Pogo deconstructs Accomplice by Inaction. While he didn't approve of what Sir Hargreeves was doing to his adoptive children, his belief that he owes complete loyalty to Hargreeves for uplifting him kept him from interfering with the abusive treatment or revealing any of the secrets even after Hargreeves' death. This includes helping with Viktor's imprisonment, brainwashing and suppression, sending Luther to the moon for four years on a Snipe Hunt to keep him busy, safe and out-of-the-way-until-needed after his Ape Man transmutation, and helping Hargreeves with his suicide in an attempt to reunite the Umbrella academy. Not only does his complicity in Hargreeves' abuse cause the siblings to lose all trust in Pogo, it becomes the main reason why Viktor murders him at the end of the first season.
The Hargreeves Siblings
A perfect deconstruction of character roles in The Team:
Luther was supposed to be the Standardized Leader, the White Male Lead, and The Dutiful Son, and he desperately wants to prove he's capable of being Number One. In practice, however, Luther was so isolated from much of the world for most of his life that he lacks the social skills to properly lead. 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 can't seem to recognize that none of his siblings even want to be led, let alone by him, and his inability to realize this is his Fatal Flaw. He often cites him being Number One as proof of his leadership status, even though their number designations weren't ranks, and were assigned to them arbitrarily when Reginald bought them from their birth parents. It's clear that Luther suffered under their father's abuse as well (such as his father performing an invasive medical procedure on him without Luther's consent, horrifically mutating him against his will) but he coped with it by deluding himself into believing it was all worth something. His decision to lock Viktor up in a cage because he decides he's too dangerous to even exist causes Viktor to snap and catalyzes the apocalypse.
Diego deconstructs The Lancer, Vigilante Man, The Snark Knight, and Jerk with a Heart of Gold; he's a very cynical and emotionally troubled man with authority problems. His hurtful remarks are less "playful ribbing" and stem more from angrily pointing out other people's flaws, verging on verbal abuse, with clear intentions of making his words hurt them as much as possible. He's more or less completely defined himself by his rage at his father, and he displaces that anger at targets closest to that mold (primarily Luther). Instead of being a balancing act between pragmaticism and idealism, Luther and Diego's relationship is incredibly toxic and lacks the requisite respect needed in a Leader/Lancer dynamic. It's implied that the two do in fact complement each other's powers, talents, and philosophies (they both still hold to Sir Reginald's belief that they could be crime fighters), but they're both too caustic to put it to good use. Diego barely functions as an adult, never making it in the police because he could never keep an opinion to himself, and continues being a vigilante despite ostensibly rejecting everything his father taught him and viewing himself as better than his siblings. Diego does hold some love for his siblings, but he's so antagonistic that nobody is willing to put up with him long enough to find his Hidden Heart of Gold, save for Klaus who is used to other people treating him poorly.
Allison deconstructs The Smurfette Principle, Male Might, Female Finesse, and Unresolved Sexual Tension. Normally, the one girl would double as The Heart and the voice of morality in the band, provide a counterbalance to the Lancer's or Big Guy's aggression, and serve as the Love Interest for The Leader. While Allison does love her siblings, it's evident that she's become exhausted by the squabbling and washed her hands of the whole affair. Her Mind Control powers are quite effective for sneak attacks, but it requires precious seconds to set up the spell ("I heard a rumor..."), leaving her open and vulnerable. She needs her brothers to protect her, but her strained relationships force her to do things on her own. Finally, her bond with Luther has unfortunate toxic undertones, ignoring the incestuous nature of it, it's implied that she used her power on him to love her at some point. This gets even worse in Season 3, in which the temporal erasure of her daughter causes her to completely snap, refusing to cooperate with her family and explicitly attempting to rape Luthor.
Klaus deconstructs the Plucky Comic Relief, I See Dead People, and Squishy Wizard; seeing ghosts nobody else can, especially with Sir Hargreeves locking him in up a mausoleum for hours as part of his training, has traumatized him to the point where he's become an Addled Addict, as the effects of alcohol and drugs are the only way he can suppress his powers and not see ghosts. His jokes fail to provide adequate relief in stressful situations and just illustrate he's either not taking things seriously or is too stoned to truly comprehend the severity. On the rare occasions when he actually has important information to share with his family, it falls on deaf ears because they're so used to ignoring whatever he has to say. Further, his fear about his abilities and wallowing in addiction has caused him to not properly develop them; in addition to communing with the dead, he also possesses Resurrective Immortality and can even bring others back from the dead. He could potentially be The Medic to the entire team and give them a decisive edge over any possible enemies if he didn't try to be the class clown all the time. As a result, he's more of a liability than a proper asset, despite how powerful he actually is.
Five is a deconstruction of The Smart Guy. Intelligence without humility caused Five to develop an ego and an overestimation of his capabilities, and because of his overconfidence, he ignored his father's warnings and attempted to master his time-traveling abilities without any help. As a result, he became stuck in a Bad Future with no way to get home. Living life completely devoid of human contact and then becoming a time-traveling hitman ultimately reinforced his pride, and he developed into an Insufferable Genius; turning back into a child just highlights his arrogance as he doesn't have his age to fall back on, making him even more difficult to work with than Diego.
Ben deconstructs The Heart, The Big Guy, The Conscience, and the Morality Chain. Ben was considered to be the most powerful member of the Academy, with his tentacles being able to grapple and dismember groups of fully grown men with no help from his siblings. This was, however, very traumatizing for Ben as his Lovecraftian Superpower seemed painful to use and usually left him covered in other people's blood. It also proved to be a hazard as the attention-grabbing nature made him an easy target, and he died young. His siblings could no longer rely on his stabilizing presence, and it was one of the final straws to breaking up the Academy. He did continue to haunt Klaus, but it's revealed that he was too scared to pass on to the afterlife, meaning that he developed unhealthy codependency on his vulnerable addicted brother. Never offering him useful life advice, but rather shaming and emotionally blackmailing Klaus into making choices he agreed with, simply trying to live through him.
Viktor deconstructs The Team Normal, The Runt at the End, and The Sixth Ranger. For his entire life, Viktor had to deal with being the only "ordinary" child in a family of superheroes. He received the lowest number in the family ranking system, was ostracized by his siblings, was deliberately left out of the family portrait, and overall was regarded as something of a nuisance. Because of this, he ended up having severe self-esteem issues and a strong desire to be special like his siblings, which enables him to be taken advantage of by people like Harold Jenkins who feign affection towards him to get what they want. Things get worse when it turns out Viktor did have Psychoactive Powers all along, which Sir Hargreeves and Pogo brainwashed him into forgetting about them when he was young (using an unknowing Allison to implant the suggestion in Viktor's mind that "there's nothing special about [him]", leading to not just suppressing his powers but a lifetime of inferiority issues because he literally can't believe in his own value until breaking through the block) and fed him with antidepressants in order to suppress them because Hargreeves insisted that he couldn't control his powers normally. His discovering all this, combined with Luther's poor decision to lock him up in the same terrifying and traumatizing cell their dad used to contain him as a child, results in him snapping into a permanent Tranquil Fury and lashing out towards his family as he becomes the Apocalypse Maiden.
