, and she states that she must attend therapy sessions before she's granted visitation rights. A few lines in Episode 8 imply that many of her relationships and accomplishments are due to her powers as well, which puts their validity into question. She later admits to Viktor that their father ordered her to use her powers on him to make him forget about his abilities.
• De-power: After having her throat slashed, she's unable to speak and therefore powerless. She gets better.
• Did Not Think This Through: Out of desperation, she makes a deal with Reginald to get her siblings to join them in Hotel Oblivion. She's then promptly reminded that Reginald is a heartless monster when he kills Luther and Klaus, and she's pissed off enough by this to threaten to cancel her deal with him if she learns he was the culprit.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: She begs Viktor not to make her Rumor him after the latter starts to lash out with his powers.
• The Dragon: In season 3 she becomes this to Reginald who despite the Sparrow’s antagonism, proves to be the real Big Bad as his ultimate goal was to sacrifice the Sparrows (and most likely the Umbrellas in the original timeline) so he can reset reality. Even their goals align to the end, betraying family to reset reality and get back a lost loved one.
• Drunk with Power: In Season 2 when Raymond asks her to show him her powers, the two go on a shopping spree where they get better clothes at white establishments, and he asks why she wasn't using her powers for the movement as it could be a game changer. It soon comes to a head when Allison rumors the server at the diner who poured coffee in her lap during the sit-in to keep pouring coffee even as it overflows and burns his hands; it takes Raymond pulling her out of her seat to get her to stop.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Deconstructed. She did love Claire and Ray and losing them causes her great grief, but rather than acting to keep her morally grounded and sympathetic, she devolves into a selfish and callous bitch in her quest to get a timeline where she has both of them in her life. However, in the last two episodes of Season 3, she plays this straight again, where she shows that despite everything she's said and done to them, she still harbors some genuine care for her siblings, being horrified that Reginald killed Luther and Klaus and kills him when he starts killing Viktor, Klaus, Five, Diego, Lila, Ben, and Sloane.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: In Season 2, her hair is shorter, straighter and back to its natural color. She also cuts her hair short to indicate her Sanity Slippage in season 3.
• Fatal Flaw: Selfishness. She exploits her powers to get a career as an actress and a husband, and she even uses them to force her daughter to behave instead of actually putting in the work of being a good parent. In season 3 she betrays her siblings in order to create a world where she can live happily with Raymond and Claire, displacing Raymond from his own time period in the process.
• Fights Like a Normal: After losing custody of her daughter due to using her powers on her, Allison has sworn off her Compelling Voice entirely, even when in danger, and relies solely on her martial arts skills to protect herself.
  Diego: [when fighting Cha-Cha] You wanna rumor this psycho?
  Allison: I don't need to, because this bitch just pissed me off!
• Green-Eyed Monster: She's bitterly jealous when Luther falls in love with Sloane in Season 3, but showed the same tendency even after he'd hooked up with a random girl in Season 1. And that is despite marrying twice when Luther was unavailable, the second time happily.
  Luther: I just, um... I just said I'd go see Sloane, so I'm gonna... I'm just gonna go.
  Allison: Wow. You can't be serious. You're blowing me off for some knockoff you've known for five minutes?
• Guile Hero: Uses a cop's admiration of her to trick him into allowing her to join an investigation so she could find Viktor.
• Happily Married: To Raymond in Season 2.
• Honor Before Reason: Even in situations that her Compelling Voice could save her and her siblings life (like when Cha-Cha and Hazel invaded their home) she still refrains from it.
• Hypocrite: She's gone through two husbands by the time of Season 3, and yet she's visibly jealous, spiteful and thoroughly unsupportive when Luther moves on from their childhood romance and finds love with Sloane. What makes it more jarring, her first husband, Patrick, was implied to be a Replacement Goldfish while she was still carrying the torch for Luther, but with Ray she had genuinely fallen in love and moved on. Granted, in Season 3 she's got a lot going on, but she showed the same behaviour towards Luther's one night stand in Season 1.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Zig-zagged with "The Reason You Suck" Speech she gives Viktor in Season 3. Technically, the points Allison raises are correct, but the speech a) comes too late, when Viktor has got a grip on his moods, consistently kept his power in check, and taken responsibility for his past actions, b) overlooks the context around said actions (especially the Season 2 apocalypse), c) is rooted in one particular circumstance completely outside of Viktor's control, and d) ignores Allison's own responsibilities in wrecking her own life before, apocalypse or not. So while calling out Viktor does have merit per se, Allison does it at the wrong time, when it's barely relevant anymore, and therefore comes across as a self-serving Kick the Dog moment rather than the well-earned dressing down it woud have been one season before in another context.
• Karma Houdini: In the season 3 finale, she got her family back even though she murdered Harlan, betrayed her siblings and helped Sir Reginald, regardless of her last minute Heel–Face Turn.
• Late to the Realization: Played for Drama. She only fully realized what she did to Viktor with her Compelling Voice as a kid 25 years later, when he learns about his newly discovered powers. Unfortunately for Allison, Viktor doesn't buy this.
• Logical Weakness: Allison activates her power through speech, so if something were to happen to her vocal cords, she is essentially powerless.
• Love Makes You Evil: Losing Raymond then Claire in quick succession, with Claire being outright Ret-Gone, starts her Sanity Slippage and slippery slope towards villainy.
• Mama Bear: The surest way to convince Allison to fight against the incoming apocalypse is to mention her daughter, Claire.
• Missing Mom: Not that she wants to be one. Allison hasn't seen her daughter in months because of her divorce, and she desperately wants to see her child again.
• Mundane Utility: Played for Drama in the flashback in which she uses her Compelling Voice to get her daughter to go to bed, which ultimately leads to her husband divorcing her and her losing custody of her daughter.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Constantly abusing her powers ended up costing Allison her marriage and custody of her child, so she decided prior to the series that she'd never use her powers again. She's also remorseful upon realizing that she brainwashed Viktor as a child, albeit under Sir Reginald's orders, especially considering what follows.
• Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer: At least three times, she does a "Can I show you something/You need to see this" routine before revealing something to other characters.
• Never My Fault: Never accepts blame for her own actions, or admits to having done something wrong.
• No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: She, a black woman, finds herself stuck in the segregrated Dallas of 1961. Fortunately, she manages to find refuge in the town's African-American community and ends up becoming a civil rights organizer.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Allison naturally has this problem. In addition to misusing her powers, she tends to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, like spontaneously revealing to Viktor that she brainwashed him when they were both children, when Viktor is already in the middle of a denial breakdown upon hearing that his new boyfriend is a lying murderer.
• Pet the Dog: Any nice gesture she makes in the final few episodes of Season 3 need to be taken with a grain of salt, but she seems genuine when she comforts Sloane for Luther's death and heps her clean her hands. After all, they've all gone to Hotel Oblivion by then, so Allison has no need to put on a nice façade and manipulate Sloane anymore.
• Power High: One of the reasons she avoids using her powers is that this much power is addictive, so when she wilfully embraces her powers, they tend to make her a more vindictive and dangerous person. In Season 2, after going on a montage demonstrating her powers to Ray, she's unable to resist using her powers to abuse the racist diner owner who assaulted her with hot coffee and treats her with contempt. Though she had no issue prior, the fact she'd recently been using her powers made her unable to resist getting revenge.
• Power Perversion Potential: Deconstructed. It is implied Allison may have used her powers on her ex-husband to make him love her, and, even if she didn't, her blatant abuse of her power (which includes using it on their 3-year-old daughter) ended up creating enough doubt on the validity of their relationship that he decided to divorce her. She learns from this by the time she marries Ray, and the process of revealing her Rumoring is played more naturally.
• Race Lift: In the comics, Allison is white. In this series she is played by African-American actress Emmy Raver-Lampman. This allows for a subplot the source material could not have done — when the team time-travels to the sixties, she is subject to severe racism and becomes involved in a local civil rights movement.
• Refusal of the Call: After her husband divorces her and gets custody of their daughter, Allison refuses to use her powers again until forced to.
• Sanity Slippage: After she finds out her daughter is gone, her desperation gradually makes her more emotionally volatile, violent, callous, and short-sighted. She also loses a lot of her moral hang-ups in the process, what with her rumoring people left and right and shedding her Cool Big Sis traits she was so clearly ready to risk the world over.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: During the first two seasons she wears colorful clothing significant for both 2019 and the 1960s. While her style remains current in the third season, everything she wears is either dark or muted, in keeping with her Sanity Slippage.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In "The Day That Wasn't", she tells Luther that he's the gentlest man that she knows.
• Slashed Throat: Inflicted by Viktor when he channels his powers into his bow in a fit of rage. She gets better.
• The Smurfette Principle: She becomes the only female sibling of the Umbrella Academy after Viktor comes out as a transgender man.
• Stepford Smiler: Implied by her Establishing Character Moment. Because she is a famous actress, she projects a happy, confident facade to the world, but as soon as a reporter starts asking questions about her family she looks uncomfortable and leaves. She's also dealing with a rough divorce.
• Story-Breaker Power: Her abilities, used ruthlessly, would solve a lot of the problems the siblings are facing, so her story arc gives her a lot of good reasons not to use them (or at least, not on a regular basis), mainly reckoning with the ethical implications of being able to force people to do things.
• Talking with Signs: Following her recovery from a Slashed Throat, her vocal cords are damaged, and she spends the last episodes communicating through a notebook.
• Trigger Phrase: "I heard a rumor..." Season 3 removes this requirement and lets Allison activate her power on any word by default.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Things go bad for her from the beginning of Season 3: she loses Raymond, finds out that almost all of them were retgone, and therefore her daughter was erased from existence, so she blames Viktor for everything and becomes increasingly violent towards everyone on her sight, especially after finding out that a new apocalypse is close and Harlan was responsible for accidentally killing all their mothers. On top of all that, she almost rapes Luther, murders Harlan, gives him away to the Sparrows, and makes a deal with Sir Reginald to help him reset the universe so she can get her family back.
• Trauma Conga Line: Starting with the shitty upbringing she shared with her siblings under Reginald, things get even worse starting with her reunion with them. She gets her throat slashed by Viktor, shortly after she’s dropped in the sixties Texas where she has to deal with an unbridled racism with only her husband Raymond to lean onto, then she has to leave him, so she can be with her daughter again only to find out Claire has been erased from existence. This begins to take its toll in season 3 causing a drastic change in personality.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Luther, of the Childhood Friend Romance sort. They seem to be the only members of the family who are on good terms with each other, and can be seen grabbing each others' hands when Five returns, as well as having an Imagine Spot Dance of Romance. She even has a locket that says A+L. They also kiss during Episode 6, but Five accidentally retcons that out of the timeline when he returns to the Academy. Even after Allison married and had a child, it's clear she and Luther are still not over each other.
  • In Season 3, Allison tries have Sex for Solace with Luther to distract herself from the grief of losing Ray and Claire. He rejects her because he is now with Sloane, and doesn’t want to get used by her. Allison makes disparaging remarks about his new relationship with Sloane and then rumors him into sleeping with her, stopping at the last minute. Luther is understandably angry at her for almost raping him. Word of God says this effectively ends whatever they have between them.
    Tom Hopper: In a way does kind of bring closure to it, because it says that it shouldn’t really be. It’s not right and it felt wrong as it happened on multiple levels. But that’s not really what they both want. It’s like a weird sort of security blanket they have which comes out in quite another weird, abusive manner from both sides.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • When she was very young, Reginald had her use her Compelling Voice on Viktor to make the latter forget that he had superpowers. Obviously, this had far-reaching consequences that nobody saw coming, and Allison makes it clear that she didn't realize the implications of said act.
  • During the early stages of her Sanity Slippage, Allison lies to Sparrows Ben and Fei about Marcus' unknown whereabouts. Had he let Viktor tell the truth, which included the deal about the briefcase, all four would have discovered along with the now-nonfunctional briecase the Kugelblitz and Grace's proclamation that "God took Marcus." They likely would have immediately agreed to work together and avert the deaths of Alphonso, Jayme, and Harlan; furthermore, Harlan would not have been targeted accordingly.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: The most gruesome on-screen use of her powers is in response to the Swedes attacking Raymond, and unlike other times she's used her powers, she does not hesitate first. She goes straight for the jugular with "I heard a rumor you killed your brother".
• Willfully Weak: Her Compelling Voice is so effective that she can convince people to fall asleep, fall in love with her, and forget their memories, but her abuse of this power ended up costing her her husband and child. As a result, she willingly abstains from using it.
• With Great Power Comes Great Perks: Deconstructed. She had this mentality pre-series, believing it was a harmless advantage she had that could make life easier for her. After getting divorced and losing custody of her daughter because of her powers, she has a Heel Realization and abstains from using her powers for the rest of the series. In "I Heard A Rumor", we get the scope of the amorality of this.

Klaus

See His Page

Five

Number Five

Portrayed By: Aidan Gallagher, Sean Sullivan (adult Five)

"We're not kids anymore. There's no such thing as good guys or bad guys. There's just people, goin' about their lives. But when the world ends, all those people die, including our family."

The fifth child to be adopted into the Umbrella Academy. He can travel through time and space, but went missing when they were children. He returns to the mansion following Reginald's death, determined to stop the apocalypse.

