We are back with a new The Umbrella Academy video! The third season of the show just became available on Netflix, and it has received excellent reviews. In The Umbrella Academy, time travel is a major concept that is constantly coming up. Fortunately, Umbrella Number 5, one of the seven kids Sir Reginald Hargreeves had adopted, had the ability to travel across time.
But as everyone is aware, time travel is a tricky idea that has the potential to go horribly wrong very quickly, which is exactly what happened to unfortunate Umbrella Number 5. This video focuses on Number 5, his history, his skills, and what precisely happens to him in Season 3 as The Umbrellas continue to travel across time.
Who is Umbrella Number 5? – Origins Explored
Number Five, the time jumper, is one of the 43 children born to mothers who displayed no prenatal symptoms at all on October 1, 1989, at 12 o’clock. One of seven children Sir Reginald Hargreeves adopted with the intention of raising them to be world-saving troops. In contrast to the others, Number 5 is always referred to by his number alone. Even though Number 5 was prepared to be a hero, things go terribly wrong when he is trapped in the future with no way to return. However, how does this start to happen?
Well, Sir Reginald Hargreeves began teaching the children very early, which allowed him to learn about their abilities. The child’s abilities would subsequently be refined through training so they could control them and utilize them effectively. Sir Reginald understood that Number 5 had the capacity to teleport and time leap. Even though this is an amazing and thrilling power, these kids were still just children, no matter how brave they were, and to put it simply, Number 5 made a huge mistake.
The Umbrellas were sent on missions all the time and Number 5 is seen in the series in a flashback, where he appeared at a crime scene. He and the others were ordered by Sir Reginald to don their formal hero attire—black suits and white masks—and proceed to the location of the ongoing crime. From there, they probably entered the bank through the back door or by using Five’s teleportation. The heroes got to work and did a pretty good job. The rest of his siblings had already taken down the majority of the offenders when one thief instructed them to stay back in an effort to gain the upper hand in the face-off.
This is where we see Number five’s power in action. In order to find out what the Robber would do if they didn’t, Five teleported behind him. After being startled, the thief tried to fire his gun at Five, but Five just teleported back behind him. As the thief turned around to draw his revolver, he was startled to realize that he was now holding a stapler. Five grabbed the stapler and punched the Robber in the head. His remarkable powers of teleportation were on full display
Following the capture of most of the thieves, Five and his siblings watched as Ben used his tentacle power to murder the remaining robbers. News reporters and journalists then surrounded the kids who were displayed outside the crime scene as the heroes who took down the robbers. Five thus lived the life of a celebrated hero for a while before things went wrong.
When Five conceived the startling idea of time travel one day, he was eating lunch. Often, the craziest ideas come to people when they are doing the most mundane things and I guess that was the case here as well. He went up to his father and said he wanted to go back in time. He was already capable of traveling through space; why not time travel as well? Five’s unexpected and quite frankly, inflated wish astonished Reginald, who then clarified that Five had not yet learned to control his own power.
Reginald’s remark enraged Five, who felt that Reginald underestimated him and his power. He then walked out of his house without knowing that he would not be able to return for a very long time. Five found himself transported to a future time where the Earth had been destroyed because he had not yet mastered the ability to jump through space and time. Here, he makes five tries to return to the present but is unsuccessful. After spending a lot of time in this desolate timeline, A representative of the Temps Commission, a group established to protect the timeline from dangers and maintain the proper flow of time, confronts him.
She promises that if he accepts her offer, he will continue to live in a secure place, far from the end of the world. Five accepts because he has nowhere else to go and this woman becomes his Handler. He becomes a skilled hitman who works for the Temps Commission. He covertly takes advantage of this chance to look into the origins of the end of the world. He makes plans while looking into how he can get back into the present and go back to where he came from. Soon after, on the day of JFK’s assassination, The Handler hires Five to serve as a marksman. Five uses this chance to go back in time while seated behind a desk. He creates a wormhole, which he then slips through to reappear in his teenage body and finally comes back to his original timeline.
Now, Number Five was stranded in the post-apocalyptic future for more than 40 years when he was 13 years old. When he discovered a route home, his body went back to being 13 years old while his mind remained the same. As a result, he is enraged at being confined to a child’s body and has the personality of a 60-year-old. He is depicted as possessing a brilliant brain, frequently labeling others—including his family—as foolish or inferior and displaying no care in their personal lives. He is also revealed to be exceedingly arrogant, pragmatic, and sarcastic. Due to his arrogant character, he also displays reckless conduct, as seen by the fact that when he was a youngster, he shamelessly used his time-traveling abilities in spite of Reginald Hargreeves’ cautions that he wasn’t yet ready to use them.
It is also shown that Number Five is a merciless and extraordinarily skilled assassin. While he does not love murdering people, he seems to have no regrets over the victims he has claimed. He is more than eager to kill anyone, including innocent bystanders, whose demise would prevent the apocalypse from occurring, and even acts casually when formulating preparations to do so. He rose to reputation during his tenure as a Temps Commission agent for his ability to successfully carry out missions that required him to kill a significant number of people in order to fulfil his contract and return to the present. Overall, it has been demonstrated that Number Five is completely willing to get rid of anyone who gets in the way of his objectives, without any hesitation or second thought.
