Diksha Sundriyal
There have been all sorts of toxic parents in the history of television, but rarely does anyone come close to the toxicity of Reginald Hargreeves of Netflix’s ‘The Umbrella Academy.’ The man adopts seven children but never treats them as such. For him, they are only the means to an end, and he does nothing to indicate otherwise. In one of his brutal moves to show that he cares more about their powers than them, Reginald calls the children not by their names but by the numbers he has assigned them, ranking their importance in the team. Still, all the kids have real names with which they address each other. Five is the only member of the team who does not have a proper name. Another thing that sets him apart is his age, the matter of which is even more complicated than his name. SPOILERS AHEAD
Five is, Technically, Much Older Than His Siblings
All the children in the Umbrella Academy were born in 1989 at the same hour on the same day, which means they are all of the same age. However, things are a bit more complicated for Five. When he was 13 years old, he jumped into the future sometime in the 2040s and got stuck there. He had no way to return to his original timeline and spent the next forty-five years away from his home, during which he also worked for the Commission. Eventually, he found a way back but decided to come in 2019, when his siblings would be 30. He should have been the same age, but due to the fluke created by his time jump, it was in the body of his 13-year-old self when he came back. So, technically, he should be about 58 years old; chronologically, he should be 30; and physically, he is 13.
While Five is 13 at the beginning of ‘The Umbrella Academy,’ there is nothing to indicate that he isn’t aging now. One could say that as time passes, Five once again moves through the cycles of the teenage. However, the graphic novels on which the series is based paint Five as stuck in his age forever. So, according to that, he remains a 13-year-old for the entirety of the story. But that would make his romance angle in Season 4 highly problematic. So, it makes much more sense for that he has grown with time, especially in the six years that have passed in the new timeline. According to this, he must be 20 or older at the beginning of Season 4.
Five’s Lack of Real Name Reflects His Character More Appropriately
While there is a way to calculate Five’s real age, there is no way to know his real name. Throughout the show’s four-season run, ‘The Umbrella Academy’ never addresses the matter of Five’s name or lack thereof. The rest of the siblings have real names with which they address each other, but when it comes to Five, everyone calls him by the name number Reginald Hargreeves assigned him in the order of the hierarchy.
The comics follow the same route and never quite reveal his name or the reason behind him being the only one not to receive it, but the creators of the novels and the show have presented different hypotheses behind it. The first reason, and the seemingly most logical one, is that Five didn’t get a name because the rest of the team was given names after he disappeared. Considering the kind of person Reginald is, it makes sense that he never bothered to name the children. He only assigned them numbers. However, Grace had love for the children, and she gave them names. This most likely happened due to Five’s sudden disappearance, which prompted her to name the children because the thought of them all dying without a name was too sad.
Another hypothesis is that the children were allowed to pick names for themselves. While the rest knew what they wanted to be called, Five could never settle on anything. He might have eventually, but before that, he jumped into the future and found himself in a post-apocalyptic world. He had other important things on his mind, like survival, so it makes sense he didn’t fret about having a proper name.
According to actor Aidan Gallagher, who plays Five, it is possible that he was given a name, but he rejected it. Gallagher sees Five as “brilliant, cunning, and weird” and someone who has superseded the need to have a name. He found it petty and rejected the name that Grace must have wanted to give him. Moreover, Five must have felt that having a proper name would have lent “Five” the air of being a number with which Reginald wanted to define him.
Like the other kids, having another name would have made him too attached to that name, and then, the number would have felt like an insult, which is what Reginald wanted in the first place. Five was too clever to have his buttons pushed by Reginald like that, so instead of receiving a proper name, he owned “Five” as his only name. It was also a way for him to show Reginald that he was beyond the petty numbering system he created to manipulate them. Five never even cared about who Number One or Number Seven was, so it didn’t matter to him if he was Number Five. He would have owned any number he was given, even if it was One. He already considered himself much more powerful than the rest of his siblings, so indulging in a rivalry with them over a number (like Diego does for being called Number Two) didn’t make any sense to him. To him, Five was the name he received, so that’s what he accepted and moved on instead of fretting about it.
Read More: The Umbrella Academy Season 4: What is the Cleanse?