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• The Ace: Of the main cast, he's easily the smartest, controls his powers the best, and comes close to being the most powerful fighter of them. He was also this at the Commission, where he's the stuff of legends, whether it was to determine who to assassinate to affect the timeline or carrying out those assassinations. In an offhand comment in Season Three, he states that he always got five stars on his performance reviews during the Academy's superheroing days from the notoriously hard-to-please Reginald Hargreeves.
• Adaptational Heroism: His love for his siblings is much more pronounced in the adaptation, while his comic book iteration was largely driven by self-interest.
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: In the comics he gets his fighting skills after the Commission infused him with the DNA of various serial killers. Here, he's a badass with no explanation. It can be inferred that the combination of being trained by both Reginald Hargreeves and The Commission allowed him to gain those skills as an assassin.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: In the comics his main power is to travel forward through time rather than teleport. It's also specified that he's stopped aging as a result of getting young again which is implied not to be the case in the show as he mentions having to go through puberty again.
• Age Lift: His comics counterpart is physically 10. In the series, he's physically 13 and is played by then-14-year-old Aidan Gallagher.
• Aimlessly Seeking Happiness: Despite his claims of "not looking for happy." For most of his life, he's been exclusively focused on a single goal, either serving Sir Reginald's goals, surviving the Bad Future, working for the Time Police, or trying to find a way of stopping the apocalypse; once the world is apparently saved, he doesn't know what to do with himself — not just because he's now without a purpose in life, but because he doesn't know how to be happy after spending decades with nothing to be happy about. As such, he's left placidly drinking margaritas, barely reacting when Hazel seemingly arrives to kill him. He's almost relieved when the world turns out to still be in trouble.
• The Alcoholic: Was apparently a very heavy drinker during his time spent trapped in the future; on top of stealing several cases of Bordeaux from the ruins of a mansion, he also indulged enough for Delores to scold him. Even when Five returns to the past, he still carries around a few suspicious-looking bottles in his backpack, much to the mannequin's apparent disapproval — though given that he's now in the body of an adolescent, he doesn't actually start drinking until it all goes horribly wrong.
• All for Nothing: Fate is utterly cruel to Five in this respect. After 4 and a half decades alone in a post apocalyptic wasteland., he dedicated his life to getting back to his siblings and stopping it all so they don’t get killed. He joined the highly unethical Commission committing several horrible acts and killing many people, turned on them bring the full brunt of them against him and his family, alienated himself from his own siblings at points, changed reality, and took no shortage of pain and suffering all to stop the apocalypse. And all he got was a brief reprieve until he found out that a looming apocalypse follows him and his family wherever he goes. By the end of season 3 he’s given up believing he’s only made everything worse.
• The Aloner: Turns into one when he gets trapped After the End with Delores as his only companion. His aloofness and antisocial nature becomes his consistent character trait.
• An Arm and a Leg: Loses a arm due to a kusarigama from one of the Hotel Oblivion guardians. It doesn't last longer tho, since Allison resets the universe and he's shown to have his arm back.
• Anger Born of Worry: A lot of his frustration with his siblings “uselessness”, stems from having found them all dead in the future and his determination to prevent that at all costs.
• Anti-Hero: Probably the straightest example in all the family. He is violent, ruthless, and horrible to everyone around him, but he's also the one member of the family who's single-mindedly devoted to saving the world and protecting his family — no matter the cost.
• Ax-Crazy: Has moments of being emotionally unstable, though it's justified as he was stuck in the future for a long time and spent some time as a trained and dangerous assassin. He literally murders the Temps Commision with an axe while smiling and experienced Paradox Psychosis that involved homicidal rage, making him even more pugnacious than usual.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Played with. Although the siblings were all born at the same time, Five is chronologically the oldest yet physically the youngest. He lived for 40 years in the future, but upon returning to the present his body regressed into his 13-year-old self, thus he retains his child actor. As such, he's often treated like a kid by people who don't know him, and even his siblings don't really treat him like he's 40 years older than them. He's not pleased with it, to say the least.
• Badass in a Nice Suit:
  • While employed by the Commission, Five dressed in a conservative suit and tie, and was renowned as one of the group's deadliest killers. He's still wearing the suit when he jumps back in time... only to discover that, since he's regressed to about thirteen years of age, it doesn't properly fit him anymore. For most of the rest of the series he wears his old Umbrella Academy uniform, which has a farily similar effect.
  • In season 3, he drops the uniform in favor of a Commission suit tailored for him at the Hotel Obsidian.
• Beard of Sorrow: During the decades spent in Earth's post-apocalyptic future, he managed to grow an extremely unkempt beard—either because he couldn't find a razor or simply couldn't be bothered with shaving. After being rescued and recruited by the Handler, he went on to shave everything but the mustache.
• Been There, Shaped History: The montage of Five working for the Commission heavily implies he caused the Hindenburg disaster, the death of Josef Stalin, and was nearly involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
• Berserk Button:
  • Five does not like being reminded of his current physical age, and has been known to physically assault people who call him "young man."
  • Threatening, endangering, damaging, or even belittling his relationship with Delores is a good way to make him lose his temper. While others see her as just a mannequin and don't understand why he gets so angry, it's clear that Five depends on her for emotional support after decades alone.
  • Played for laughs in Season 2 when he tries to buy himself a candy bar but it gets stuck in the machine, causing him to violently shake it and then kick the glass.
• Beta Couple: Delores may be an inanimate mannequin, but his devotion to her is clear and other than some minor arguments over his alcoholism, the two get along better than most of the show's romantic relationships. This is lampshaded in Season 2 by Klaus as he drunkenly rambles to Allison and Viktor.
  Klaus: Face it, the healthiest long-term relationship in this family was when Five was banging that mannequin.
• Big Brother Instinct: Played With. He is chronologically older than his siblings, and his primary motivation in the series is to stop the apocalypse at any cost or method to prevent his sibling’s deaths, but he is physically younger than his family.
  • Luther is the member of his family that Five trusts the most and therefore the closest to him. He is not only visibly distraught when Luther is beaten non-stop in a fighting ring, he also pushes him out of the way when the chimney in Sissy's house starts to collapse and it ends up falling on him instead of Luther.
  • The first thing Five does when he meets Diego again in a mental institution during 1963, is to worry about his brother's mental health and promise to rescue him. Also the main reason for Five initial hatred towards Lila is because she apparently romantically cheated on Diego.
  • In Season 3, Five saves Allison from being seriously injured by Alphonso's attack and later saves Ben's life as the Sparrow Academy collapses.
• Big Good: Well, not entiely good, but he's more often than not the only member of the family who's more focused on saving the world when everyone else is mired in dysfunction.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Has this brother dynamic with Luther where Five is one that calls the shots due to his savviness where Luther is pretty the dumb muscle who has to follow Five's lead due to his naivety.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: He gets covered in blood when he kills the board of Commission in Season 2.
• Brainy Brunet: Five has brown hair, and is shown on multiple occasions to be very intelligent, sometimes scarily so.
• Broken Bird: Though he hides it well, it's clear that living alone for decades on a wasteland with nothing but a mannequin for company has taken its toll on him.
• Character Development: At the start of Season 2, learning of a second apocalypse on the way, he is now capable of asking for help and being open about needing help and sharing information with his siblings rather than pretending he is better than everyone else.
  • In Season 3, he's actually looking forward to retiring, unlike his Season 1 self who claimed he wasn't looking for happiness. He's also much more insistent on the family working as a team, as he chastises Viktor for going rogue and even gives him a speech about the importance of listening to others.
• The Chessmaster: Manipulating details across history was actually his job, which he used to proficiently perform on a regular basis in the commission. When he temporarily becomes Commission executive, he proves to be so competent at it that he's heavily praised and shown as an example by the Handler.
• Combat Pragmatist: He uses everything in his surroundings to his advantage, and his Teleport Spam enables him to kill people in a ton of creative and brutal ways. As he was a former assassin, this makes sense. In his first on-screen fight, he is shown using only a butter knife, a pencil, his necktie, and his Teleport Spam to kick the Commission's asses. He is extremely successful.
• Companion Cube: Is in love with Delores, a mannequin who was his only form of company in the post-apocalyptic wasteland for 40 years. Even after being forced to abandon her following his recruitment, he eventually goes on to reconnect with her in the past... namely by stealing her from her original department store. Eventually, he decides that they should part ways, and returns her to the department store in an emotional farewell scene. Season 3 reveals that he's not as over her as he likes to think, for when Jayme doses him with her venom, he hallucinates meeting Delores again - this time fully animated and looking progressively more human as the scene continues. Five responds with utter adoration, even kissing her... much to Jayme's bemusement.
• Consulting Mister Puppet: He frequently has one-sided conversations with Delores, even arguing with her on occasion.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: You can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of fights where anyone gave Five even the slightest bit of difficulty, despite him being a 58-year-old-man in the body of a slightly shrimpy 13-year-old. In fact, the person who puts up the most prolonged fight against him is his "older" self.
• Cursed with Awesome: He treats being returned to his adolescent body as nothing more than a mistake and annoyance, yet it does afford him with an extra 40 years of life and hides his true identity, which throws off the hitmen sent to kill him for a few episodes.
• Deadpan Snarker: Every other line that comes out of his mouth is this.
  Number Five: [after watching his siblings bicker] It's nice to see nothing's changed.
• Deliberately Cute Child: Not cute, but he does use his appearance as a young child to his advantage to get adults to want to help him or get information.
• Determinator: It takes a special kind of rock solid resolve and stubbornness to spend four decades stuck surviving in a desolate wasteland with no human interaction and still have your sanity and the willpower to try and prevent the end of the world.
• Disaster Scavengers: In the post-apocalyptic future, he spent most of his days scavenging anything that wasn't nailed down just to survive, including the booze he needed to keep himself from completely losing it.
• The Dreaded: He was the best assassin that ever was at the Commission, and is almost always treated with utmost seriousness by them, who first sent an entire squad of hitmen to kill him, and then two of their best agents when that didn't work.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Gets drunk as a skunk when Hazel and Cha-Cha destroy the last piece of evidence that could have helped him save the world. He's later found unconscious in a public library with an empty bottle of tequila in his hand and has to be carried home by Luther and Diego. And he pukes down the side of Luther's jacket.
• Does Not Like Spam: Twinkies. He found out the hard way during the apocalypse that Twinkies, like everything else, have an expiration date. He's never touched one since.
• Easily Forgiven: Lila eventually comes to see Five as an ally and family in season 3 even though he killed her parents in the Handler’s orders. Considering the action, it dibs to take much.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He doesn't seem to have his own name, so everyone refers to him by his number.
• Everyone Has Standards: While he doesn't exactly fight fair, he smashes a glass vase over his brother's head once he starts biting Hazel's ear.
  Five: I draw the line at biting.
• Fatal Flaw: Luther calls him out on his Pride. Even when they were kids, Five thought he was better than his siblings, and in the present, this is much worse. His refusal to believe he needs or could use his siblings' help to stop the apocalypse is actually extremely detrimental to his plans, but he refuses to admit it.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: He was trapped in the future for decades until the Handler came to recruit him for the Commission.
• Foil: To Number One/Luther. Luther is a large man whose powers are Super-Strength which does well for close combat, while Five has a diminutive stature whose powers are teleportation which does well for long range. Luther is physically the largest of the Hargreeves and is technically made leader of them, but proves to be ineffective as such and is actually the most innocent and childlike among his siblings, while Five is actually the most mature and wisest among his siblings despite having the appearance of a child, and has better leadership skills than Luther, eventually serving the de-facto leader for his siblings.
• Fragile Speedster: A teleporting assassin he may be, but he still has the body of a teen which means he has to rely on his brains more than outright fighting. In Season 2 when going up against the largest Swede, he is easily overpowered by the man. He is also easily incapacitated if someone larger than him pins him down.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Five's sanity is distinctly frayed after decades spent trapped alone in the future, especially given that he treats Delores the mannequin as a real person, holds conversations with her, and even reacts violently to threats against her safety. Granted, he's a lot more stable than he used to be: when the Handler first appeared before him, Five lost composure and threatened to shoot her dead, even though she was the first person he'd met since he'd left his home time period.
• Good Is Not Nice: He's nasty to everyone he meets but won't stop trying to save the world.
• Grumpy Old Man: As an old man in young adolescent's body, his cranky personality makes him look like a moody teen.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Especially in Season 2, he seems to have more intense anger issues due to constant stress.
• The Hero: While all the children get equal time in the spotlight, Five is arguably the protagonist of the entire "time travel" storyline, and is inarguably the one member of the family who actually gets the most shit done, even when everyone else is moping. So far at least two apocalypses have been prevented because of his intervention, and it's strongly implied that during the course of his many years in the Commission, those weren't the only times he saved the world. Especially in Season 2, where he has the most direct personal connection with the show's main villain, the Handler, and he's the one spearheading the family's attempts to return to the present.
• Hitman with a Heart: Double subverted. When Luther asks him if he had a code while working for the Commission, Five admits that he didn't. But while he's jaded, abrasive and rude to most people he meets, he stills cares for the family he grew up with, Delores, and ultimately, the fate of the entire world.
• How Do I Shot Web?: The whole reason he got stuck in the future is because he hadn't mastered time travel just yet, but got overconfident about using it.
• Insufferable Genius: His intellect is never in doubt, because he'll remind you of it constantly and tell you all about how you pale in comparison.
  Luther: You know what your problem is?
  Five: Really hoping you'll tell me.
  Luther: You think you're better than us. You always have, even when we were kids. But the truth is, you're just as messed-up as the rest of us. We're all you have ... and you know it.
  Five: I don't think I'm better than you, Number One; I know I am.
  [Luther scoffs]
  Five: I've done unimaginable things. Things you couldn't even comprehend.
• In Vino Veritas: When he gets drunk in Season 3, he apparently made a heartfelt speech praising his family and showing his love for them.
  Viktor: I especially liked when you referred to us as a family bound by destiny and love.
  Luther: Yeah. That was great.
  Five: Okay, enough. That was the booze talking. In the light of day, you're all still deplorable.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Insufferable Genius aside, he is the one most adamant on saving the world, even throwing his guaranteed chance to save his and his siblings' lives to stop the apocalypse. There are also moments where he shows that he genuinely cares for his family, such as when he consistently demands that the Commission ensure their survival, states he wants to live long enough to meet Claire, and doesn't hesitate to say that they'll bring Viktor with them when they travel back in time and teach him to control his emotions to avert the apocalypse.
  • In Season 2, when he finds Viktor again, he omits information on Viktor being the cause of the apocalypse in their timeline to protect him. He was also hesitant to hurt one of the attendants where the Commission was having their annual meetings.
• Killer Rabbit: Due to his outward appearance as a preteen boy, most people mistake him to be harmless and innocent. However, years of serving as a Commission hitman has made him pretty dangerous indeed, and to underestimate him would be your last stupid move.
• Large Ham: "I'M THE DADDY HERE!!!!"
• The Leader: He’s the true leader of the siblings if there is one.
• Limited Wardrobe: Unlike his siblings, Five spends pretty much the first two seasons running around in his old Umbrella Academy uniform from when he was a child, complete with shorts and high socks. Paradoxically, this actually has the effect of making him look more badass, as if he is so single-mindedly focused on saving the world that he can't be bothered to put any effort into his appearance. In season 3, he initially stops this since he thinks there's no longer any danger and is seen indulging himself in a hotel bathrobe and later some travel clothes in the first two episodes. After discovering the kugelblitz, he reverts back to this mindset and wears a custom tailored suit for the rest of the season.
• Living Legend: Is this amongst the Commission for his survival skills during the apocalypse and his work as a temporal assassin.
• Little Big Brother: He's actually the oldest of the siblings despite being one of the shortest characters and having a teenage body.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Much to his frustration, he notices that despite having the experience and intellect of a 58-year-old, having been sent back into a 13-year-old version of his body, which is the process of going through puberty, means he simply cannot help but slipping into thinking and acting like an emotionally unstable Hormone-Addled Teenager.
• Mundane Utility: Oftentimes, he uses his powers to access otherwise locked doors.
• Must Have Caffeine: Drinks as much coffee as he can get his hands on.
• The Needs of the Many: He was a hitman that killed whoever was necessary to make sure events happened as needed. He is pretty cold about the fact that he will kill a bunch of innocents if it means saving many more. He is willing to kill a gardener because he thinks he might influence the apocalypse and murder a butcher to cause an accident, even though they had done nothing to anyone. He later admits that he sees this as necessary but not enjoyable in any way and that he was never happy about this job.
• Never Given a Name: Everyone just calls him "Five," meaning that he was not given an actual name like the others. Word of God says that while the other siblings all chose their own names, he couldn't decide on one before he time-jumped for the first time, eventually deciding he liked just being called Five.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: He establishes in Season 2 that people can't cross their own timeline because it induces Paradox Psychosis with several stages of bodily discomfort, paranoia, and homicidal rage. It's made even worse in this particular case by young-looking Five needing his past self to travel through the portal in order to sustain his temporal existence while still trying to make a deal for a Commission briefcase and Five's general personality being awful for interaction with himself. Eventually the two don't even bother with the deal and start beating the crap out of each other, at which point Luther has to put his foot down and knocks out old-looking Five so they can actually get somewhere.
• No-Respect Guy: Played for Laughs. Him being treated like a child due to his appearance is a Running Gag.
• Not So Above It All:
  • In Season 2, he gets absolutely pissed because a vending machine gets stuck and won't give him the Fudge Nutter he paid for.
  • In Season 3, once it appears as if the apocalypse has been averted for good this time, Five decides to retire and have fun for a change - to the point that he seems genuinely happy to go on a road trip with Klaus, even circling several tourist traps on the map for them to visit. In fact, he's so engrossed in retirement that it's Klaus that decides to investigate something serious on the road trip.
• Neck Snap: For some of his opponents, this seems to be his go to move. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on the largest Swede in Season 2.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His second escape from the Commission in Episode 6; though he does a perfectly good job of wrecking their base of operations, using a briefcase to send himself back to 2019 results in him undoing every good thing that's happened in the episode so far: Klaus doesn't sober himself up and see Dave again; Diego doesn't hear Grace's confession; Luther and Allison don't enjoy their big heartwarming dance number; and worst of all, Viktor doesn't find Reginald's journal hidden under Leonard's bed, meaning that his Evil Plan continues unopposed for the time being, bringing the world a step closer to the apocalypse.
• Odd Friendship: With Viktor. One's a sensitive Shrinking Violet Nice Guy who struggles with forming healthy relationships (especially romantic ones), while the other's a sarcastic, remorseless assassin who barely cares about anyone or anything except his mission. Despite this, Five seems to be much closer with Viktor than any of the rest of his siblings, and is much gentler with him than he is with anyone else in the family, let alone outside of it.
• Odd Name Out: In the company of Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Ben, and Viktor, he's just Number Five. While this is justified in the comics since he left before Grace could give him his name, here he left after their first mission, and the rest already have names by then, leaving this unexplained.
• Older Than They Look: After getting stuck in the Bad Future, he aged chronologically and grew quite old, reaching 58 to be exact. However, upon returning to the past, he regains his 13-year-old body. As a result, he tends to act like a grumpy old man more often than not, which tends to confuse casual onlookers meeting him for the first time. However, he does use his appearance to his advantage when sneaking around and pretending to be an innocent kid.
• One-Man Army: Even with his present self, Five can beat a room of enemies alone as is the case during the pilot, for example.
• Only Sane by Comparison: His siblings all are, as he puts it, “emotionally stunted man-children,” so naturally he is the one that usually has to force the team to focus on what's actually important; he's also the most intelligent and commonly pursues the most important goals. However, there's no denying that Five isn't all that high on the sanity scale: he's an alcoholic, he can barely relate to most human beings, he has no moral qualms about killing innocent people, and thanks to his years spent alone in the post-apocalyptic future, he's in love with a mannequin - and scenes in both season 1 and season 3 indicate that he sincerely believes that said mannequin can speak and interact with him.
• Pet the Dog: For all of his cold and calculating personality, he is undeniably more gentle to Viktor than any of the siblings, going as far as to lie to him about the cause of the apocalypse because he doesn't want him to feel guilty.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Physically 13-years-old, easily one of the smallest of the group, and among the most effective in combat. In one scene, he ends up mopping the floor with an entire roomful of assassins, finishing off the last one by snapping his neck.
• Precision F-Strike: Done in the most mundanely hilarious way for Season 2, it's not a reaction to any of his plans to avert nuclear doomsday going pear-shaped, he's just really mad that the vending machine won't give him the candy he paid for. One might think that if it weren't for it, Five would have carried out the slaughter of the Commission's board of directors more... cleanly.
• Pride: Easily the most arrogant of the main characters because of his tendency to behave like he's better than everyone else due to his experience as a trained assassin and this leads him to act like a rude, abrasive and condescending jerk who's extremely sassy with everyone around him. Luther even accuses him of thinking he's better than the rest of the family ever since they were kids. A large part of his character arc is learning that he's not the best at everything he does and that he needs to accept working along his siblings.
• Professional Killer: Used to be one for the Commission, eliminating anyone who could alter the timeline and is well respected for this.
  Five: I am a trained assassin, arguably the most dangerous assassin in the space-time continuum.
• Properly Paranoid: In Season 2, he doesn't trust Lila because she seemed to know too much and it turns out he's correct when it's revealed the Handler raised her. He also doesn't trust the Handler to get him and his siblings back to their timeline, but has to take up her offer when he runs out of options. She stabs him in the back later and he calls her out on giving him a plan that was doomed to fail.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He took no pleasure in that and only took the job so he could escape his decades of isolation, find a way to return to his family, and avert The End of the World as We Know It.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Retains memories of all his time traveling, despite effectively rendering those timelines moot when he jumps back.
• Screw Destiny: His whole goal is to save his family and avert the end of he world, despite The Handler stating that it was "meant to be".
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Justified. Since they're the only clothes in his wardrobe, he mostly wears his old Academy schoolboy clothes.
  • Gets a little weird when he goes to 1963 and does not have access to numerous copies of the outfit, yet continues to wear the uniform for over a week. It's likely because he's so focused on stopping another apocalypse from happening and trying to keep his family safe that he doesn't care enough to get a new outfit.
• Slasher Smile: He sports a particularly vicious one in Season 2 when he goes to kill the Commission.
• The Smart Guy: He's the most intelligent, rational, and knowledgeable of The Umbrella Academy. It makes sense since he was stuck in the future for 45 years.
• Sociopathic Hero: Five does have a caring and protective side when it comes to his family and will do anything to save the world from being destroyed, but he's also a ruthless murderer who struggles with human empathy.
• Surrounded by Idiots: This is the general attitude he has around anyone, especially his siblings who won't always go with his plans or listen to him.
• Sweet Tooth: Even though he likes his coffee black, he does seem to like eating sweet things. His favorite food is a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, he reminisces about coming to the donut store and eating the donuts with his siblings, and during the apocalypse he tried to eat a Twinkie before foregoing the food forever. In Season 2, he loses it when his fudge nutter gets stuck in the vending machine and then he pettily drags his finger through a nearby cake before eating the frosting off of his finger.
• Taking Advantage of Generosity: Five uses his appearance as a teen to take advantage of adults' kindness when he asks for help, as seen in season 1 when he tries to get information on the fake eye he found in the future. In season 2 he also threatens to send Diego back to jail by calling out to an officer while sitting in his car. This sometimes backfires as he may just be seen as an annoying kid, or Five gets quickly annoyed at being treated like a kid.
• Teleport Spam: The primary function of his superpowers. However, it appears that he has limits on how many times he can teleport in a row before he has to stop and recharge. This nearly gets him in serious trouble when cornered by Hazel and Cha-Cha.
• Thicker Than Water: Despite all his annoyances towards his siblings, Five proves himself to be very loyal towards his family and will do anything that he can to keep them safe, even at the cost of everyone else. When Carmichael believes the Handler put a hit on him and tries to offer Five money in order to spare his life, Five simply says, "I'm not doing this for money."
• Time Travel: His powers allow him to travel through time, but he got overconfident and got himself stuck in the future as a result. When he travels back, he uses it to try and prevent the apocalypse. In Season 2 after getting some advice from the Reginald of this period, Five can now rewind time.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Seems to be a peanut-butter sandwich with marshmallows. Viktor made this for him every night when he was younger in case Five ever came back home; true to form, the first thing he does when he arrives in 2019 is fix himself the very same type of sandwich.
• Tragic Keepsake: Implied and downplayed. At some point in the future Five found a copy of Viktor's book about the Academy. While he snarks about it to her upon his return, he did notably hang on to it until he managed to jump back, implying he kept it as a reminder of his family.
• Tragic Time Traveler: His power lets him travel through time, but in an attempt to prove himself to the academy, he accidentally sent himself to a post-apocalyptic world with only a mannequin for companionship. Not helping matters is the fact that he only escapes this thanks to the Commission, who give him a job as a hitman and further damages his humanity. And by the time he escapes their leash and sends himself back in time? A miscalculation causes to return as a 13 year old, leaving hims struggling against the older Umbrella students who don't take him seriously.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Though he's chronologically an old man, Five's regression to adolescence results in a great deal of shock from uninformed onlookers when he continues behaving like an adult — most prominently by casually killing, assaulting, or just threatening people... and later getting drunk in public.
• The Un-Smile: Five does not smile sincerely often, and his attempts to do so usually end up looking less like a friendly grin and more like a mad, threatening rictus. For good measure, most of his smiles are delivered just prior to him saying something predictably acerbic.
• We Used to Be Friends: Was the closest to Viktor when they were children. However, Five is so focused on stopping the apocalypse in the present that he's quick to blow him off and exclude him along with the others, which just deepens his insecurities and leaves him easy prey for Harold's influence, and causes him to bring about the apocalypse.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Notwithstanding him being Older Than He Looks and Older and Wiser than the rest of the cast, he seemed to have the same kind of big picture thinking that Hargreeves seems to have at age 13, since it's implied he had saving the world as a priority at the beginning of his life in the apocalyptic future.
• Who Shot JFK?: Subverted. During a flashback to his days as a hitman, it appears that he was the one that shot JFK, but he bails on the mission and someone else fires the killing shot, as in history.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Once he reaches the apocalyptic future, Number Five realizes that he doesn't know how to go back in time, trapping him there.
• Your Favorite: In the flashback where he first meets the Handler, he tells Delores that he got a case of her favorite Bordeaux.

