Yahoo News This Umbrella Academy theory implies a major twist for season 2
Note: contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy season one.
You’d be forgiven for missing the odd detail here and there as you work your way through The Umbrella Academy, Netflix’s brand new superhero show based on Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s comic book series of the same name.
A hell of a lot happens, but something you might have found yourself mulling over is how exactly does Ben Hargreeves (Justin H Min) die?
Klaus (Robert Sheehan), being able to conjure the dead, is the only one who can see and communicate with Number Six aka The Horror – a title based on his ability to summon the giant tentacles of monsters lurking in other dimensions, which then emerge from his torso to do his bloody bidding for him.
When Klaus chats to his brother in the presence of the rest of his siblings, it literally looks like he's is talking to himself.
Not much is revealed about Ben’s death in the show. Number Five (Aiden Gallagher) and Vanya (Ellen Page) have a brief conversation about the tragedy, but they don’t go into detail. All we know is the incident was "bad", Ben likely being killed during a mission, and that there’s a statue of Ben behind the house with the inscription: "May the darkness within you find peace in the light."
And there doesn’t seem to be much about his death in the comics either. In Vanya’s book, 'Extra Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven', she writes that Ben was "the kindest of my siblings, but he was so eager to please father", adding, "He was easily manipulated, dragged into father and Luther’s little games – and those two simply let him die."
But while it’s explicitly stated in the source material that Ben is dead, we know that the show isn’t sticking strictly to the comics, having already merged both the first volume, 'Apocalypse Suite', with the second, 'Dallas'.
There’s also the glaringly obvious fact that in the comics, the Hargreeves kids manage to save the world from the apocalypse but in in the first series they don’t.
So key narrative details have been changed for the sake of TV viewing, and one fan theory on Reddit suggests that while Ben is dead in the comics and seemingly dead in the series, there is a chance that the latter might not actually be the case.
"When Klaus dies in 'Dallas', he comes back and says it's no problem when the Hargreeves children die," writes PandasOnGiraffes.
In the show, Klaus manages to escape Hazel (Cameron Britton) and Cha-Cha (Mary J Blige) following his torture session, but in the comics he is shot by the contract killers and finds himself in heaven, before eventually being sent back down to the land of the living by God.
We know that Klaus has a multitude of issues, suffering from what can only be described as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder following a difficult childhood in which his father locked him in a crypt for hours on end. But surely his remark isn't to be taken as callous, but knowing, Klaus having discovered that death doesn't always have to mean the end?
And it’s that remark which "could imply that Ben isn't dead yet, he's just stuck in-between like Klaus was and has not been able to come back fully yet," the Redditor continues.
According to PandasOnGiraffes, "This might also explain why he [Ben] is easier to conjure than any other dead person for Klaus and even when he's high."
When Klaus is being tortured by Hazel and Cha-Cha, he comes face to face with numerous people who the contract killers snuffed out, listening to their gruesome tales. But it is Ben with whom he converses on a regular basis, and there’s a moment towards the end of the series when Number Six makes physical contact with Klaus, slapping the drugs out of his brother's mouth – a moment that takes both of them by surprise.
There's also the big battle right at the end of the series when Klaus’s fists light up and Ben’s powers come into action, the tentacles exploding from his spectre-like form and defeating the masked gunmen.
It's almost like Klaus is controlling him, the pair working together, but totally at a loss as to how.
Does this mean that Ben isn't dead, but trapped between the world of the living and the world of the dead? Will we see him return as a fully-formed human in season two? And how on Earth will that happen?
Or is he officially dead, and this is just an exciting development in Klaus's abilities, with Number Four finally getting to grips with the full extent of his capabilities now that he's sober?
The possibilities really are endless.
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