In the premiere episode, each Hargreeves sibling dances to the same song (Tiffany's version of "I Think We're Alone Now") in their own childhood bedroom, unaware that the others are doing the same. Allison is a celebrity whose voice can compel other people - "rumor" them - a power that can easily backfire and causes deep ambivalence about her fame and influence (perhaps that explains why Way, with his pop singer background, told EW in 2018 that Allison is his favorite character to write). The Umbrella Academy has always been imbued with music thanks to Way's experience and sensibilities.
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Music was another way that the show honored the comic while taking full advantage of the TV medium. Castañeda played Diego less like a cranky vigilante and more like a romantic hero (it helped that his police partner, Patch, was changed from a monkey to a human, played by actress Ashley Madekwe), while Raver-Lampman and Page brought out new sides of Allison and Vanya, not least their complicated sister relationship. They make it seem like Number Five and Klaus walked right off the page as three-dimensional characters. Sheehan, a hypnotic speaker whose sentences are peppered with unexpectedly enlightening references and asides, often arrived at seemingly on the spot, was already an online fan favorite from Misfits, another unique take on superhero TV. The kind of person your grandma might call an "old soul," Gallagher has the uncanny ability to believably inhabit Number Five, a character who looks like a young teen but carries the weight of decades spent alone in an apocalyptic wasteland. Now 16 and growing fast, he displays maturity and wisdom beyond his years. Gallagher was 14 years old when filming began. The show prefers their human names - Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Klaus (Sheehan), Ben (Min), and Vanya ( Ellen Page) - signifying a preference for their relatable familial dramas over some of the book's more surreal superhero spectacle.Ĭasting was a big part of this, of course. The comic favors their superhero codenames: Spaceboy, Kraken, Rumor, Seance, Horror, and (eventually) the White Violin. As they grew, they also each got superhero monikers and civilian names, except for Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), who time-traveled away from home as a kid so never got past the numerical stage. When they were young, Hargreeves gave them numerical designations to signify a chain of command and their relative importance to him: Numbers One (the leader and golden child) through Seven (the supposed mediocrity, the spare). As a sign of how cold and results-oriented their childhood was, the kids go by three different naming systems. Forty-three such children were born this way, but these seven were the ones adopted by Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore in the show), an eccentric billionaire industrialist who is also probably a space alien (the fates of the other 36 children have not yet been revealed). Each member of the Umbrella Academy was born with extraordinary powers at the exact same moment across the world to women who mysteriously hadn't previously been pregnant.