Ben

Ben Hargreeves / Number Six

Portrayed By: Justin H. Min, Ethan Hwang (young Ben)

"Life isn't supposed to be easy. Life is hard. Bad things happen. Good people die."

The sixth child to be adopted into the Umbrella Academy. His ability is being able to possess monsters from other dimensions under his skin. He died prior to the beginning of the series, under unknown (yet horrific) circumstances. In the present day, he hangs around Klaus.

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• And I Must Scream: He sees being a ghost as this.
  Ben: [to Klaus] You know what the worst part of being dead is? You're stuck. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to change. That's the real torture, if you gotta know. Watching your brother take for granted everything you lost and pissing it all away.
• Ascended Extra: A corpse and a statue in the original comics, Ben is a fully-realized character in the series. He's still dead, though; he appears as a spirit who follows Klaus around, and since Klaus is the only one who can see him, he's the one Ben interacts with pretty much for the entire series until the final episode. Though he was a recurring character in Season 1, he's moved up to a series regular in Season 2.
• Backup from Otherworld: When Klaus discovers he can manifest spirits of the dead into the real world, the first one he conjures is Ben, who defends the rest of his family members by eviscerating the other Commission agents invading the Icarus Theatre. Even prior to that, Ben punches Klaus in an attempt to keep him sober, and pulls Diego out of falling wreckage.
• Bad Powers, Good People: The sibling with the most gruesome power but also the gentlest.
• Berserk Button: Does not like being compared to his adopted father.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Since he's always by Klaus's side, he tries to get him to be sober and gives him advice on how to get out of situations. Ben often brings up the fact that Klaus shouldn't waste his life on drugs since he died so young. Unfortunately, since he always uses that particular guilt card, Klaus tends to feel more annoyed than guilty nowadays.
  • When Diego is temporarily unconscious and is about to be crushed by falling rubble, Ben, now able to barely manifest himself in the physical realm, grabs Diego and pulls him away just in time. However, Ben gets slightly offended when Diego thanks and hugs Klaus instead, believing he was the one who saved him.
  • In Season 2, it's his love for Viktor that stops him from changing the timeline, and when he enters his mind, he assures Viktor that his feelings are valid and knows he can be stronger than this.
• Blessed with Suck: Appears to be the opinion he had of his powers while alive; despite being by far one of the most powerful members in the team, he clearly didn't enjoy the way it required using himself as a portal to summon Eldritch Abominations and left him covered in blood after battles.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: His powers don't have him coming out of a fight as cleanly as his siblings.
• Bookworm: Flashbacks show him reading at the dinner table during meals; meanwhile, his main hobby for when Klaus is passed out is to read whatever book he can get a hold of.
• Boy Meets Ghoul: Gender-Inverted Trope. He's a Lovecraftian Superpower-laden spirit who falls in love with Jill, a living woman.
• Combat Tentacles: He can summon eldritch beings, which manifest as tentacled monstrosities bursting out of him. Very useful for taking out multiple mooks. We don't directly see them used in combat until the end thanks to him being a Posthumous Character, but a flashback shows him walking into a room, a lot of screaming, and then walking out covered in blood.
• The Conscience: To Klaus, who often tries to drown himself in drugs and booze and mostly has to be talked into getting sober by Ben.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: According to Viktor, the way he went out wasn't pretty at all. We still don't know what got him.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Ben is a ghost who wears all black but he's actually a pretty chill guy who looks out for his siblings, even in death.
• Dead Person Conversation: All his present-day conversations with Klaus are this by default, due to being deceased.
• Desperate Plea for Home: During a flashback sequence to their early adolescence, his siblings pressure him into using his powers to clear out a roomful of bank robbers — and does so with nightmarish ease. Young Ben emerges covered in blood, looking as if he's seen a few things he'd rather forget, and very quietly asks if they can go home.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Played with given that he's already dead, but when he possesses Viktor to calm him down and stop him from starting World War III, Ben begins disintegrating into light and explains he can't come back anymore and is finally moving on. In his last moments as his final request, Ben shares a hug with his brother as he slowly disappears.
• Disappears into Light: He dies for real in Season 2 by slowly disappearing into sparks of light.
• Endearingly Dorky: Ben doesn't have much experience interacting with anyone who isn't family, so the rare instances where he's seen talking to someone else he is a rambling dork. When Klaus lets him possess his body in Season 2, this is his first time feeling physical sensations in a long time, and so Ben reacts to everything with almost childish exuberance and awkwardness. When face-to-face with Jill, she notices that something's different about "Klaus" — he's dorkier, and she likes it.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Responsible Sibling to Klaus's Foolish, Ben often tries to steer Klaus to do the right and responsible thing instead of indulging in self-destructive behaviour.
• Friendly Ghost: He's a pretty good-natured guy even after death and the only ghost whom Klaus isn't scared of.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Frequently pressures the self-destructive Klaus to remain sober and use his powers, not only to help others, but to help himself in tight situations.
• Has a Type: When Klaus traveled with his cult, Ben is noticeably attracted to Jill who has her nose buried in a book.
• The Heart: Implied to have been this. According to Viktor, the siblings all went their separate ways after Ben’s death since there was nothing really holding them together anymore. In fact, he lives up to this trope when he possesses Viktor to help calm him down. Then once he talks him through regaining his memories, he assures him he can still change and as his body fades away, he asks Viktor for one final hug which he gives.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He possesses Viktor and enters his mind, knowing full well he wouldn't live through the experience, but is okay if he knows he and the others will be fine.
• Informed Attribute: Based on a conversation with Diego, Ben has an aptitude for technology that started at a very young age.
• In the Hood: In his first few appearances, he has his hood on. However, after Klaus begins to sober up, his hood falls down to reveal the rest of his face.
• I Regret Nothing: Says this word for word to Klaus in Season 2 after possessing his body for some time and Klaus throws him up.
• Like Father, Like Son: To his frustration, Klaus tells Ben that's his constant criticism and tendency to act superior to him have made him grow up to be just like Reginald.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: The tentacled monstrosities he commands are a textbook example of this. He can summon them from other dimensions, with his body as the medium.
• Nice Guy: Implied to have been The Heart while alive, Viktor's autobiography even flat out calls him the kindest of his siblings, and ultimately seems like the most well-adjusted member of the Academy. Or, at least, he would have been, if he had remained alive. Death may have relieved certain stresses.
• Not So Above It All: For all his seriousness, Ben isn't above the occasional moment of levity. For example, when Klaus and Diego charge Hazel and Cha-Cha with a stolen ice-cream truck, Ben can be seen sitting on the dashboard with a popsicle in his hand, shouting "Wheeeeeee!"
  • He also spends most of his time around Klaus asking if they could go someplace to eat, or just to be somewhere else like the ocean.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: The only ghost Klaus doesn't mind seeing, and it's implied they were best friends as kids.
• One-Man Army: Can take out multiple mooks at once thanks to his Lovecraftian Superpower.
• Only Sane Man: Around Klaus, where he tries to help his spiraling depressed, alcoholic brother. In Season 2, he applauds Allison for not enabling Klaus in his drinking, only to be flabbergasted when she tells him she has better booze and a blender if they're going to day drink right. Even if the rest his siblings aren't able to hear him, he usually sides with them over Klaus in terms of ideas.
• Posthumous Character: Zig-zagged. Alive in the flashbacks, otherwise dead by the start of the series, but manages to be present due to Klaus's ability to commune with the dead.
• Race Lift: White in the comics, and played by an Asian actor in the Netflix adaptation.
• They Really Do Love Each Other: As much as he complains he truly loves Klaus. He even asks Viktor to send a message to Klaus before he disappeared.
• Refusal of the Call: While raised and trained as part of the Academy, Ben shows obvious reluctance to use his powers in the flashbacks and he left the academy at some point before his death.
• Satellite Character: In the first season, most of his character arc revolves around advising Klaus and telling him to get sober. Somewhat justified due to him being dead and Klaus being the only one he can talk to. Starting with Season 2, Ben has more independence as a character.
• Ship Tease: In Season 2, he gains a crush on one of Klaus's cult followers, Jill, which he tries to hide from Klaus by telling him he had "unfinished" business in San Francisco after Klaus runs away from his cult.
  Ben: Dark, curly hair... Almond eyes you get lost in.
• Something Only They Would Say: As Ben is possessing Klaus's body and Diego comes to pick him up, Ben tries to tell Diego it's he but the other doesn't believe him. So Ben tells Diego to ask him anything only he would know. Diego asks what Ben had programmed Allison's toy to say when they were kids and he replies, "Luther smells Dad's underwear." Overjoyed, the two brothers share a hug with Diego even telling Ben he missed him.
• Spirit Advisor: Ben is deceased and for the most part can only be seen by Klaus; his spirit accompanies Klaus and tries to give him advice and steer him in the right direction.
• Stalker with a Crush: In Season 2, Ben develops a crush on Jill, one of Klaus's cult members. Due to Klaus being the only one who can see him, Ben can't interact with her but continues to watch her. After he possesses Klaus and finally gets to have his conversation with Jill it quickly becomes apparent how much Ben has watched her, listing off several small quirks and habits of hers. Then he asks if he can smell her hair.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: The straight man to Klaus's wise guy. Ben is more sensible and levelheaded, and frequently acts as Klaus's Voice of Reason.
• This Is Gonna Suck: As a child, he clearly doesn't like the idea of using his powers on the robbers and only meekly asks his siblings after killing them all if they could go home now.
  Ben: [hanging his head] I didn't sign up for this.
• Those Two Guys: Since Klaus is the only one who can see him, they stay very close. Flashbacks to when they were kids implied that they were already best friends before he died.
• Unfinished Business: In Season 2, he claims he has this to Klaus as he constantly nags his brother about dragging him away from San Francisco. Turns out, it was because he had a crush on Jill and wanted to stay by her, but Klaus ran away from his cult to go back to Dallas.

Viktor

Viktor Hargreeves (Formerly Vanya Hargreeves) / Number Seven

Portrayed By: Elliot Page; T.J. McGibbon, Alyssa Gervasi (young Viktor)

"If you're raised to believe nothing about you is special, if the benchmark is extraordinary, what do you do if you're not?"

The seventh child to be adopted into the Umbrella Academy. Supposedly, unlike his adopted siblings, he has no special abilities of his own besides having a knack for playing the violin. Prior to the story, he wrote a tell-all autobiography on the Umbrella Academy that his surviving siblings still resent him for.

He came out as a trans man in the second episode of season 3, "The World's Biggest Ball of Twine".

