If there's something Umbrella Academy fans can agree, it's that Luther is one of the most disliked characters. It's true.
Given the competition he's up against, it seems surprising that one of the core characters, the first of the seven Hargreeve siblings, is hated more than the two sociopathic villains, Cha-Cha and Hazel. But why?
Spoilers Ahead!
Our source of irritation with our gigantic Number One comes from the fact we see him making progressively worse decisions through the series. The key event most sight as evidence of Luther's failings is the moment he locks up Vanya in the soundproof cell. This turned much of the audience against him, including myself.
To make matters worse, he doesn't learn his lesson, repeating his mistake in the climax of the final episode. While Vanya is halfway through her debut at the concert, we see her sharing a small smile with Allison as her sister approaches the stage.
Of course, the audience is praying for a calm, loving and inspiring ending to the drama. Instead, Luther and Diego charge her, resulting in Vanya's attempt to destroy the world.
Nice job, Luther.
Could easily be said of Luther
But we can rationally see his decision-making process. Vanya had just attacked and almost killed the love of his life, Allison. They have just learnt that she's incredibly dangerous - perhaps the most powerful of them all. They now know she causes the apocalypse.
In Luther's calculations, what else could he have done?
Negative Change arc
In series one's The Umbrella Academy, Luther is clearly on a negative change arc. Where we see Allison, Diago, Klaus and Ben make so much progress and become better people over the series, we see Luther fail.
K.M. Weiland on her site Helping Writers Become Authors describes the negative change:
In a word, the negative character arc is about failure, and this becomes nowhere more clear than in the Third Act. If the positive change arc is about redeeming self and the flat arc is about saving others, then the negative character arc is about destroying self and probably others as well.
Luther starts the series confident of his place in the world. He is the leader - even if the Umbrella Academy has long since been functional. His father placed him on the Moon in order to protect the world and he never questioned his father's grand design. This all plays into the fact that Luther's defining sin is pride.
Self-pity isn't an attractive quality at the best of times. Combined with uncompromising pride makes for a less than appealing character.
Not your Captain America
What we have here is leadership done horrendously badly. The decisions he makes as the de facto leader of the family are both wrong and heartless. When we picture powerful leaders in comics, we inevitably think of characters like Captain America, making Luther's actions entirely at odds to want we expect.
Luther stuck in the past, stuck in the shadow of his father. We see him stepping up to replace Reginald as the family dictator and yet make all the same mistakes.
So I appreciate The Umbrella Academy. Yes, it's a superhero story, but a dysfunctional one. It's gritty, the people aren't perfect and it seems more 'real'. This is a conscious decision by the show's creators, who wanted to make this a different superhero story. When asked why Diego's powers differ from the comic book series, David Castañeda said:
wanted to ground the comic book even more. So for example, Klaus doesn’t levitate in the show, whereas in the comic book he does. And there’s something about seeing someone who has actually no real supernatural powers and only being able to throw things with precision that kind of makes people be like, 'Oh, I can see that, I can put that person in real life and I can see it play out as a human being'.Digital Spy
I've written another post about the realism of the Umbrella Academy. Honestly, I don't think I can stop writing about the Umbrella Academy...
Luther is a comic book hero, but a deeply flawed one.
And it's my hope that in the next series we'll see Luther move out of the shadow of his father and start thinking for himself. The idea of forging his own path is scary, and he has little faith in his own opinions, devoid of his father's guidance. I have high hopes for him and hopefully, he can meet them.
Meanwhile, if you'd like to see how each of the Hargreeve siblings stands for one of the seven deadly sins, click here!
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