The Umbrella Academy Powers Explained

Through four seasons of Netflix’s superhero series The Umbrella Academy, members of the dysfunctional Hargreeves crime-fighting family have lost and regained their powers multiple times. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the weirdness Luther, Diego, Allison, and company endure.

Amid all the bickering, time-traveling and universe-hopping, it can be easy to forget that The Umbrella Academy even had superpowers in the first place! Thankfully early seasons of the show and the comic source material from Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá provide a helpful reminder of what the Hargreeves are capable of.

What follows is a breakdown of every member of The Umbrella Academy’s (and Lila’s) power. The availability of those powers vary from season-to-season and sometimes they unlock a new dimension of said powers, but the fundamentals remain the same throughout.

Number One – Luther

Per comic book lore, Reginald Hargreeves numbered his “children” by how useful they were to him. If that is indeed the case then Mr. Hargreeves was suffering from a severe lack of imagination. Because Luther (Tom Hopper), however useful he might be, has arguably the most unremarkable super power. Luther’s super power is basically the most generic, entry-level ability imaginable: super strength. Luther has always been strong and that strength seemingly magnified when he was injected with gorilla DNA to save his life. 

Number Two – Diego

Initially, Diego’s power had been understood as a supernatural skill for knife-throwing. Then the finale of season 2 reveals that that mastery in knife-throwing extends to the manipulation of any kind of projectile when he stops a barrage of bullets with his hands, Matrix-style. 

“If you think about Diego’s power, he can, with his mind, control the trajectory of objects,” Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman told Den of Geek in 2020. “Basically he likes throwing, so he can throw his knife and he can make it go in weird, odd curvatures and directions.”

In Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s comic series upon which the TV show is based, Diego has a different superpower altogether. Though comic Diego is indeed fond of throwing knives, his actual power is the ability to breathe underwater (or perhaps the lack of a need to breathe at all…it’s unclear how that works as he has no visible gills). This helps explain his superhero callsign “The Kraken.” 

During a season 2 set visit, Diego actor David Castañeda told Den of Geek that the show had ultimately decided against incorporating that power for the character, saying: “You’ve got Jason Momoa doing that a hundred times better anyway.”

Number Three – Allison

Just about every superhero team has a character whose power is so useful and convenient that the storyteller often has to contrive of reasons for them not to use it. Allison Hargreeves (Emmy Raver-Lampman) is quite clearly this character for The Umbrella Academy.

Allison has the power of “prevarication.” Or to put it more simply: her lies become real. In the comic books, this ability is so powerful that when Allison lies about going to the library so she can sneak off to make out with a Polynesian knife-thrower, a second Allison actually pops into existence and goes to the library! 

Sometimes the show can struggle a bit with the rules and applications of Allison’s ability. As Five tells Reginald in season 2 “Allison can rumor anyone to do anything,” suggesting that her power is limited to bewitching human beings. But there are other times in which Allison is able to manipulate reality itself. She does so in the beginning of season 2 by telling Soviet soldiers “I heard a rumor I blew your minds” followed by their heads exploding. 

It’s more likely then that Five just has interpreted Allison’s power incorrectly…or is just trying not to really freak Reginald out. Regardless, Allison is often intimated by the scope of her own powers. And that’s how the show frequently justifies her sparse deployment of them.

Number Four – Klaus

There’s a reason why Klaus (Robert Sheehan) has “Hello” and “Goodbye” tattooed on his palms. He is quite literally a human Ouija board. Yes, Klaus’s main power is his ability to communicate with the dead. This has extremely useful applications as seen in season 1 when he uses it to intimidate Hazel and Cha-Cha.

In season 2, however, this power gains more physical implications. As seen in the season’s opening scene, Klaus is able to summon ghosts to do battle with his enemies. We saw a little bit of that in season 1 when Ben briefly became corporeal but the application is even more destructive and useful this time around. Klaus is also able to let the dead inhabit his body. Ben discovers this to his great delight in season 2 and Klaus puts the new talent to financial use in season 4.

Like Diego, however, Klaus is missing one of his powers from the comic book series. Number Four in the comic possesses the power of telekinesis and can move stuff around with his mind. This proves to be so powerful that he’s able to stop the moon from crashing into Earth. Not bad! The weird drawback is that his power only works when he’s barefoot. Klaus in the show is frequently shoeless as well but that just seems to be a personal preference. 

Number Five

Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) doesn’t have a name but he does have a pretty righteous superpower: time travel. Here’s the thing about time travel though…it’s hard, even for someone who possesses the innate ability to use it.

In season 1, Number Five tried to prove to his father that moving back through time was possible by jumping years ahead and then returning. As it turned, out Reginald was probably right as he usually, annoyingly was. 

Five was able to return though, but only after years of experimenting and crunching the numbers, trying to get the equation right. In season 2, Five discovers some easier uses for his power. For starters, there are his “blinks.” Five blinks through time and space to essentially teleport. This is tremendously helpful during the many fist fights he finds himself in. 

Number Six – Ben

For much of the series, Ben’s superpower is simply being dead. Yes, Number Six tragically died (of an eventually-revealed cause in season 4) in his teens. Since then he’s been mostly hanging out with his spooky brother Klaus, give or take some sideways universes.

Prior to Ben’s death, however, his real superpower was quite imposing. As the comic explains, Ben is able to summon monsters from other dimensions and manifest them through his body. That’s why he’s known as “The Horror.” In the comic and on the show Ben exclusively uses this power to procure enormous tentacles through his stomach. He’s like a forward-facing Doc Ock.

Number Seven – Viktor

Reginald’s insistence that he numbered the children by usefulness might make more sense if he numbered them in reverse order. For, while all the Hargreeves children are powerful, only one of them was so powerful that their father had to subdue that power with pills. 

With Leonard’s help, Viktor (Elliot Page) ditched those pills in season 1 and unleashed his awesome might. Dubbed “The White Violin” in the comic series, the character is able to manipulate sound into truly awe-inspiring spectacles of energy. Viktor’s eruptions of sound-based power are near nuclear in nature – able to shred apart an FBI building or blow a chunk off of the moon. 

The show doesn’t hew too closely to Viktor’s sound-sourced powers in latter seasons but it does preserve his destructive might.

Lila

The Umbrella Academy season 2 finale made explicit what was pretty apparent early on. Lila (Ritu Arya) is indeed a Hargreeves’ “sibling.” Well…sort of.  Though she obviously didn’t grow up with them under the tortured tutelage of Reginald Hargreeves, Lila was born on October 1, 1989 just like the other 42 extraordinary children. And just like the other 42 extraordinary children, Lila has an extraordinary power. She is able to mimic the power of any other super-powered individual she comes into contact with.

All four seasons of The Umbrella Academy are available to stream on Netflix.