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• Accidental Murder: He accidentally murders one of the drunk guys that were beating up Leonard with his powers. The trope is narrowly averted when he slashes Allison's throat in a fit of impulsive rage.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the comics, it's largely implied that his counterpart and Diego had some mutual feelings towards each other. In the show, Diego treats him only marginally better than how he treats Luther, indicating that he doesn't particularly see him as anyone special.
• Adaptational Dye-Job: Viktor's general appearance, both as himself and as the White Violin, differs from that of his comics counterpart.
  • In the comics, Vanya is tall with black hair. When she transforms into the White Violin, her skin and hair turn white, her eyes turn blue, and she gains violin markings on her body.
  • In the series, Viktor is shorter and has longer brown hair, which is cut short after his transition. When he becomes the White Violin, his skin and eyes glow, and his clothing turns white the more he uses his powers.
• Adaptational Gender Identity: In the comics, Vanya is a cisgender^note (a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex) woman. Here, Viktor transitions from female to male during the third season, a result of their actor transitioning between seasons.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the comics, Vanya joined Die Verdammten and helped conduct the Apocalypse Suite of her own accord. Here, Viktor is manipulated into acting on his deep-seated resentment toward his siblings, and immediately regrets his actions when he nearly kills Allison in a fit of rage. While unintentional, the act causes Luther to see him as a threat to himself and the rest of the family and lock him away, inadvertently causing him to snap and cause the apocalypse.
• Adaptational Modesty: When Vanya becomes the White Violin in the comics, she ends up eschewing clothes entirely for a Barbie Doll Anatomy. In the show, Viktor wears a black suit which turns white the stronger his powers become.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Vanya shows only attraction towards men in the comic. Her series counterpart Viktor shows attraction to both the male Leonard and the female Sissy, and an early special episode script reveals that he had a girlfriend prior to dating Leonard (while he was still presenting as female).
• Afraid of Their Own Strength: He calls his new powers terrifying after learning that he hospitalized two of the drunk guys that were beating Leonard and and killed the other one.
• Amnesiac Hero: In Season 2, when transported to the past, Viktor is hit by a car and loses his memory, prompting him to spend his time living with the family that hit him as their live-in babysitter while looking for his family.
• Amnesiacs are Innocent: Due to not having any memory of his traumatic past in Season 2, Viktor is more emotionally stable and expressive.
• Apocalypse Maiden: If left unchecked, Viktor’s massive reserves of psychokinetic power could end the world. Ironically, Reginald's attempts at inhibiting him ultimately end up driving him to do just that. According to Five, Viktor is destined to cause the apocalypse no matter what unless he gets a handle on his emotions.
• Apologises a Lot: Viktor is extremely apologetic due to an inferiority complex he developed in his childhood. Towards the end of Season 1, we learn more about it in a Troubled Backstory Flashback involving Allison.
• Badass Boast: Gives one to Marcus in the Season 3 trailer.
  "Your team's good. But I don't think you're better than me. I ended the world twice. And you? You're just meat and spandex."
• Barrier Warrior: Can project protective barriers using sound-based energy.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • Unlike their brothers, Allison actually makes an effort to bond with Viktor after Sir Reginald's funeral, inviting him out for drinks and bringing him coffee for breakfast. She also apologizes for lashing out at Viktor after a fight with her ex-husband, and is the only one who makes it clear she wants Luther to let him go in a way Viktor can see even from behind a steel door. Because of this, Viktor doesn't attack her during his rampage.
  • Five's room is the only one Viktor doesn't blow up directly during his rampage on the mansion, because Five treated him the kindest out of their siblings. In his book, he even mentions that Five was the one he’d play new violin pieces for when they were kids.
  • He bonds with Leonard on an emotional level because he lavishes Viktor with attention and tells Viktor he’s special. Naturally, it all falls to pieces when he realises that Leonard’s been manipulating him all along.
• Berserk Button: A flashback reveals that as a little child, he killed three nannies for trying to get him to eat his oatmeal. He also tried unsuccessfully to kill Grace.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • He left the lights on in the kitchen and some food out for Number Five in case he came back home. Before Five left to prove Reginald wrong about his lack of control over his ability to time travel, Viktor was the only sibling who tried to warn Five to back down from the argument, subtly shaking his head. When he comes to Viktor’s apartment after his fight with the Commission, Viktor helps him clean his wound and outright tells him that he doesn't want to lose him again.
  • During 1963, he quickly becomes close to Harlan, who he starts to treat almost like a son. Viktor seems to have a soft spot for the kid as he is very caring and protective of him. When Viktor discovers that Harlan had drowned in a lake after searching for him when he ran away from home, Viktor quickly tries to save his life and serves as an emotional crutch for him when he starts to unknowingly use his powers.
  • Despite the horrible way Diego treated him earlier, when he sees his brother depressed over Lila's disappearance while sitting on the steps of Sissy's house, Viktor’s first action is to sit next to him and go with him to comfort him
• Birds of a Feather: He bonds with Leonard over their perceived ordinariness and troubled relationship with their fathers.
• Blow You Away: On several occasions when using his sound-based powers, he seems to be able to generate wind.
• Broken Bird: As a result of believing he was the only normal one of his siblings, in addition to the Training from Hell Sir Reginald put them all through, Viktor grew up a severely anxious and emotionally fragile Nervous Wreck who's so distant and distrusting of his other family members that he falls in love with a stalker with obviously devious intentions. His mistrust of his siblings also leads him to push them away when he could most benefit from their input.
• Butt-Monkey: In Season 1, he’s been isolated by his family, emotionally abused by his adoptive father and manipulated by his first boyfriend who wanted to exploit his superpowers, driving him to be emotionally fragile and insecure to the point that his intensity and troubled nature becomes a danger to himself and others. He’s less hapless in Season 2, but still suffers from amnesia after almost immediately getting hit by a car when he lands in Dallas and later in the season, he gets tortured by the FBI when he’s assumed to be a Russian communist. In Season 3, he is more self-actualized and is taking responsibility for himself and comes into his own identity as both super-powered and as a trans man. Unfortunately, the flip side to this comes with finding out that his son Harlan that he rescued last season still has some remnant of his power lost control of his power when Sissy died in 1989 and he reached out desperately to try to find Viktor, but ended up accidentally killing the Umbrella's mothers.
• Career-Revealing Trait: During the second season, Sissy Cooper tries to help with Viktor's efforts to rediscover his past by checking his hands: she can tell by his smooth palms that Viktor isn't a farm labourer, but he sports calloused fingertips, revealing that he used to play a string instrument.
• Character Development: In Season 1, Viktor does not know how to control his emotions or take responsibility for his actions, in part due to his strict upbringing and a lifetime of being on heavy antipsychotic meds. Come Season 2, Viktor shows more control over himself emotionally; while he is mad after finding out that Five kept an important secret from him, he drives back to Sissy's farm because Sissy has been worried about him all night instead of lashing out at Five. He also logically points out that if he ended the world, it may be safest for everyone if he stays out of trouble and goes back to the quaint life he has, without a violin or any expectations. Even when he gets his memory back and starts to regress while being tortured and drugged (again), Ben helps to calm him down to a point between the two states of mind. This logically continues in Season 3, where he learns to restrain his powers and gains confidence in his identity leading to him coming out as a trans man (which is accepted completely by his family), and his bonds to his family strengthen throughout this season at the cost of his relationships to Allison and Harlan.
• Confidence Building Scheme: Lacking in self-esteem from a comparatively early age, Viktor is normally a classic Shrinking Violet... up until Leonard begins encouraging him to be more outgoing and steals the medication that normally keeps his emotions and powers suppressed. With his support, Viktor begins to gain self-confidence until he's coaxed into auditioning for First Chair of his orchestra's violin section and wins hands-down. However, Leonard isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart, and definitely not because he actually likes Viktor: by spurring him into action, posing as his boyfriend, murdering the previous First Chair and even arranging a mugging to prompt him into using his powers in self-defense, Leonard hopes to eventually turn Viktor against the rest of the Umbrella Academy.
• Cowboy Cop: Deconstructed. While he's not an actual cop, he goes behind the back of his siblings quite a few times during Season 3 in order to do what he thinks is right and generally acts as a lone wolf. This ends up creating an incredible amount of issues, from Marcus' disappearance being blamed on the Umbrella Academy because he decided to meet him alone, to continuing the feud between the Sparrow Academy and his family because of his insistence on saving Harlan, as well as losing him quite a lot of goodwill in his family's eyes, Allison's in particular. Five lays it all on him about this later.
  Five: It means you're very dangerous, Viktor Hargreeves. The decisions you make impact the entire world. So no matter how benevolent they may seem, you don't get to make them alone. You know what they call a superhero who works alone and doesn't listen to anybody? A villain. [...] No more going rogue. If you ever need anything, I'm always here for you. But lie to us again ... Viktor, I'll kill you myself.
• Creepy Child: Reginald had to create a robot mother just so Viktor didn't kill her like he did with the real nannies due to how super-powerful he was.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not as much as most of the other siblings, but Viktor has his moments, especially after he becomes emotionally stable.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Of The Team Normal. His family frequently put him down because he lacked powers, often treating him like a nuisance. This results in him developing severe insecurities and self-esteem issues well into his adult years, as well as deep-seated resentment towards his siblings and an unwillingness to forgive them for even minor slights. These factors together make him far more susceptible to the influence of a man who wants to use him for his own ends, simply because he tells him he's special.
  • Ironically, once the truth about him comes out, he also deconstructs the concept of the Superpower Lottery and Story-Breaker Power. Viktor is by far the most powerful of the siblings, so you would expect him to be The Ace of the team like Superman, right? Except for that to happen, he would have needed to have a loving upbringing and a strong sense of right and wrong instilled into him. Instead, what he got was a man with only a tenuous grasp on human morality who couldn't offer either and instead decided that he is a threat to the world and must be suppressed. That turned out well.
• Does Not Like Spam: He hated oatmeal as a child. In a flashback, he's shown killing three nannies after they attempted to get him to eat his breakfast, and only stopped when Grace was introduced, as she could not be killed.
• Easy Amnesia:
  • At the beginning of Season 2, he is hit by a slow moving car and is amnesiac afterwards, with the doctor they've seen saying that a bit of rest will suffice. It's ultimately subverted in "The Seven Stages", where we learn that he's actually deeply repressed his memories before his arrival in November 1963.
  • Despite having little memory of his own past, Viktor's amnesia seems not to have affected his knowledge of current and historical events in general. He doesn't question Diego's insistence that Reginald is involved in the plot to kill JFK, or that JFK was even going to be assassinated. He is also aware of society being more accepting of LGBTQ+ people in 2019, and he knows the name of Harlan's disorder and that there are resources in 2019 to help him.
• Elegant Classical Musician: Viktor plays the violin in a local orchestra, in addition to giving private music lessons on the side. He is portrayed as average at first, but when Leonard flushes his meds down the sink and his emotions are dampened no longer, he's actually excellent enough that one audition earns him first chair and a spot as the soloist for an upcoming concert.
• Emotional Powers: As Harold pointed out, his abilities are tied to his emotions. Naturally, this makes it difficult for him to control them.
• Emotionless Boy: Subverted. His powers are tied to his emotions, and Reginald kept him heavily medicated with mood stabilizers well into his adult years to suppress them; as a result, he tends to speak in a monotone for the first few episodes. After his medication wears off, he displays a more natural range of emotions, and subjects his siblings to several outbursts when he believes they have excluded him on purpose. This quickly turns violent when Allison confesses to Rumoring him as a child.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Flashbacks consistently show Viktor with straight-cut bangs and longer hair as a child; as an adult, he keeps his hair tied back in an unflattering hairstyle. After getting into a relationship with Leonard and learning that he has powers, Viktor begins letting his hair down as a sign that he is slowly becoming more confident. In Season 2, he strikes a balance between the last two with his hair tied into a ponytail to show him as more emotionally mature. Season 3 has another hairstyle change preceeding his coming out, where it's now ear-length and in a style that frames his face better.
• Excessive Evil Eyeshadow: He adopts black eyeshadow when he becomes the White Violin, which stands out even more because of his angelic, all-white appearance and Glowing Eyes of Doom while he's super-charged.
• Eye Colour Change: As the raw destructive nature of his powers "possesses" him in his rage, his irises change from brown to an unnerving, black-ringed white surrounding pinpoint pupils.
• Final Boss: After Harold and the Handler are dealt with, Viktor becomes the final threat of Season 1, being highly unstable and turning into a ticking time bomb ready to bring the world to destruction.
• Flight: In Season 2, he gains the ability to fly using force he creates out of sound.
• Freak Out: In the season 1 finale when the combined stress of everything that's happened to him finally hits the breaking point and again in season 2 when all of this unresolved trauma is supplemented with prolonged torture and being pumped full of hallucinogenics courtesy of the U.S. government.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: In Season 1, he goes from the meek and powerless team normal to the single deadliest member of the Academy and the cause of the apocalypse.
• Gender-Blender Name: Vanya is a common female name in Brazil (although in Portuguese it's spelled Vânia), but a male one in Russia, Viktor's country of birth; more specifically, it's a diminutive/affectionate form of the name "Ivan". Justified, since he was not named by his birth mother, but by Grace, who presumably went for a Russian-sounding name without really having a full understanding of the Russian Naming Convention.
• Gender Flip: Thanks to Elliot Page's transition, Viktor is this starting in the third season.
• Glass Cannon: Exaggerated. Viktor is so powerful he can end the world if his emotional state is left unchecked, but at his most powerful, he loses his senses and control of his powers just by the sound of a bullet passing close to his ear, (justified because his powers are sound-based). Also, because he wasn't giving the same martial training as the rest of the team, his overall physique and reflexes are at best average, so it's not uncommon for him to be knocked out by overwhelming physical force if he doesn't have time to use his powers.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: His already unnaturally color-changed eyes glow as his destructive power increases.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Viktor is told this in a Brutal Honesty way, by a fellow violinist who seems to be a prodigy. She makes it clear that practice only gets you so far, and if you don't master a discipline within a certain amount of time, you never will. This adds to his already heavy insecurities, especially since he only started playing in hopes of standing out and becoming special to his adopted father.
• The Heart: By the third season. During the initial confrontation with the Sparrows, he repeatedly tries to keep the peace, even during combat. He initiates two meetings with the Sparrows And while his attempts to help Harlan pisses off the siblings, his motives are for the latter's well-being. And while his apology to Allison was at the request of Luther, he continually attempts to reconcile with her, despite Allison having killed Harlan and even after knowing that she had made a deal with Sir Reginald which cost two of their brothers their lives. He displays leadership skills throughout the season. Even Marcus assumes that he is the Umbrellas' Number One.
  Viktor: I'm Number Seven, actually.
  Marcus: Well, then somebody screwed up.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • He goes completely catatonic after accidentally slashing Allison's throat. He spends the opening of "Changes" emotionally switched off, and barely has the will to do anything but follow Leonard around like a sleepwalker; by the time he's up to talking again, he's been reduced to sitting in the bathtub in a fetal position, and he can't even bring himself to make eye contact.
