The Most Pause-Worthy Diego Moment In Netflix's Umbrella Academy
Throughout its two seasons, the sci-fi series "The Umbrella Academy" has done some terrible things. As a superhero show, you would think its main characters have a strong sense of morality, but that's not the case with the Hargreeves family. Based on the comic book series of the same name by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, "The Umbrella Academy" focuses on a group of seven adopted siblings, all strangely born on the same day and imbued with unique superpowers. All seven of the children undergo mental and sometimes physical abuse from their erratic billionaire father, Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore), as he trains them to become a superhero unit.
As the children grow up, their dysfunctional relationships with each other and their father become more estranged until they eventually all go their separate ways and live their own lives. While some of the siblings go on to do more noble things as adults, Diego (David Castañeda), a.k.a Number Two, uses his telekinetic power of curving bullets and knives to become a masked vigilante. Like his siblings, Diego has a strained relationship with his father and is always vying for his attention as a child. In Season 2, there's one moment in which Diego and Reginald's strained relationship comes to a head, and it's this particular moment that broke a lot of fans.
The dinner scene in Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy had fans in tears
Season 1 of "The Umbrella Academy" sees the Hargreeves clan stop the oncoming apocalypse, only for them to be shot back in time, each to a different year in the early 1960s. Again, the Hargreeves siblings live separate lives, until Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) is tasked with reuniting his siblings to stop yet another apocalyptic threat. Eventually, the siblings are able to find each other again, and they learn that Reginald is involved with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Reginald hears of their suspicions and invites the group to a meal, and that's where things go wrong for Diego. Diego accuses Reginald of being involved with the assassination plot, to which Reginald unleashes a flurry of psychological insults, such as calling him a "desperate man," reducing Diego to a stuttering, sad mess.
This is the scene that had many "The Umbrella Academy" fans up in arms in a Reddit thread titled "This Scene Broke Me." U/pelb went so far as to say that it's "the moment the viewers heart is ripped in half." U/jackindevelopment pointed out that the siblings must be caught off guard by their father's cruel nature and wrote, "I felt so sad because he feels betrayed that no one backed him up but it's like, no one was prepared for the level of psychological whoop-ass Reggie was gonna unload." U/jeffyscouser even called for an award for Castañeda for the emotional scene and wrote, "INCREDIBLE ACTING! It was heartbreaking, with the stutter, the tear, and slowly slumping back into his chair. Get this man an Emmy!"
Hopefully, we'll see more of Diego and his redemption in the upcoming Season 3 of "The Umbrella Academy."