eep okay so my two main special interests at the moment are the Umbrella Academy and Will Wood!
TW cuz I mention drug addiction a bunch in here but don't go into much detail
I first watched The Umbrella Academy in 2020 and it was an instant hyperfixation, but only last year did it become my main special interest. And I have watched it so. many. times. Anyway, it was originally a comic by Gerard Way (yes, the My Chemical Romance guy) and Gabriel Ba, and then it got adapted into the Netflix TV show, which is pretty different. For instance, the show is much more diverse, there's main character POC, a transguy (Viktor), and a pan guy (Klaus). And the diversity makes more sense because the whole plot is that 43 women around the world suddenly gave birth on the 1st October 1989, and all the babies have powers. But what I love is it's not your classic superhero show. In fact, a lot of their powers are the root of all their problems (like Klaus is a drug addict because he uses drugs to get rid of his powers (but that's not the reason in the comics!), and Allison lost custody of her kid because she used her powers on her). It's not a show/comic about superheroes even though they were forced to be superheroes as kids, it's a show/comic about a dysfunctional family and there just happens to be an apocalypse going on (every season). Annnd I'm still in a very infodump-y mood, so here's a breakdown on each of the Hargreeves siblings! (the main characters) Be warned, there's lots of spoilers ahead!
Their adoptive dad, Reginald Hargreeves, numbered them all because he couldn't be bothered giving them actual names. (And my theory is that they're numbered from least powerful to most, but they never got told this and decided themselves it was a hierarchical structure of leadership, from 1-7). Reggie was such an abusive father. We hate him. Then their robot mother, Grace, gave them all proper names later in their lives. So in order:
Luther is Number One (so considered himself the leader of the siblings), he's also called Spaceboy in the comics, but they don't really have those superhero codenames in the show. His power is superstrength. He was the last to leave the Academy, then on one mission on his own he nearly died, so Reginald gave him a serum that made him part chimp (oh and they have a butler/father figure who's a chimp, he's the only chimp in the show, but there's pretty much as many chimps as there are humans in the comics). Then a bit after that, Reginald sent Luther to the moon for a 'mission'. He only returned when Reginald died. He was very isolated up there so that was traumatising for him 😕 Also, he had a weird incestual thing with Allison in the show and comics, but it got dropped pretty soon in the show. Most of the fandom doesn't like the incest even if they're all adopted. In season 3, he marries someone else who is also Hargreeves and was raised by the same dad lol, but they aren’t actually related at all because of timeline/time travel shenanigans.
Then we have Number Two, Diego, also known as the Kraken in the comics. In the comics, his power is to be able to hold his breath for however long he wants, but in the show his power is a mild form of telekinesis where he can manipulate the movement of things he throws, usually knives. He’s a vigilante, and did originally go to the Police Academy, but dropped out because he didn’t like it. But that’s where he met Patch, who he dated for a bit. In season 2, he meets Lila who’s part of the Temps Commission (more on that later) and he’s gonna have a baby with her. Ummm yeah he likes knives, he has a hero complex, he has a lot of rivalry with Luther, and that’s all I can really think of to say.
Then we have Number Three, Allison, or the Rumour. Her power is to rumour people, which means she can make people do anything she wants by saying “I heard a rumour”, e.g. “I heard a rumour you shot your friend in the foot” or even “I heard a rumour you love me.” She used her powers to become a famous movie actress, and it’s implied she used it to make her ex-husband, Patrick, fall in love with her. She had a daughter, Claire, with Patrick, and a big plot point in seasons 1 and 3 are wanting to get back to Claire but she can’t for different reasons 😞 In season 2, in the 60s, she marries Raymond Chestnut. Allison overall is very nice and motherly, and in season 3 she gets a villain arc, but. I don’t like season 3, and I’m not alone in that opinion. I think a lot of them are out-of-character, and a bunch of other things I could infodump about another time.
Then my personal favourite (and most popular character in general), Klaus AKA Number Four AKA the Seance (AKA the Prophet AKA the Prince of Darkness (both only in the show)). His powers are basically to be able to see ghosts. Which he hates because they're constantly screaming at Klaus and they look horrific. Then at some point in his childhood, he discovered drugs block the ghosts out, so he eventually becomes a poly addict. When he moves out of the Academy, he's homeless. I think most of the fandom agrees he was a prostitute for drug money, and also slept with people just for a place to stay. So. yeah. Klaus got the worst end of the stick with his powers 😞 Although, in the comics, drugs don't inhibit his powers at all nor is he bothered by his powers, so he's a drug addict for unknown reasons (probs has something to do with his childhood trauma, which is part of show Klaus' addiction too but not the original cause). Although I really don't think the show handles Klaus' addiction very well, they sometimes make it angsty, but for the most part it's played off as a joke which sucks, but I read enough fanfiction to make up for it lol. And some of the fandom wants their "sewer rat" from season 1 back, which basically means they want Klaus to go back to hard drugs (he had been sober for 4 years at the start of season 2, then relapsed on alcohol a few episodes in, now he's just been using alcohol and no other drugs for the rest of the show so far), and I wanna throw that part of the fandom at all a wall, but anyway I'll stop my complaining for now lol. I must talk about Dave! Dave's such a minor character but he's so important! In season 1, Klaus accidentally time travels back to the Vietnam War, where he meets Dave. Who he says is "the only person I've ever truly loved more than myself" (personal translation: the only person who has ever truly loved me and I truly loved back even though I thought I was incapable of love/being loved). Dave dies 😞 Klaus takes his dog tags and doesn't take them off for the rest of the show. He goes back to 2019, and Diego makes him realise he can see Dave again if he conjures him, so he gets sober. He succeeds! Except because of time travel, in the official timeline he doesn't succeed… He can't conjure Dave's ghost… But in the 60s in season 2, Klaus starts a cult called Destiny's Children (yes named after the band Destiny's Child), and Dave visits after Klaus embarrassingly professes his love for Dave who doesn't know him (he gets punched by Dave, then Klaus relapses). And then that's their last meeting before Klaus loses Dave again forever, because Klaus can't stop him from enlisting in the war 😞
Oh boy that was long. Anyway, Five! AKA the Boy. Five is just Five because in the comics he left before they all got names, but in the show we don't know (because they were named already by the time he left), a lot of people say it's because he's very analytical and preferred the number name. His powers are jumping through space and time. Five also has one of the saddest backstories 😞 When he was 13 (10 in the comics), he ran away from home because Reggie wouldn't let him practise his time travelling ability. He ended up in 2019, but there was an apocalypse. And poor little 13-year-old Five found his dead adult siblings and buried them with his bare hands. He spent more than 40 years alone there (he couldn't jump back because Reggie was right, he couldn't control his time travelling powers well enough), barely surviving, and he became an alcoholic while he was there, but it's not really mentioned, just implied. He did have a mannequin, Delores, who was his wife, and he hallucinates(?) her speaking to him. One day, a woman named the Handler showed up and invited him to be an assassin with the Commission, and in return, he'd be able to go back to his family when he'd done his full term of service. The Commission was like Marvel's TVA, when there was a disturbance in the proper timeline, the Commission sent someone to kill someone in order to get the timeline back to normal. Five was their best assassin. Then on one mission, he didn't kill who he was supposed to and instead used the time travelling briefcase to get back to just a few days before the apocalypse to warn his siblings and get them to help him stop it. But he made an error with his calculations and accidentally got put back in his 13-year-old body (in the comics the error was which time he ended up in, he wanted to go back to his 10-year-old body and go back to that time but he ended up just a few days before the apocalypse).
(splitting this up cuz it's too many characters)