  • And again during Season 2, while he is arrested, drugged, and interrogated by the FBI. He regains his memories and his powers are completely unchecked as he withdraws into his mind, filled with guilt for what he did in the last season. It takes the effort of his deceased brother Ben to be able to comfort him and pull him out of his trauma.
• Horrifying the Horror: When he was young, Viktor was quite the terror, especially to nannies who made the mistake of telling him to eat oatmeal at breakfast — to the point that he would psychokinetically murder them. However, the sight of Grace managing to survive having her neck twisted 180 degrees freaked Viktor out so much that he agreed to behave himself from then on.
• Identity Amnesia: He suffers from this for a majority of Season 2, although it's hard not to admit that he’s happier not remembering some parts of his past.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Being told he was ordinary, and punished for this fact, gave him a deep desire to be considered special.
• Intoxicated Superpower Snag: Since childhood, Viktor has been prescribed anti-anxiety medication in order to suppress his abilities, and given his chronic lack of confidence, he isn't inclined to stop taking them. The plot of season 1 naturally begins heating up when Leonard Peabody steals Viktor's prescription, gradually allowing his powers to return...
• It Was a Gift: In "The White Violin", a flashback reveals that his violin was a gift from Reginald, that he himself received from his wife.
• I Will Wait for You:
  • Downplayed. In the series opener, Viktor talks to Pogo about how he didn’t give up on Five coming back to them. Every night after Five's disappearance, he kept making him his favorite sandwich and made sure all the lights were on so he would find his way home. However as per the conversation, he has accepted that he is not coming back.
  • In Season 2, Sissy and Viktor make a similar promise that if Viktor can find a way safely back to her, to take it. Unfortunately, he doesn't make it back.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When Allison comes to check on him after the assault on the mansion, Viktor doesn't believe her concern is genuine, and bluntly points out that Diego and Allison told him to leave. Allison has to admit he's right on that one and apologizes.
• Light Is Not Good: He can convert sound into pure energy, and his attacks largely consist of bursts of white light. During the confrontation between him and his siblings in the finale of Season 1, as he gathers more and more power, his outfit and violin become white as well.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Viktor's powers are reliant on him being in contact with sound. Reginald created a soundproof chamber specifically to prevent him from using his powers, and Luther locks him in it with the intention of keeping him there until he's no longer a threat. Too bad Luther didn't count on him using the sound of his heartbeat to escape.
  • Loud noises can also disrupt his control over his powers, which Allison exploits in the Season 1 finale by firing a gun next to his ear.
• Love Makes You Dumb: His love for Leonard blinds him to the truth about his real intentions, and leads him to violently reject the evidence Allison brings to prove he is dangerous.
• Make Some Noise: His ability. He can manipulate sound and convert it into energy, which has a variety of applications from telekinetically controlling objects to generating concussive blasts.
• Manchild: Like most of his siblings, he's emotionally stunted from a lifetime of Reginald's abuse and neglect. It isn't immediately obvious since he's lived on his own with a job for a decade, and he was meek and timid due to his mood stabilizing medication. However, once his medicine wears off, he's shown to have a very childish emotional outlook, a short fuse, impulsive behavior, easily-triggered anxiety, a bad habit of holding onto petty grudges, a tendency to latch onto anyone willing to give him attention and validation, and explosive bouts of grief when faced with personal loss.
• Meaningful Name: "Vanya" was one of the codenames for Tsar Bomba, befitting that he's from Russia and that he's the most powerful member of the team.
• Mind over Matter: He can generate psychokinetic force through sound, allowing him to move and control objects.
• Mistaken for Spies: As an amnesiac formerly named Vanya who speaks fluent Russian and has no documents to prove his citizenship whilst living in 1960s America, it doesn't take long for him to get blatantly accused of being a Russian spy.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Years of exclusion by his father and siblings led him to write a tell-all book without his siblings' knowledge or consent. This book exposed their powers, weaknesses and a lot of personal demons that most of the team would have probably liked to have kept secret, hence why their relationship with Viktor is even more strained in the present. Cha-Cha later uses this book as a "Hargreeves family handbook" to give herself and Hazel an advantage.
• Musical Assassin: Sounds are the fuel to his powers, and he uses his violin to command them during the confrontation with his family. This includes causing shockwaves and directing slashes of energy using the violin's bow.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • His reaction when he accidentally uses his powers to slice Allison's throat in a fit of rage is to immediately rush to his sister's side and profusely apologize. He spends the entirety of the next episode traumatized and intensely remorseful.
  • Also has a downplayed version when he realizes that his unsuccessful attempt to take back his powers from Harlan in 1963 ended up creating the Kugelblitz when Harlan's powers backfired and accidentally killed the Umbrella's mothers in 1989.
• Nightmare of Normality: It's eventually revealed that his supposed lack of powers was due to Sir Reginald ordering Allison to erase Viktor's memories of them, with the powers themselves being suppressed by medication for a non-existent anxiety disorder.
• No Medication for Me: He's off his meds in the latter half of the first season after Leonard flushes them down the sink in an attempt to draw out his power, and he admits that he feels much better than he used to while taking them. It's likely a contributing factor to his fragile emotional state, which in turn causes the end of the world. Season 2 seems to confirm that Reginald went overboard in providing the meds because after a year off the withdrawal, he feels better and is much more in control of himself.
• No Social Skills: Due to being isolated his whole life, he has a hard time developing social skills and even struggles to understand that his first boyfriend was manipulating him just to control him and his abilities. Averted by the second season. His amnesia and lack of unnecessary medication makes him more assertive, he can much more easily read people, can appropriately stand up for himself, and projects leadership skills. Getting his memories back not only doesn't cause him to revert back to old ways, but he becomes ever more badass during the third season.
• Obliviously Superpowered:
  • A major reveal of the first season is that he possesses superpowers of his own but is unaware of them due to a combination of brainwashing and suppressant medication. Halfway through the season, the drugs are stolen, but his sonic powers return so subtly that Viktor doesn't even notice them in action at first. Even after he notices that his bad mood has bent every single streetlight on the block out of shape, he's reluctant to acknowledge what happened and needs to be carefully coaxed into accepting his powers before he can be trained in how to control them.
  • Happens again in Season 2: suffering amnesia in the wake of the cataclysmic previous season finale, Viktor is once again unaware of his powers. This time, though, he retains the training he developed in the previous season, so no accidental uses tip him off even after several weeks spent living with the Coopers. It's not until the Swedes attempt to assassinate him that Viktor instinctively uses his powers to deflect a bullet, revealing his powers - and making them very hard to deny, given the resulting crop circle. Thankfully, Number Five shows up soon after to help him come to terms with what just happened.
• Older Than They Look: Not to the same extreme as Five, but Viktor looks a decade younger than his siblings despite all sharing the same birthday. Then again, he is played by Elliot Page, who has commented on his ability to pass for a teenager even into his 30s.
• One-Man Army: By the time of Season 2, he's able to single-handedly defeat hundreds of Commission soldiers using his powers.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Being the only one who could never use their supposed powers, he was this and The Un-Favourite.
• Person of Mass Destruction: In the first two seasons, Viktor is a direct cause of the apocalypse.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Is the smallest of his siblings, but also the most powerful. Even Reginald was unable to figure out how to safely harness Viktor's powers and opted instead to suppress them to keep everybody safe.
• Power Glows: As his powers increase, his body gives off a blueish-white glow.
• Poor Communication Kills: In season 3 he learns that Harlan inadvertantly killed the mothers of the original Umbrella Academy. Unfortunately he does not inform his siblings about this or at least warn Harlan to keep the truth to himself, causing Harlan to misjudge Allison's cold response to him and give away the truth, causing Allison to kill him in a moment of rage.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: The first season composes this. Between being manipulated by his first boyfriend, traumatic memories coming on full force, the death of his father, and repeated slights from his siblings (both real and imagined), he ends the season fully snapping and causing the apocalypse.
• Psychic Link: Viktor develops one with Harlan after he uses his powers to revive Harlan.
• Psychoactive Powers: His considerable powers are tied to his emotional state. Too bad he's suffered years of emotional abuse and neglect, and loses access to the medication that's meant to suppress his emotions thanks to Leonard.
• Redemption Demotion: Downplayed; in season one, Viktor is an apocalyptic threat that wipes out the entire team and is only stopped thanks to a surprise attack - and even that results in Viktor accidentally blowing up the moon and causing the apocalypse anyway. As of season two, he's still incredibly dangerous in combat, to the point that if he has the time to use his powers, he can easily wipe out an entire army; only two other super-powered characters can rival him - in this case Lila and Harlan. However, now that he's no longer in withdrawal from mood stabilizers, he's not in danger of casually destroying the world - and doesn't want to anyway.
• Repression Never Ends Well: His emotions have been repressed via drugs since he was a child. The result? When he goes off his meds and realizes he has superpowers, which have also been repressed by his sister Allison's Compelling Voice, he is furious and lashes out with them, nearly killing Allison.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Goes on one upon breaking out of his prison, starting with destroying the mansion and killing Pogo and Grace.
• The Runt at the End: Viktor is the only sibling to lack powers and the last one numerically (Seven), and is also the physically smallest. He turns out to have the strongest powers of all of them, but they still affectionately tease him for his size.
• Save the Villain: When given a chance to kill Viktor during his concert, Allison instead opts to fire her gun right next to Viktor's head, using the noise to disrupt his powers and knock him unconscious. Minutes later, with the apocalypse closing in, the rest of the team takes Viktor with them as they teleport away.
• Shower of Angst: Almost broken by the events of the previous episode, in "Changes," Viktor can only sit in the bathtub, huddle into a Troubled Fetal Position, and let Leonard wash Allison's blood off him.
• Shrinking Violet: Viktor suffered emotional abuse and neglect as a child, causing him to grow into a timid, meek and insecure adult.
• Super-Empowering: In Season 2, Viktor discovers he can share his powers with others. After he discovers that Harlan has drowned, he uses his energy to revive him, which causes Harlan to manifest sound-based powers similar to his. Viktor tries to take the power back in the season finale, but Harlan is later seen manipulating objects with telekinesis, implying the attempt was unsuccessful. Confirmed in the third season, which reveals that Harlan still has his abilities.
• Super-Hearing: Through concentration, Viktor can hear sounds that would be impossible for the average human hearing to pick up or block out other sounds to focus on a specific one, like the sound of a car engine or his own heartbeat. After training with Harlan, he learns how to hear sounds his physical hearing can’t detect. Makes sense, since his powers are sound-based.
• Superpower Lottery: Easily the winner among the seven siblings in terms of powers. He can convert sound into energy (which has several different applications like shockwaves, telekinesis, and levitation), control the weather, and drain energy from others. By Season 2, he discovers that he can share his powers with someone else by transferring his energy to them, which also gives him a mental connection to them. The main drawback is that because of Reginald neglecting to train him, he barely has any idea how to use most of them and often just relies on emotion or instinct to trigger their use, which leads to several cases of Power Incontinence when his emotions run high.
• The Team Normal: Viktor is supposedly the only member of the Umbrella Academy to lack powers of any kind, and as such was ostracized by the rest of his siblings and mistreated by Reginald. It later turns out that he not only had power, but was the most powerful of all the siblings, and was both inhibited and manipulated by Hargreeves into believing he was completely powerless. And while his siblings generally have powerful but relatively limited abilities like Super-Strength and Teleportation Spam (Five's Time Travel notwithstanding), Viktor is more akin to a Physical God than anything else.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: He manages to fully access his powers when he's Forced to Watch his boyfriend Leonard being beaten up by a bunch of drunks.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Young Viktor ended up impulsively murdering at least three of his nannies because he didn't like being told to eat his oatmeal. He only stopped because Sir Reginald was able to create Grace, a nanny he couldn't kill.
• The Unfavorite: Growing up, he felt like he was this, since Reginald pointedly excluded him from participating in Academy superheroics and his siblings eventually followed suit.
• Unskilled, but Strong: His powers put him in an entirely different league from his siblings, but he was excluded from their Training from Hell as a child and consequently has very little real combat experience. Due to this, it is still possible for normal people to take him down with the right plan or if they manage to catch him by surprise.
• Unstable Powered Woman: Deconstructed, and later Gender Inverted as of his transition. He starts off as The Team Normal in a Super Family Team and resentful of his adopted siblings, but turns out to be the most powerful of them after all and eventually causes the apocalypse the siblings were trying to prevent after Luther locks him in the same soundproof chamber once used to restrain him as a child. However, his father figure treated him as a ticking time bomb from the beginning, had his personality and powers repressed (supernaturally and through drugs) and kept him isolated when he was young, which meant he was not allowed to grow into his powers organically. In Season 2, with a clean slate and the love and support of people around him, he remasters his powers fairly quickly and becomes a force for good.
• Unstoppable Rage: His anger at his siblings for excluding him, at Sir Reginald for erasing his memories of his powers, and at Leonard for manipulating him all coalesce into a massive power boost that ends up destroying the world in two separate timelines.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: While it's ambiguous how much agency he had in bringing about the apocalypse in the timeline Five was trapped in, the altered timeline with Five's presence only triggers it because his stored-up energy was unintentionally flung into the moon while he was unconscious. In Season 2, his torture at the hands of the FBI and subsequent lashing out is mistaken for a Soviet attack that causes Kennedy to escalate the Cold War into actual armed conflict.
• Vampiric Draining: One application of his energy-based powers. Not only can he generate massive bursts of energy, but he can drain it as well, and almost kills all four of his brothers this way when he's in his full Drunk on the Dark Side Super Mode.
• Villain in a White Suit: As his destructive power grows, his clothing and violin both turn white as an Evil Costume Switch of sorts. The same happens to his civilian wear in Season 2 after his torture at the hands of the FBI leads him to lash out with his powers and unintentionally bring about yet another apocalypse.
• Weather Manipulation: Seems to have this power. While leaving the estate after an argument with his siblings, his anger caused thunder and rainfall that was isolated to the street he was on.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Viktor bears deep emotional scars from the trauma he suffered in childhood, and is deeply emotionally repressed due to being heavily medicated for much of his life (at least until the meds are later discarded). Despite having at least a decade away from his father's toxic influence and an unspecified amount of time seeing a therapist, he still clings to old wounds. A manipulative boyfriend with a vendetta against his siblings pushes him to remember all the things he dislikes about his family, leading him to see careless slights against him as intentional and intentional wounds as unforgivable. He pushes the only sibling trying to initiate a friendship away, only realizing the error of his ways when he accidentally nearly kills Allison. When he returns to the Academy to try and apologize, it's too little, too late; Luther, who doesn't know all the facts, already sees him as a threat and locks him away, inadvertently causing him to snap.

