WARNING: Spoilers ahead for The Umbrella Academy season 3
Klaus Hargreeves takes his groovy spiritualism shtick to new heights in The Umbrella Academy season 3 - here's how this new power works, and what it means for the future. Robert Sheehan's Klaus Hargreeves is a hard-partying reluctant cult leader with an uncanny knack of putting his body through the proverbial ringer and escaping permanent consequences. In season 3, The Umbrella Academy reveals exactly why Klaus gets away with so many fatalistic Looney Tunes shenanigans. Across The Umbrella Academy's first two seasons, Number Four's superpowers involved communing with spirits from beyond the grave, sometimes willingly; sometimes not. Off the sauce and concentrating really hard, Klaus could even manifest these ghosts in the real world... occasionally.
During a visit to Hotel Obsidian's White Buffalo suite with Stan in The Umbrella Academy season 3, Klaus Hargreeves finds himself on the wrong end of a harpoon, with the accidental projectile spearing him clean through the chest. After a brief trip to the afterlife, however, Klaus wakes up while Diego and Stan are moving his definitely-dead-a-second-ago body down an elevator. Completely healed and flopping around like a wet noodle, Klaus has defied death once again, but not through drunken good fortune or cartoonish durability. This is all thanks to his unusual Umbrella Academy gifts.
Through a conversation with his birth mother and a harsh training session under the Sparrow Academy's Sir Reginald Hargreeves, Klaus discovers he possesses the power of immortality in The Umbrella Academy. Even a harpoon through the chest proves no big deal, as Klaus unlocks a whole new layer to his afterlife arsenal.
How Does Klaus Come Back From The Dead?
Even more shocking than Klaus' immortality is the revelation that Klaus has always been immortal in The Umbrella Academy. This isn't a power he consciously controls or switches on-and-off - Klaus simply cannot die. According to Rachel Herschberger (who's been watching her son from the Void), Number Four has perished a total of 56 times beginning with tomb experiments conducted by Sir Reginald Hargreeves, then graduating to drunken party incidents and drug overdoses. In The Umbrella Academy season 1, audiences even witnessed Klaus miraculously recover after taking a tumble at a rave and smashing his head. We now know the Séance was properly dead in this scene, but like all previous occasions, mistook death for a "near-death experience."
Though his immortality is involuntary, The Umbrella Academy season 3 proves Klaus can control his deathless nature to a degree. Every time Klaus dies, he's sent to The Umbrella Academy's weird afterlife void, left to wander aimlessly before popping back to the mortal realm. It seems the more Klaus becomes accustomed to the Void the quicker he's able to find a way back, as he tells Luther, "I had to die, like, a million times before figuring that one out" when they jump between heavens. Before playing celestial catch with Reginald, Klaus took approximately 18 minutes to reanimate; once the training is over, he's resurrecting almost instantaneously.
As part of Number Four's resurrection ability, wounds fatal or otherwise are completely healed. The hole Stan cleaved through Klaus' chest magically seals over, while disfigured limbs caused by numerous collisions with fast-moving vehicles all click back into place. This is another trick the Séance improves through training. When making Diego and Stan soil themselves in an elevator, the returned Klaus can barely stand upright; after his road trip with Reginald, this "floppy" period has vanished completely.
There may, however, be a limit to how much damage Klaus can recover from. When training with the Sparrow Academy's Sir Reginald, the alien taskmaster describes his parallel son's power as "near-immortality." Since Reggie knows more about the Umbrella Academy's superpowers than anyone, we can perhaps assume there are certain injuries Klaus cannot overcome. They'd have to be ridiculously severe though - even after being utterly disintegrated by the Kugelblitz in The Umbrella Academy season 3's "Seven Bells," Klaus returns from the Void alive and well one episode later.
What Powers Could Klaus Secretly Have?
Klaus Hargreeves' immortality derives straight from The Umbrella Academy's original comic books by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. Though the mechanics are slightly different here (comic Klaus comes back simply because God doesn't like him), the basic premise remains untouched, with the Séance taking a bullet to the head and rising to his feet shortly after. Intriguingly, The Umbrella Academy's comic Klaus possesses even more abilities we're yet to glimpse in Netflix's adaptation, such as telepathy, telekinesis and spiritual projection. Might these gifts secretly dwell within Robert Sheehan's character too? The Umbrella Academy has certainly teased it...
Back in season 1, the spirit of Sir Reginald Hargreeves told Klaus he'd only scratched the surface of his clairvoyance. Sure enough, The Umbrella Academy season 3's graveyard sequence shows Number Four exorcising a gaggle of spirits, exposing yet another layer to his mastery of the afterlife. While telekinesis and telepathy feel a little beyond Klaus' live-action wheelhouse, astral projection would represent a logical next step in his evolution. We've already seen Allison, Five and Viktor's respective gifts grow stronger. Allison no longer needs to say her "rumor" line, Five learned to rewind time in The Umbrella Academy season 2, and Viktor can finally control his powers thanks to Harlan. Klaus may have a handle on resurrection and the means to dispel spirits, but as the Void's self-styled "Prince of Darkness," more facets to his Séance skills might reveal themselves... if the Hargreeves siblings can get their superpowers back in The Umbrella Academy season 4.