Viktor comes out as transmasc in Season 3 of The Umbrella Academy. It fits into his character arc very well, and all his siblings have different, but all kind and supportive, ways of reacting to his coming out. This was written into the script to support Viktor’s actor, Elliot Paige, who came out as transmasc between the releases of seasons 2 and 3!
Viktor has a long character arc, starting in the very first episodes of the show, centering on his journey of self discovery. He struggles with mental illness and overcoming his self-worth issues, and through the events of the show, slowly finds out who he is. Because of this, him coming out as transmasc fits seamlessly into his overarching character development. Viktor at the start of the show is soft-spoken and insecure, but as he finds himself, he becomes more confident, becoming in later seasons one of the most outspoken characters among the Hargreeves siblings. Viktor loves his siblings, and develops an especially strong relationship with Allison through the events of the show. Viktor is skilled at the violin, and is the most powerful Hargreeves sibling, with the power to manipulate sound and energy in a number of massively destructive ways.
More info:
- Other Names: Number Seven, The White Violin
- Pronouns/Gender: He/Him, transmasc
- Media Appearances: Netflix show, major character (based on a character from a comic series by Gerard Way, the comic book version of the character isn’t listed here as she is not trans)
Story (SPOILERS!!)
Viktor was one of the children born on October 1st of 1989 in a strange event where 43 women, who were not pregnant before that moment, suddenly gave birth. Eccentric billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves adopted them soon after, along with 6 other children born in this event. At the Hargreeves mansion in an unnamed city, Reginald raised Viktor, originally under the name “Vanya”, and was raised alongside his siblings, Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Number 5, and Ben. Also each assigned a number, with Viktor being Number 7, the Hargreeves children were raised akin to experiments, with Reginald trying to form them into a sort of ragtag superhero team.
The practices Reginald used to train them, however, were incredibly abusive. When Reginald discovered early on that Viktor had powers that were, he believed, too powerful to be controlled, he began to give him pills to suppress his powers and memories of their powers. For his entire childhood from then on, he was instilled by his father with a belief that he was inherently lesser than his siblings, which would lead to extreme self-worth and mental health issues.
At the start of Season 1, the Hargreeves children have gone their separate ways, divided by the death of their brother, Ben. with Viktor living a quiet life, soft-spoken, focusing on his violin. The Hargreeves are brought together by the death of their father, and the sudden reappearance of Number 5, who had disappeared about a decade ago. Meanwhile, Viktor meets a man named Leonard, who is suspiciously kind to him. Despite his sibling’s’ suspicions, they get together, but they soon find proof that Leonard was preying on his self-worth issues so that he could turn him against his siblings. Viktor kills Leonard upon finding out, completely losing control over his powers as a result, just as Reginald feared. Seconds before his siblings calm him down, he fires a laser from his chest straight into the moon, causing a hail of moon rock that would destroy the Earth in mere minutes. Seconds before they’re crushed by a massive chunk of debris, Number 5 sends them all back in time, to a time decades before any of this even happened.
We find the Hargreeves siblings separated again in Season 2, this time scattered through different times early 60’s Dallas. Viktor, now suffering from amnesia, finds his way to a farm owned by a small family, Sissy, Carl, and their son Harlan, who has a mental developmental disorder. Viktor later saves Harlan, seconds away from drowning in a pond on the farm, by invoking his powers, inadvertently sharing a fraction of his powers with Harlan. As Viktor builds a relationship with Sissy, unhappy with her loveless and unhealthy marriage, they fall in love, and plan to run away together. When Carl finds out about their affair, reacting by threatening to put Harlan in an institution, they finally make an attempt, taking Harlan with them. Along the way, they’re caught by two police officers, one of which is Carl’s brother, and when Viktor uses his powers against the officers he is knocked unconscious by a gunshot. As Viktor is taken to the FBI headquarters, Carl begins to drag Harlan to his car to go through with his threat. Sissy , tired of his emotional abuse, threatens him with a rifle. Carl snatches the rifle, accidentally firing it directly at Harlan, who involuntarily deflects the bullet back towards his father, killing him.