Lila

Lila Pitts

Portrayed By: Ritu Arya

"Oh, anything that you can do, I can do better."

A woman who Diego befriends during his stay at the mental institution and tags along after they escape. It's eventually revealed that she's another one of the 43 children born in 1989, whom Reginald wasn't able to adopt. Instead, the Handler took her as her daughter after having her parents killed. She has the power to copy the abilities of the other children.

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• Action Girl: She's shown to be able to kick ass with ease. It's because the Handler is her mother.
• Ambiguously Bi: The framing of the initial meeting between Lila and her friend in 1989 Berlin, and the way they look at one another, may suggest their relationship was other than platonic. Additionally, she claims to Diego that she's slept with many people, and called Sloane calculating hot.
• Anti-Villain: She was groomed into becoming an assassin by the Handler, and despite this, she chooses to confront her when she learns that she plans to take contol of the most superpowered children possible.
• Anti-Hero: In Season 3, she becomes an ally to the siblings, but remains the same snarky pain in the ass.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Diego.
• Child Soldier: She was raised by the Handler, who faked a kill order to make her one of her superpowered soldiers.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Invoked by the Handler so she could raise her as an emotionally detached killer machine.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She lost her parents to home invaders (actually Five on the Handler's orders) as a small kid.
• Deadpan Snarker: Every line she says is pure roast, especially if it's Diego. This is how she shows her affection for him.
• Family of Choice: In "The End of Something", Diego offers her a place in his family. After the Hargreeves siblings get shot by The Handler, Lila declares that they were her real family. It's unknown if she still has the sentiment, however, since she ends up leaving the siblings and departing on her own with a briefcase. Season 3 eventually reveals she does actually love Diego and would like to embrace them but the Handler's reveal of her true feelings on Lila left her feeling emotionally troubled for a good long while over whether to stick with Diego or not.
• Femme Fatale: This was part of the Handler's training, as she dressed her up for one of her first missions where she kills her target in the back of a limousine.
• The Gadfly: She loves messing with anyone nearby. This includes Diego of course.
• Genki Girl: She's a crazy, eccentric and unpredictable Womanchild who rarely drops her cheerful attitude.
• Happily Adopted: She's at first happy with being the Handler's adopted daughter, but as time goes on she starts to waver in her loyalty.
• Harmful to Minors: She was just a little girl when she watched her parents being murdered while she hid away.
• Heroic BSoD: In season 3 realization that her mother was just using her for her own benefit leaves Lila emotionally annihilated, to the point that she can only blankly review the footage of her own narrowly-averted murder in tears.
• In Love with the Mark: The Handler calls Lila out on this word for word as the two talk during a bingo night session where the Handler asks if she would kill Diego if she asked her to. When Lila hesitates, the Handler points this out which Lila tries to deny. When Herb asks if she was really going to kill Diego she's quick to shoot down that assumption and outright says she loves Diego.
• Instant Expert: When she copies the Hargreeves' powers, she almost always outmatch them, on account of her being groomed by the Handler to fully exploit her ability. She has greater control over Viktor’s power, forming a barrier very easily, overpowers Luther, can affect someone's unconscious actions, like breathing, with her rumours, and tires herself much slower than Five when blinking.
• It's Personal: With Five, since he killed her parents during his Commission era. She also deflects Five's claims that his assassinations were never personal by saying it's always personal. Five thinks that's why she isn't cut out to work as an assassin for the Commission, as the others are usually No-Nonsense Nemesis.
• Like Brother and Sister: Somewhat ironically (in every sense of the term), this is what her relationship with Five slowly turns into over the course of Season 3. Though they initially hate each other, they go from insulting each other at every go to lightly teasing and joking around with one another. Though they still seem to harbor some irritation, it’s not as bitter or intense as it used to be.
• Obfuscating Insanity: She fakes being mentally ill and plants herself in an asylum to get close to Diego and continues to do so for some time while also pretending she has no idea what is going on, simply acting like a mentally unwell thrill seeker who just wants to get in on the action. In reality, she is the Handler's adoptive daughter helping her mother to take over the Commission and already knows all about the Academy and what's at stake.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Normally a sly, mischievous, uncaring, effortlessly-confident snarker, the realization that Five was responsible for the murder of her birth parents leaves her horrified and consumed with vengeance for the first time in the season. She's left completely dispirited when it turns out that the Handler - her own adoptive mother - gave Five the order.
  • In season 3, she completely breaks down in the wake of her mother/the Handler's betrayal; her chronological next appearance immediately following the end of season 2 features her staring blankly at the Infinite Switchboard's recording of the Handler murdering her in the invalidated timeline, her eyes full of tears. In the very next scene, a visit to the fall of the Berlin Wall and finding the secret message planted there results in her suffering a screaming, sledgehammer-swinging meltdown, to the point that only joining a rock band is enough to keep her from going off the deep end.
  • Lampshaded: after returning from her visit to the Commission with Five, she immediately kisses Diego. Given the current state of their relationship, Diego quickly realizes that this show of affection can only mean that something serious just happened. In this case, it's the discovery that the world is doomed all over again, the Commission is gone forever, and nobody knows what to do about it.
  • When she admits to being pregnant with Diego's child, she starts tearing up, admitting that she's deeply afraid of failing her baby as badly as the Handler failed her.
• Power Copying: It's revealed in the Season 2 finale that she is one of the 43 children born in sudden pregnancies on October 1st, 1989. Although the nature of her powers is not explained, she can copy the abilities of the other children and has been described as a "chameleon". It's implied that she can also duplicate more mundane skills such as fighting. She herself describes her power as "anything you can do, I can do better". The Academy deduces that she can only copy one ability at a time as she never uses their powers in tandem — which would keep her from having a Story-Breaker Power — but this theory is never really tested.
• Pregnant Badass: She is pregnant with Diego's child in Season 3, but stays and fights to stop the Kugelblitz, no matter how many times Diego tries to stop her.
• Rebellious Spirit: Lila definitely has shades of this and is chaotic by nature
• Revenge: She goes after Five after she finds out that he killed her parents. She stops, however, when she learns that her adopted mother was the one to send the kill order.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Season 2 ends with her grabbing the Handler's briefcase and making a time jump. Diego lets her go because he wants her to have a choice with her life.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • To all of the Hargreeves siblings in general, as she's one of the 43 children who were born in the Bizarre Baby Boom, and she uses her powers to do bad things instead of at least trying to do the right thing as the Hargreeves usually do. While Reginald tried to instil a sense of wrong and right in his adopted children and raised them with the supposed goal of preventing the world's end, the Handler actively raised Lila to be an amoral killer solely to fulfill her own personal ambitions.
  • To Diego, both are attractive, reclusive, street smart killers who conversely care deeply for the women (Grace for Diego, The Handler for Lila they consider their mothers. Although while Diego is The Cowl who believes in justice and cares for innocent people, Lila is a Professional Killer who’s killed numerous people regardless of whether or not they are innocent. Subverted though as thanks to falling in love with Diego, Lila becomes more heroic and good natured.
  • To Viktor, both are young people who have been led astray and manipulated by a supposed loved one (The Handler and Leonard) who just want to use them for their power. Both fight the Hargreeves siblings before pulling a Heel–Face Turn.
• Stepford Snarker: By season 3, she decides to hide her emotional vulnerability by snarking and messing around with Diego so she doesn't have to confess her true feelings.
• Tragic Keepsake: She wears the bracelet Diego made during their time in the asylum, and continues to wear it, even after she grabs a Commission briefcase to travel somewhere else after the Handler is killed.
• Tyke Bomb: Raised by the Handler specifically to serve as her secret weapon.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: To some degree. In "Wedding at the End of the World" when Klaus goes over to Diego hoping to get him to join Reginald and his plans, Lila obstructs him with a chair and warns him, a fork pressed to his chest, that if he goes filling Diego's head with stupid ideas she will make the last twenty four hours of Klaus's time on Earth very painful.
• Wacky Cravings: A three-month-and-counting pregnant Lila chalks up her desire for sushi to this since she otherwise seems to regard that type of food as disgusting and mediocre.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: When Diego lays out his plan to just cut off Lee Harvey Oswald's trigger finger, she asks him why they don't just kill the man if they know for certain he's going to shoot the president.
• You Need a Breath Mint: During Season 3, when the two are attempting to use their powers to reactivate the briefcase and go to the Commission, Five complains that her breath is terrible.
  Lila: Garlic is for winners.
• You Will Be Spared: In the Season 2 finale, she leaves Diego pinned under a tractor rather than go for the kill, as she did with his other siblings. Granted, she figured out he didn't know about Five assassinating the baord given his confused expression. This ends up saving them; Diego puts down his knives and simply talks to her, knowing she must be scared and angry as they all were.