Despite his antisocial tendencies, he is compassionate and genuinely loves his family. He appears to be the family member who is most committed to averting the catastrophe, working relentlessly in both the past and the future to do so. Most of the time, he even declines to include his family out of concern that they might perish. He requests that his family be preserved as well when he “renegotiates” his agreement with the Temps Commission.
Another question that arises is, why does he not have a name when all of his other siblings do? Each Academy member has a nickname in the comics, and Five is known as The Boy. However, he has no real first name, and this is reflected in the on-screen adaptation. He is only ever addressed by his number, unlike his siblings.
In The Umbrella Academy, Five was never given a genuine name because it turns out that, in the comics, Grace, the children’s android “mom,” gave each of them names while Five was away. Thus, he simply never ended up having one. Netflix’s adaptation of the Umbrella Academy never offers such an explanation due to considerable deviations from the comics, such as Luther and Five’s romance. However, it is alluded to by the creators of the show that it is what actually happened in the show’s universe as well.
However, the series does suggest that because of Five’s harrowing journey and the trials and tribulations that he underwent as a result of getting stuck in the future, he did not care for a name. His transformation into an assassin further solidified his lack of humanity which unfortunately was a direct result of the quality of life that he had led. Thus, he never felt the need for a name and thought it was too trivial a matter. In fact, in many ways, Five was more machine than he was a boy.
Gallagher even claims in an interview with Collider that he knows Five rejected the idea of a new moniker. To Five, trivialities like names are unimportant. Although Five gains some humanity through his reunion with his brothers, he is intended to serve as the detached outsider who grounds his sentimental family. Therefore, it is appropriate that Five was never given a real name.
Powers and Abilities
Because of his ability to bend space and time, Number Five is able to teleport through it, move through it, and even change it. This is his unique power and arguably, it is one of the coolest among the seven siblings.
Number Five can therefore teleport over short and large distances utilizing his special ability, which he repeatedly exploited to get away from Hazel, Cha-Cha (Two time-traveling assassins), and the Temps Commission. Despite having the ability to travel at leisure, Five frequently became fatigued after numerous trips in a short period of time. He has the ability to teleport others along with himself, as was seen in the episode The End of Something when he took Diego along with him as they fled from Commission agents. He has the capacity to transport things without making physical touch.
Five has the ability to travel through time as well. The first time Five utilized this power, he unintentionally journeyed to the end of the world and was unable to return because he had not yet mastered it. Even though he is less skilled at time travel, Five is quick to pick things up. In the episode The White Violin, he accomplished a first for him by traveling across time and bringing his siblings along. In the episode, The End of Something, Five has the ability to turn back time by a few minutes, redoing the previous few minutes’ worths of events so that only he remembers them and can change the future.
Apart from his special power, he also has other skills that he mastered and can use in combat. Even as a little child, Number Five was an excellent fighter. However, after traveling into the future, the Commission taught him cutting-edge combat techniques, and he honed his fighting and assassination skills. Number Five was the most lethal assassin in the Temps Commission; using his abilities, even after regressing to his youthful form, he could kill several individuals in a matter of seconds.
In terms of his tactical and intellectual prowess, Number Five also possesses genius-level intelligence and is incredibly smart and intuitive. Additionally, he is a master tactician who can create new plans and battle strategies on the fly if the scenario warrants it. For example, he can devise a variety of intricate schemes to successfully take down various foes under challenging circumstances. Last but not least, Because of his mental instability and violent demeanor, Number Five knows how to be highly scary and is an adept intimidator. He is able to intimidate people even after assuming his teenage form.
What Happens to Umbrella Number 5 in Season 3?
There is a lot going on in season 3 and Number 5 seems to always be the medium. At the end of season two, we see that Umbrella Number 5 had managed to take all his siblings back in time to undo the apocalypse that had been triggered by Viktor Hargreeves because he pretty much destroyed the moon. Well, this decision would trigger a whole host of events that led them to the happenings of the third season.
During their time in the past, they met their father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, which led to a complete change in the timeline, with Sir Reginald choosing a completely different set of kids to be his heroes and make up The Sparrow Academy. When Number Five brought all of them back to the present again after that fateful meeting with their father, they landed up in a world that was the same as the one they had left but with one key difference. Because Sir Reginald picked 7 different kids, The Umbrella Academy never existed – they have wiped off the face of the Earth.
However, that was not all. Because of this major time travel mistake committed by Number Five, they had managed to create a Kugelblitz. Now a Kugelblitz is a black hole that is created when time is warped and timelines are tampered with and altered. This Kugelblitz posed a major threat in the third season because it would suck up the timelines and the people, effectively destroying everything and triggering another apocalypse.
As is to be expected, Five has a bizarre plotline once again, since this time, the main character meets his dying older self. Five and Lila Pitts jump into another timeline in pursuit of information after realizing they must halt whatever is producing these waves. When they locate the Operations Bunker to talk with the Commission’s founder, they learn that it is actually an earlier version of Five!