After being tortured and accused of being a Russian spy by FBI agents, Viktor returns to Sissy and Harlan. He attempts to drain the power in Harlan that he unwittingly gave him, and then finds Sissy in the boy’s bedroom. Viktor urges Sissy to come back with him to 2019, along with Harlan, now that Five has found a way to bring them all back to their original timeline. Despite loving him, she knows that going with Viktor will put Harlan in danger, and declines.
After a massive gunfight with the entirety of the Commission, the Hargreeves siblings jump forward in time, back to their home time. But all is not as they expected, due to their actions in the 60’s. In the final seconds, we see an entirely different team of Hargreeves siblings, including Ben, alive once again: the Sparrows.
Season 3 starts right off from where Season 2 ended. After the Sparrows (the new, twisted Hargreeves family that exists in this new timeline) wipe the floor with the Umbrellas (our original team of Hargreeves siblings), Viktor swiftly ends the battle with his powers. The Umbrellas flee, and end up staying, for the time being, at the nearby Obsidian Hotel. As Viktor take a walk through the now alien city, he reflects on his conversations with Sissy. She helped him find himself, and now there’s no going back. As he reminisces on her words: “you don’t even notice the box that you’re in until someone comes along”, he heads into the nearest barbershop, grinning as he takes a seat in the barber’s chair.
Next we see Viktor, he casually mentions in a conversation with his siblings that he goes by Viktor now. He says “It’s who I’ve always been. Is that an issue with anyone? After taking a moment to process, Diego responds with a casual “Nah, I’m good with it”, and Klaus seconds it! Five, responds in his normal casual way, simply saying “truly happy for you, Viktor”, before returning to the conversation at hand.
In a scene later with Allison, Allison says that she “feels like such an a**hole” for not noticing, to which Viktor says, “You couldn’t have known cause I didn’t fully. Being with Sissy, she opened something in me, showed me I’d never be free hiding from who I really am. After losing her I realised, I can’t live in that box anymore. I won’t.” Upon staring at his reflection in a window, Viktor laments, “You know, I always hated mirrors. I thought everybody felt so strange in their skin. I guess that’s not true?” But now, he says, when he looks at his reflection, he sees himself, and just himself. Before the scene ends, Allison hugs him, and reminds him that “You’re family, Viktor, and there’s nothing that would make me love you less.”
The last sibling to learn about Viktor’s transition is Luther, when Diego corrects him on Viktor’s name and let’s him know the news. Being the big, loving softie that he is, he insists on the spot on throwing Viktor a whole party to celebrate, while Diego wants not to make a big deal out of it, as not to embarrass Viktor. Later Diego mentions it to him, saying “Luther wants to throne you a big, stupid party so you feel loved. Do you feel loved?” Viktor says yes, and, despite Diego’s closed off, snarky manner, Diego says, genuinely, “Good. You are.” Luther also asks Viktor to be the best man at his wedding with Sloane, one of the Sparrows. 🙂
While all this has been happening, reality has been tearing itself apart as fallout of the Umbrellas, who were never born in this new timeline, existing in this new timeline that they created, which means that they would have to exist to cause the changes that created this timeline, but– and so on and so on. This is all centered on a crazy ball of lightning called a Kugelblitz, which is disintegrating everything in the universe, at random. Right before the last bit of the universe is destroyed, the remaining Hargreeves children, along with this timeline’s version of Reginald Hargreeves, go through a strange door in an Obsidian Hotel suite, taking them to an identical copy of the hotel. From there they can, according to Reginald, essentially reset the universe. Though they do succeed, Reginald gets to mold the universe how he sees fit, with the Hargreeves children only able to helplessly watch. The original Hargreeves siblings suddenly appear in a new universe, along with Lila and Sparrow Ben. As they all go their separate ways, the camera pans out to show that, in this new universe, Reginald seems to own the city.
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Notes:
- The person that wrote the original Umbrella Academy comic series, Gerard Way, was also the main singer of My Chemical Romance!
- Yeah, I know a lot of context is missing from the story section on this post, but the plot of the Umbrella Academy is EXTREMELY complicated and I think WordPress would crash if I typed out the entire thing. And more importantly that’s too much work, so yeah I just focused on Viktor’s storyline and his trans journey -Sylvie <3
