Though Vanya is considered the most powerful member of The Umbrella Academy, one character potentially carries the strongest power within the whole family: immortality. Klaus Hargreeves, also known as the Séance, is famous for communing with the dead. However, his destructive and addictive personality has consistently had him facing down the barrel of the great beyond. But due to his constant returns, it’s become a conjecture among the fans that the character may be unable to die.
In the comics, Klaus’ first brush with death is in The Umbrella Academy: Dallas #3. While a captive to the hitmen Hazel and Cha-Cha, Klaus is beaten and eventually shot in the head. While in heaven, Klaus meets a figure who represents God, taking the form of a cowboy in the old west. Conversing with God, Klaus discovers that because neither God nor the Devil are fond of him, he will be sent back to the land of the living. While this is the first time readers see Klaus walking in the afterlife, this was far from the first time for the character.
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In Tales from the Umbrella Academy: You Look Like Death, a much younger Klaus is shown going through an overdose after being kicked out of the Academy. As his body fails him, Klaus is introduced to the Void, a place between Heaven and Hell where spirits go when they can’t move on. When not spending time in the real world, Klaus often enters the Void, either on purpose or following blunt trauma. One example of this is when the vampiric chimpanzee, Mr. Shivers, continuously sends Klaus to the Void via torture, so he can try to find the vampire’s dead love. Though Klaus never gets an explanation for this power in the series, fans who’ve read Dallas already know that it is due to God and the Devil’s poor opinion of him.
While Klaus’ case for immortality is stronger in the comics, there’s still room for ambiguity in the context of the TV show. In the first season of the series, Klaus dies multiple times. His first death is in the show’s premiere episode following a drug overdose, but he is quickly revived by paramedics. However, in Season 1, Episode 7, “The Day That Was,” Klaus is slammed against the floor, sending him to the afterlife where he meets a different God, a little girl on a bicycle, and speaks with his father, Reginald. His second death shares a visually similar black and white filter to when he met God in Dallas. The only difference between the two mediums is that the show’s God never confirms the Devil’s opinion on Klaus, adding further ambiguity to his immortality.
Other episodes in the series show Klaus’ death from the multiple apocalypse situations he and his family endure. The first of these deaths is when Five travels to the future following Vanya’s awakening power, which caused the world’s end. Among the rubble of the Hargreeves’ home, Klaus’ body can be seen with his other siblings. Then, in Season 2, Episode 1, “Right Back Where We Started,” he and his siblings face a nuclear apocalypse and presumably die. His last death to date is in Season 2, Episode 10, “The End of Something,” when he and his siblings are gunned down by the Handler. In the end, all of these deaths are undone by Five’s time travel abilities, never clarifying if Klaus stayed in the afterlife or not.
There is no doubt that Klaus is incredibly strong in his supernatural skills. But where the comics series showed that Klaus is, at the least temporarily, immortal, his live-action counterpart is far more ambiguous. Though he has died more than once and returned on his own a couple times, his other deaths are less clear due to Five’s interference. For now, there are no definitive answers to Klaus’ immortality on TV, but the more he dies and returns, the more possible it is that he may never remain deceased.
Based on the comic series of the same name by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy stars Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher and Justin H. Min, with Ritu Arya, Yusuf Gatewood, Marin Ireland, Jordan Claire Robbins, Kate Walsh and Colm Feore. Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Netflix.
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