The Sparrow Academy (Spoilers for Season 3)

In General

From left to right: Sloane, Jayme, Ben, Marcus, Alphonso, Christopher, Fei.

• Asshole Victim: While there are exceptions (Marcus died after simply investigating the kugelblitz, and Sloane and Ben don't die), most of them die when attempting to or contemplating murdering others (Fei and Christopher in particular get exploded while contemplating to murder the Umbrella Academy after their alliance was over), and they're generally portrayed as hyper-arrogant even when compared to the protagonists.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: They are not very nice to each other but when push comes to shove they do risk their lives to protect each other and are deeply upset when one of them is killed. Additionally, they’re all upset to see Pogo leave.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: They may hide it better but they are just as messed up as the Umbrella Hargreeves. Marcus is the one putting them together, and even he is a Slave to PR who treats his siblings more like subordinates than family. Ben is an arrogant Jerkass crazy for a spot at the top, Jayme and Alphonso are too busy doing petty theft and beating random thugs to care for any bigger scheme, Fei and Christopher are outright malicious, planning to kill the Umbrellas just as they seem to have made peace, and Sloane only stays because she has nowhere else to go and nobody to turn to.
• Butterfly of Doom: Because of the different powers and people involved, Ben survived the "Jennifer" incident, which causes the team to stick together to adulthood. However, Reggie's continued abuse eventually becomes too much for Pogo to tolerate, so he quits, but not until after advising them how to drug and pacify Reginald in such a manner that they can take control of him. With Reggie becoming their docile plaything, they proceed to verbally and financially abuse him (and by implication, physically abuse him), while giving them untold freedom to become spoiled manchildren who act more like bullies than superheroes. What's more, the different sibling dynamic also resulted in Ben having a completely different personality, growing up more like Diego.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Many of them refer to Reginald by his name instead of calling him "dad". And unlike the Umbrella Academy, they see Grace as just a robotic servant rather than a motherly figure, so instead of calling her "mom", they either call her "Grace" or simply "the robot".
• Celebrity Superhero: Unlike the Umbrellas, the Sparrow Academy never grew out of it, and is even implied that they had only expanded upon it after they pacify Reginald with drugs. Deconstructed, as their family dynamic had devolved into a ranking system that leaves them rather petulant and backstabby. The only reason why they continue to antagonize the Umbrellas after beating them is because they came close to losing and it would look bad if it became public knowledge.
• Dwindling Party: Their numbers slowly decrease over the course of the season as most of them die and Sloane disappears, with Ben as the only one left by the very final scene of season 3.
• Foil: To the Umbrella Academy. Though both are dysfunctional families led by the same abusive father, the Umbrellas actually love each other but don't show this openly but in different ways. In contrast, the Sparrows seem more coordinated at first but below the surface, they don't get along well mostly because of their power dynamics and numerical hierarchy, which are more present in their group (especially between Marcus, Ben and Fei). Also their outfits differ: since the Umbrellas were active as a Kid Hero group, theirs were more scholarly and blue-themed while the Sparrows wear red and spandex bodysuits.
• Faux Affably Evil: They're no less menacing when they decide to hold Luther hostage, but they treat him civily throughout the entire experience, even allowing him to eat breakfast with him and sending him on his way with a gift bag.
• Freudian Trio: The three girls as feisty Jayme is the Id, serene Sloane is the Ego and calculating Fei is the Superego.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: After Marcus is erased by the kugelblitz, the team is comprised of three guys and three girls. The next four members to be taken out are one guy and one girl to maintain the gender equality.
• Hero of Another Story: Prior to the Umbrella Academy arriving at their timeline, the Sparrow Academy had their own history as a group of superheroes.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Fei and Jayme (edgy and wear a lot of black outfits) are the Dark to sweet, approachable Sloane's the Light.
• Manchild: Beneath their veneer of having it together and being a successful tight knit team are a bunch of petulant adults who are arguably even more childish than the Umbrellas. Despite being way nicer than her siblings, Sloane, like Luther is incredibly naive and never left the clutches of her abusers. Jayme and Alphonso act more like a couple of schoolyard bullies around the city than actual heroes. Fei, Christopher, and Ben are constantly snipping at and trying to one up each-other to work as a team long enough and let’s not forget about Ben’s daddy issues. They’ve also seemingly never been away from each other and have a codependency that the Umbrellas do not due to most of them leaving to actualize as individuals. The most mature of them is Marcus but even he has his issues as he’s so obsessed with the teams image.
• Nominal Hero: They're a superhero team, but they don't actually care about other people, in fact Marcus, their leader, refers to normal people as sheep and cares more about the team's PR, while Jayme and Alphonso's only acts of "heroism" is preventing a pizzeria being robbed only to then rob it themselves.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During the flashback to Pogo's resignation, the arrogant and uncaring Sparrow Academy look emotionally destroyed; Alphonso, Sloane, and Jayme are crying, Fei appears downcast, and even Marcus looks as if he's making a serious effort to hold back the tears. In fact, the only member of the team who doesn't seem in any way upset is Ben.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: They're the world's biggest crime fighters and a beloved superhero team, who never actually engage in any heroics or crime fighting, instead spending all their time focusing on their petty feud with the Umbrella Academy. Justified by the fact they had been so effective in the past they more-or-less ran out of 'big' villains to fight and see the Umbrella Academy as the closest they've had to a real challenge in a while. The closest they get to actually paying attention to the world outside their Academy is Fei mentioning the number of missing persons reports have escalated, which Ben immediately dismisses in favor of the Umbrella Academy.
• Villain with Good Publicity: They're hyped as a big superhero team, but in actuality, besides Sloane, they're mostly just a group of spoilt bullies. Notably, their posters and billboards around the city include slogans like "Watch yourself, because we're watching you", which sounds far more like the threat of a fascist regime than the reassuring slogan of peace-keeping heroes.
• Workout Fanservice: After their brawl against the Umbrella Academy, they appear together on running machines discussing the fight, with most of them wearing tight and/or revealing clothes (doubles as as a Shirtless Scene for Marcus and Ben).

Marcus

Marcus Hargreeves / Sparrow Number One

Portrayed By: Justin Cornwell

"We haven't faced decent enemies for years."

The first child to be adopted into the Sparrow Academy. He was born with super strength and serves as the Sparrows' leader.

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• The Ace: As the "Number One" of the Sparrow Academy, he shows a lot of discipline and runs a tight ship.
• Black Dude Dies First: He's the first to be erased by the Kugelblitz.
• Extremity Extremist: Unlike Luther who try mainly fights him with punches, Marcus beating and subdues him mainly with kicks.
• Foil: To Luther. While both are the Number One whose superpower is super strength, Marcus is more pragmatic and self-confident because of his good looks, while Luther is socially naïve, his siblings don't see him as the authority figure of the group and he has low self-esteem because of his body turning half-gorilla. In an interview, Tom Hopper refers to Marcus as the leader Luther always wished he was.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: A small sample of Viktor's powers is enough to convince him that, if Viktor does play to win, he and his family don't stand a chance. He quickly agrees with a deal afterwards.
• The Leader: He's the one actually in charge of the Sparrow Academy, as he's shown running strategies with his siblings and giving orders to Reginald. He's also shown to be surprisingly reasonable, in that even though he still wants revenge on the Umbrella Academy for breaking into their house, for PR reasons, he's shown to be more pragmatic than the rest of his family on his talk with Viktor. It's implied it's actually the reason why he became Number One. Apparently Ben was Number One before him, but was considered by Reginald too unstable to be the team leader. Marcus is really a better fit.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's almost as strong as Luther, but a lot quicker and a lot more agile - to the point that he likes showing off his gymnastic prowess alongside his muscles.
• Mr. Fanservice: Regularly exercises shirtless on the academy roof which always gathers an adoring crowd all hoping for the chance to grab his sweaty towel when he throws it to them.
• Pet the Dog: Though otherwise ruthless in combat, he respects Klaus's plea for mercy and and lets him leave the initial fight without trying to attack him.
• Properly Paranoid: While the rest of the Sparrow Academy brushes off the threat posed by the Umbrella Academy, Marcus takes note that they are more dangerous than they appear, and frustratedly points out to his siblings that five of them were defeated by Viktor in just 30 seconds. He also listens to Reginald's warning that the Umbrellas are not to be underestimated.
• Race Lift: Sparrow Number One in the comics is a blonde white man, while Marcus in the show is a Black man.
• Slave to PR: He admits to Viktor that he doesn't actually want a rematch with the Umbrellas, but he's only doing it because word getting out that their team getting beaten by someone would look bad on the reputation they've worked to maintain.
• Super-Strength: He possesses immense strength similar to Luther.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He gets killed by the Kugelblitz in the first episode of season 3

Ben

Ben Hargreeves / Sparrow Number Two

Portrayed By: Justin H. Min

"Why does everybody keep looking at me like that?"

The second child to be adopted into the Sparrow Academy. His ability, much like his counterpart from another timeline, is the ability to summon tentacles from a portal in his stomach.

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• Alternate Self: Turns out that having an entire different set of adoptive siblings was decisive on Ben's personality while growing up. Sparrow Ben is more abrasive and mean to everyone else, while the original Ben was often calm, collected and the voice of reason of the group.
• Berserk Button: His demotion, his scar, and the Jennifer Incident are all seriously sensitive subjects for him and are implied to be connected.
• Combat Tentacles: His superpower lets him summon eldritch tentacles from underneath his skin. However, Sparrow Ben seems to have gotten more comfortable using his tentacles unlike Umbrella Ben and is much more willing to use them for violence, as indicated by his refusal to let go of Jayme during a sparring match in a flashback.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Umbrella Ben was kind and was the only sibling the Umbrellas universally liked before their reunion. When they meet Sparrow Ben, they can't help but see their deceased brother in him, which rankles him. When Luther suggests that their Ben's personality might still be somewhere in him, Ben initially brushes him off.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Has to be told that the reason people don't like him is because of his caustic and abhorrent personality.
  Ben: Why don’t you like me?
  Klaus: Because you’re a huge puckering asshole?
• Foreign-Language Tirade: He starts to speak Korean in the middle of a argument with Diego, who retaliates by shouting right back in Spanish.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Downplayed but he does fly off the handle pretty easily and is easily provoked by any hits at his fragile ego, big or small.
• It's All About Me: As Sloane correctly points out, Ben is more upset about the Umbrella guys not inviting him to Luther's Bachelor Party, than him being upset about Fei and Christopher's recent deaths, or being happy for Sloane, his last remaining sister, getting married.
• Jerkass: Unlike the original Ben, who was the glue that held the original team together, this one is a petty, vindictive, and paranoid man due to growing up with different siblings.
• Lean and Mean: Has a very lean physique and is extremely cruel towards pretty much everybody.
• Mark of Shame: Has a noticeable scar next to his nose, unlike Umbrella Ben. It's implied that whatever happened to inflict it is a big reason he's not Number One as Fei rubs it in when talking.
• Mirror Character: His unchecked toxic masculinity, petty grievances, and skewed desire to be Number One and prove himself as Sparrow Number Two makes him most similar to Umbrella Number Two Diego, who had the same flaws at the start of the show. This also indicates just how much of Ben's personality is a result of the environment he grows up in. Diego and Sparrow Ben are very fast to butt heads as a result. Despite this, they contrast with their powers, Sparrow Ben has large, imposing, powerful Combat Tentacles while Diego can control trajectory of his short, tiny knives.
• Not So Above It All: Despite being rude and aggressive to almost everyone, Klaus and Sloane can tell that Ben was really hurt for not being invited to Luther's Bachelor Party, despite being in constant denial about it.
• One-Track-Minded Artist: Viktor finds Ben's room, which has a lot of drawings of a girl named Jennifer, who apparently has something to do with the original Ben's death.
• Pass the Popcorn: Gleefully wolfs down cheese puffs and places bets while watching Allison fighting with Viktor.
• Rank Up: He promotes himself to Number One after Marcus goes missing.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The arrogant and aggressive Red to Fei's composed and cold Blue.
• Sadist: Shows some signs of this during Viktor and Allison's confrontation after Allison admits to killing Harlan. He starts by sitting there with a jar of cheese puffs, and when the argument gets to the point where Allison forces Viktor to shut up (to the point of not letting him breathe) and is getting so intense even Lila and Five are starting to get unnerved, Ben is sitting there with a small smirk. His response after the fight?
  "Sweet. You guys fight just like us. (eats a cheese puff while smirking)
• Shirtless Scene: Part of the contrast with Umbrella Ben is Sparrow Ben's notable musculature, which is shown off when he exercises shirtless and took it off during drunk partying at the Hotel Obsidian in the wedding afterparty.
• Sole Survivor:
  • In the new timeline, he is the only one of the original seven Umbrella siblings to still be alive. In fact, because he was the only one who never met Harlan, he was the only one that even got to be born.
  • By the end of Season 3, he's the only Sparrow sibling alive and accounted for. Marcus gets kugelblitzed, Alphonso and Jayme are killed by Harlan, Fei and Christopher also later get annihilated by the kugelblitz, and Sloane mysteriously disappears after the universe is reset.
• The Starscream: He is obsessed with taking the "Number One" place from Marcus and the moment Marcus dies he leaps on the opportunity to take over the Sparrow Academy.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Klaus guesses correctly that deep inside, Ben is very defensive and angry because deep down he wants approval from their father.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Luther tries to convince him that somewhere, deep down, there must be some of the original timeline's Ben in him. Klaus can tell this as well, getting Ben to start opening up.
• Would Hit a Girl: Slaps Fei once, tightly grips one of her crows to make her physically squirm, and doesn't mind being too harsh with Jayme in a sparring match.