The Number Five in this timeline is prepared to pass away, but before he does, he imparts some crucial knowledge to the Five in the present. He tells Lila and Five that a Kugelblitz is necessary and, shockingly, counsels them against trying to save the world once more. Understandably, Young Five rejects this, but before he can ask Old Five further questions, Old Five begins to die. Before passing away, he says the word “oblivion.”
In The Umbrella Academy season 3, Number Five does really pass away. But it’s not the Five we’ve been watching since season 1; it’s Five from another timeline. Through the entirety of season 3, our current Five remains alive. When Five and his siblings discovered the sigil at Hotel Obsidion in the finale, they were on the verge of death. Reginald Hargreeves had converted the hotel into some sort of energy force field. Except for Allison Hargreeves, who struck a bargain with Reginald, the siblings were struggling as their lives were being drained from them.
Allison is informed by Reginald that they were essentially inside a machine in a different universe and that the hotel was just a ruse. Despite Luther’s life nearly being extinguished, Number Five was able to inform Allison that Reginald had killed him. This tipped Allison off and she finally sided with her siblings, disregarding the deal made with her father. Allison managed to gain the upper hand and it was revealed that this Reginald was a robot or alien. Allison thus saves the siblings’ life and sets them free.
However, things don’t go as the siblings had anticipated. The Umbrella Academy season 3 ends with the world being reset and the majority of the Hargreeves finding themselves back together in a new reality where they no longer possess magical abilities. Number Five is still very much alive, and he must decide what to do next.
Thus, while Vanya is “always the bomb” and is the Hargreeves sibling who ushers at the end of the world, Number Five also has a tragic fate. In the first season, Number Five saw how the world ended when he woke up during the apocalypse and was given the responsibility of compelling his family to preserve the planet. Number Five made a jump error in 1963, which caused him to see the end of the world once more and come back as a prophet. He was compelled to gather his team once more in order to save the world again.
Umbrella Number 5’s Origins as Shown in the Comics
The Netflix series is adapted from Gerard Way’s comic book series of the same name. Thus, almost all the characters have been heavily inspired by the work in the comics and Number 5 is no exception.
In the comics, around 1950, at the same time as 42 other unusual children, the kid who would come to be known only as Number Five was born. Sir Reginald Hargreeves, a well-known scientist and businessman, adopted him as a child with the sole purpose of raising him to save the world. Number Five resided at the unique academy that Hargreeves established to train the kids. He was given the number five designation by Hargreeves and possessed time travel abilities. The Umbrella Academy’s first mission to stop the ravaging Eiffel Tower in Paris was several days away when Number Five, using his skills, moved forward in time and vanished. Sir Reginald said that it wasn’t a big loss for them to be without him.
Number Five landed in the future, in 1980 to discover a lifeless barren land of rot and ruin, with dead bodies all around. He messed about with a blade, beheading sculptures and toy animals after realizing after a few days that he was the only person still alive on the Earth. However, he soon realized how terrible everything was and started planning how to get home.
He discovered Vanya’s book Extra-Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven after doing some investigation. Later, he started having delusions that a statue of a woman that was present there, could speak. Dolores was her given name when he fell in love with her. After spending fifty years in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, aging and attempting to figure out how to return home, he realized—through Dolores—that, twelve years earlier, during his calculations, he had forgotten to deduct a two from a one. Five finally returned home to 1960, the day the Eiffel Tower went insane throughout Paris, after giving Dolores one final passionate hug.
However, his journey back home did not go smoothly, and Number Five was removed from the timestream by the Temps Aeternalis as he skimmed the timeline to go back to when he had originally left, all those years ago. The Temps Aeternalis was a significant organization that dealt with time travel and other similar issues, and they were extremely powerful. He agreed to work for them for five years in exchange for them sending him back home.
The Temps undertook significant surgery on Number Five in order to make use of his time-travel capabilities. They improved his strength, agility, and reflexes as well as, without telling him or taking his consent, bound his DNA to the genetic components of some of history’s most notorious murderers. The old man became extremely quick and soon was the best assassin in the organization’s history when they taught him how to execute micro jumps through time.
For a few years, Five carried out their instructions and orders and turned to extensive drug use while numbly celebrating his successes. However, he discovered the reality of the Temps’ tampering with his DNA when it came time for him to kill John F. Kennedy in 1963. Furious, Five proceeded to 1963 as planned, but he did not go through with his orders. When the reinforcement Temps troop dispatched to assassinate Kennedy from the future saw that Five had defied their orders, they all opened fire on Five, and Five fleed. After leaving 1963, Five finally traveled back to 1960, the period he had originally set out to reach.
Number Five finally came back to the Academy shortly after Monocle passed away in 1980, looking as though he had not aged a day. After his brother had come back from his stint on the Moon in the aftermath of their father’s passing, he first disclosed his presence to their Chimpanzee butler Pogo before going to tell his brother, Umbrella Number 1 or, Spaceboy. Interestingly, in the comics, Spaceboy and Number 5 are actually twins!
Thus, Number 5 is a crucial character in the series and it is because of his ability to time travel, that many of the story arcs exist in the first place. What do you think about Umbrella Number 5? Let us know in the comments section below!