Fei

Fei Hargreeves / Sparrow Number Three

Portrayed By: Britne Oldford

"The Sparrows will bring The Umbrella Academy to justice. Dead or alive."

The third child to be adopted into the Sparrow Academy. She can manifest a murder of crows that she can command to fight her enemies.

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• Actually Pretty Funny: When Diego sarcastically asks if killing Ben will bring their Ben back, Fei laughs and smiles at the idea.
• Animal Eye Spy: She can see through the eyes of her crows.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: She has the power to summon crows that act as her eyes, and instead of her own eyes, there's only blank spaces with crow feet scars. The saying "raise crows and they'll gouge out your eyes" fits appropriately.
• Creepy Crows: Her power allows her to summon multiple crows she can use to spy or attack her enemies. Her presence is often announced by flapping wings or cawing sounds.
• Costume Porn: In both her casual ones and her superhero uniform.
• Disability-Negating Superpower: She's blind but can summon crows whose eyes she can see out of.
• The Dragon: Briefly acts like this to Ben, who for the first chunk of season 3 is the primary antagoniser of the Umbrellas.
• Eye Scream: Her eyelids are permanently shut and have several claw scars around it.
• Feathered Fiend: She can use her crows for spying or attacking. Her crows are stronger and more durable than regular crows, as they can easily peck through a wooden door.
• Foil: To Allison. Both are the Number 3 of their respective group with a ladylike appearance but with a feisty personality. They have powers based on control of living beings with Fei can control and generate crows while Allison can control human beings. Also if Fei's powers are related to her sight as she's blind and her sight is linked to her crows, Allison's powers are linked to her voice. In opposite with Allison, Fei seems more concerned with the numerical hierarchy inside her group ready to rank up and don't hesitate to tease Ben about his failures.
• The Lancer: She's promoted to Number Two when Ben becomes One. True to the form, she has very different ideas on how the family should deal with the Umbrella crisis, clashing with The Leader Ben more than once.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: She and Jayme are the dark, next to Sloane's light.
• Mook Maker: She can summon crows from her body to fight and spy for her.
• Pet the Dog: After spending most of the scene plotting to murder the Umbrella Academy, she's immediately supportive of Christopher when he begins struggling to contain the Kugelblitz. Her last words are to reassure him - right before the poor bastard is eaten from within by the Kugelblitz, taking Fei with him.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Calls Ben out for keeping the feud with the Umbrellas for too long, tries to stop it and combine an agreement ASAP to solve the problem with that shiny little apocalyptic blob in their basement. Since when she thinks they solved it the first thing she did was to plan to kill the Umbrellas with Christopher, with Ben disagreeing, no less, it was likely less due to having reservations on what Ben wanted to do, and more calling him out on his Skewed Priorities.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The composed and levelheaded Blue to Ben's brash and arrogant Red.
• Right Through the Wall: She knew that Sloane had been seeing Luther and sneaking him into the house to have sex. When Sloane accuses Fei of spying on her, Fei reminds her that they share a wall, and she could hear the bed squeaking.
• The Starscream: Tries this with Ben, planning to attack the Umbrellas with Christopher after Ben had more-or-less made peace with them. Neither her nor Christopher live long enough to act on it.
• Zerg Rush: Her main form of combat is by rushing her enemies with her crows.

Alphonso

Alphonso Hargreeves / Sparrow Number Four

Portrayed By: Jake Epstein

"Bet that hurt, huh?"

The fourth child to be adopted into the Sparrow Academy. He can redirect any pain he receives back towards his attacker.

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• Abusive Offspring: He and Jayme are quite abusive to Reginald, forcing him to take pills and sign documents (threatening to get Christopher if he doesn't comply) and making very mean-spirited comments at him. Though it's later revealed that this Reggie is just as evil as his Umbrella counterpart, if not more, and that the pills are administered for the Sparrows' own safety.
• Acrofatic: He’s a lot more heavy then his siblings but moves just as well and is able to keep up with Diego. It appears his "heavy" physique is at least in-part the result of all the calloused injuries thanks to how his powers work, though he also appears to be the least healthy of the Sparrows in terms of lifestyle.
• Attack Reflector: He can redirect any attack he suffers to the one that inflicted it. He does seem to have to activate it, though, as Diego is able to hurt him quite a bit in their fight without suffering.
• Bait the Dog: In his first scene, he and Jayme beat the crap out of some violent racists at a pizza joint, only to take their pizzas themselves without paying, making a snide remark about the toppings as he leaves.
• Beauty Inversion: As you can tell by his TV Tropes page, Jake Epstein is conventionally handsome in real life.
• Blessed with Suck: His ability to redirect the pain of injuries onto other people allowed for him to accumulate a considerable number of wounds over the years, which left him with serious deformities (in a way, his ability works a lot like Hansen's disease aka Leprosy; a condition that numbs the nerves of the afflicted and thus contributes to them literally falling apart from accumulating a host of injuries over the years) - something that wouldn't have happened with a different superpower.
• Body Horror: He doesn’t feel pain but his body takes some sort of damage as years of use has left his body and face mashed. Flashbacks show him slimmer with a smoother face.
• Facial Horror: He's killed by an energy blast from Harlan that completely shreds the right half of his face. Even before, his face is a misshapen lump of flesh, as he lacks the Required Secondary Power of not taking physical damage from attacks.
• Feel No Pain: His power allows him to take any pain inflicted onto him and send it back to his opponent, effectively making him immune to pain. He still suffers the physical injuries of the attacks, though, which has physically messed up his entire appearance.
• Jerkass: Both Jayme and Alphonso are shown taking advantage of their celebrity status and powers to do whatever they want around town including stealing from pizzerias and local stores.
• Major Injury Underreaction: During his supermarket brawl with Diego, a piece of his neck sloughs off, leaving a noticeable gash, and even causing Diego himself to stop in disgusted horror. Alphonso himself is completely unconcerned.
  Alphonso: Oh... It does that sometimes.
• Pass the Popcorn: He literally snacks on some popcorn watching Fei face off against Allison in the opening brawl between the two Academies.
• Schmuck Bait: The first thing he does when he steps in to fight Allison is ask her to punch him in the face. She complies, and promptly lays herself out due to his powers.
• Those Two Guys: With Jayme. He is closest to her out of all his siblings and they are never seen without the other. They go out the way they lived as they are both killed by Harlan at the same time.

Sloane

Sloane Hargreeves / Sparrow Number Five

Portrayed By: Genesis Rodriguez

"Cute trick. Here's mine."

The fifth child to be adopted into the Sparrow Academy. She can manipulate gravity to make herself and others fly.

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• Beware the Nice Ones: She goes violently murderous on the Guardians of Hotel Oblivion, whom she believes responsible for Luther's death and wants to take revenge on. Judging by the way she screams at him upon learning he's the real culprit, one has to wonder what she would have done to Reginald had the fourth Guardian not appeared.
• Birds of a Feather: Her and Luther have a lot in common in terms of temperament, interest, and personality, and they both have the same issues with feeling dependant on their family and have some childish tendencies. It's unclear if she also lacked sexual experience like he did, but it's notable that she didn't realise people would be able to hear her having sex in her room despite the bedrooms being adjacent.
• Bridezilla: Averted. While she does scold Ben for being sour on her wedding day, she still tries to make the wedding a nice event for everyone.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Downplayed. In the brawl between both Academies at the beginning of Season 3, Sloane manages to briefly disrupt Viktor (undeniably the strongest member of the Umbrella Academy) from using his powers and keep him out of action for most of the fight (though when Viktor gets up he single-handedly defeats all Sparrows at once, including her).
• Flight: She is able to use her power on herself in order to fly.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: She and Luther fall for each other in less than a week, and they decide to get married with the apocalypse right behind the corner.
• Gravity Master: Her power allows her to effortlessly lift objects (including herself) into the air by manipulating their gravity.
• Happily Married: To Luther, as the two decide to get married to make sure they have no regrets before the world ends. It doesn't last long as Reginald shortly murders Luther a day later to force everyone to move into Hotel Oblivion, with Sloane then disappearing after the universe is reset and Luther is resurrected.
• The Heart: Of the Sparrows, it seems. She's the only one of them who isn't a jerk, and they don't appear to hold that against her, and even Ben seems to warm up to the Umbrellas largely for her sake. Deconstructed, though, as she feels incredibly dependant on them and has no idea how to live without them despite hating how abusive they are.
• Hidden Depths: She comes across as sweet but a little ditzy, and her physical beauty is greatly emphasised. Turns out she has a very vast knowledge of physics, which explains her great proficiency with her gravity-based powers.
• In-Series Nickname: "Gravity Barbie", courtesy of a particularly spiteful Allison, is quite memorable.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: She is the light, next to Fei and Jayme's dark.
• Love at First Punch: The first time Luther and her interact is after Luther accidentally punches her. He immediately apologizes to her, as he didn't mean to hit a girl, and both exchange some smitten looks before realizing that they're supposed to be fighting on opposite sides.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's very beautiful and gets the most revealing outfits or sexy situations among the female characters. First she gets workout fanservice while exercising along with her siblings, then another extended example when she's talking with Luther. As she does so, Sloane leans over and provides a long cleavage shot (whether intentional or not). It's revealed she uses her gravity powers for sex on the ceiling with him later. Then for their marriage she wears a low cut dress that flatters her figure greatly as well.
• Mundane Utility: She uses her gravity powers for tasks such as getting out of bed, bringing breakfast to bed, and having sex in the air.
• Naughty by Night: She's very sweet and slightly shy in public. While with Luther, though, she has no compunction about having sex with him on the ceiling by use of her gravity powers.
• Nice Girl: Unlike her siblings, Sloane is incredibly sweet which is part of why she and Luther take to each other so quickly.
• No Gravity for You: She can remove her opponent's gravity in order to leave them helplessly flailing off the ground.
• Power Perversion Potential: Sloane uses her gravity powers during sex with Luther for all kinds of kinky positions like on the ceiling, which he cheerily mentions in euphemism with Diego.
• Sex Goddess: By Luther's reactions and comments after they consummate their relationship, he is very happy with her performance, taking into account Sloane's gravity powers in the bedroom.
• Spoiled Sweet: While the unlimited freedom after years of abuse turned the rest of the Sparrows into bullies, Sloane remained a sweetheart.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Aside from the "Zero Gravity Sex", Luther and Sloane bond because she found interesting that he has been on the moon for four years, which usually bore others. She promises Luther that she wasn't lying to him, especially about the moon. Luther later proposes to her with a ring he made of wire and a moon rock he saved for a special moment and she loved it.
• Token Good Teammate: Not only is she the only Sparrow without any kind of malice to her, she’s also genuinely sweet.
• Uncertain Doom: Mysteriously disappears after the universe is reset. She is the only member of the surviving group in the finale to not be seen.

Jayme

Jayme Hargreeves / Sparrow Number Six

Portrayed By: Cazzie David

"Not in the mood for your bullshit today."

The sixth child to be adopted into the Sparrow Academy. Her spit can cause vivid hallucinations for a short period of time.

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• Abusive Offspring: She and Alphonso are quite abusive to Reginald, forcing him to take pills and sign documents (threatening to get Christopher if he doesn't comply) and making very mean-spirited comments at him. Though it's later revealed that this Reggie is just as evil as his Umbrella counterpart, if not more, and that the pills are administered for the Sparrows' own safety.
• Animal Motifs: Her spit and her hiss make her resemble a snake.
• Bait the Dog: She seems to be doing some genuine heroics in the opening of season 3, beating up a couple of racist punks about to attack an innocent pizzeria owner. Then she and Alphonso help themselves to their pizza without paying.
• Death Glare: Constantly gives this as a method of intimidation.
• Facial Horror: She's killed by a beam of Harlan's energy striking the left side of her face, causing it to almost instantly melt.
• Jerkass: Just so we don't miss them too much, Jayme and Alphonso are shown taking advantage of their celebrity status and powers to do whatever they want around town including stealing from pizzerias and local stores.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: She and Fei are the dark, next to Sloane's light.
• Master of Illusion: The venom she spits causes hallucinations on contact. She makes Diego see all members of both Academies (including himself) and Grace engaging in a huge dance party, and makes Five hallucinate of Delores.
• Super Spit: She can spit a toxic secretion that causes hallucinations.
• Those Two Guys: With Alphonso. She seems closest to him out of all her siblings and they are never seen without each other. They go out the same way. Together.

Christopher

Christopher Hargreeves / Sparrow Number Seven

Portrayed By: Existential Dread-Inducing Psykronium Cube

(Speaking alien language)

The seventh member of the Sparrow Academy, a "psykronium cube" of unknown origin who was (presumably) adopted by Sir Reginald Hargreeves.

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• Abusive Offspring: Reginald is terrified of Christopher. In the first episode, Reginald meekly obeys him when he furiously shoos Reginald out of their gym, and Alphonso later threatens to call him to coerce Reginald into signing documents. Though he and his siblings have their reasons to hate Reginald, given what's revealed in the flashback about Pogo's retirement.
• All There in the Manual: His ability to manipulate temperature is mentioned in Season 3 promo, but never seen in the show. The promo also states that he can "induce paralyzing fear", though the nature of his beams are never explained in the show itself.
• Ambiguously Human: Yes, he's a living cube of "psykronium", but, as one of the superpowered children, he had to have been born to a human mother...
• Ambiguous Situation: It's unstated whether or not he was born as the eldritch cube he is today, or regressed into that form with age as his powers manifested.
• An Ice Person: He can manipulate the temperature in a room, no matter what size, to make it freezing cold.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Speaks in alien chirps that only the Sparrows (and seemingly Diego) can decipher.
• Kavorka Man: Highly exaggerated: despite being a living cube with no human features to speak of and who can't even speak any human languages, his intro scene shows that he has no problem pulling girls at nightclubs, even being able to net a kiss from one of them.
• Living Polyhedron: He is a living cube. No explanation for his unusual nature is given, and despite it, he's treated as just another sibling by his family.
• Ominous Cube: And a sapient one, at that. Not only can Christopher induce dread into people with his powers, but he's quite the malicious person(?) in general.
• Orphaned Punchline: Christopher is apparently a very witty cube, but only the Sparrow Hargreeves understand his jokes and comment that others wouldn't get it.
• Power Floats: His main form of movement is by floating around through unknown means. He can also be seen rotating with no difficulty, implying that this is simply one of his powers.
• Power Glows: Whenever he uses his powers, he glows an ominous red.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: He can instantly induce fear in any person near him, to the point it leaves the victim paralyzed.
• Token Non-Human: Although he was probably born in the same Mass Empowering Event as the rest of his siblings, he's... Well, a floating, gleaming cube that speaks in unintelligible noises that his siblings have no problem understanding.

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