Sir Reginald Hargreeves is back in The Umbrella Academy season 3 – here’s why the character’s physical appearance doesn’t age between eras.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead for The Umbrella Academy season 3
Why does Sir Reginald Hargreeves appear to age in The Umbrella Academy – and how old is he, anyway? Played by Colm Feore, Reginald Hargreeves is the mastermind behind the Umbrella Academy. Though he begins the story deceased, flashbacks and a trip to the afterlife offer a glimpse of the man behind the myth … before The Umbrella Academy season 2 shows the alien behind the man. The Umbrella Academy season 3’s Reginald Hargreeves is a modern day alternate who created the Sparrow Academy rather than the Umbrella Academy, but still has one hell of an effective skincare regime.
Despite living across multiple eras, Sir Reginald never significantly ages. The Umbrella Academy season 3’s “Wedding At The End Of The World” includes Reginald’s earliest flashback yet, dating back to 1918 and the conception of Hotel Obsidian. At this point, the Hargreeves patriarch has the exterior of a man in his 30s. His next scene comes when purchasing an umbrella company in 1928 (in Umbrella Academy season 1), and the character looks no older. Reggie seems a little more mature when meeting his future children in 1963, but those 50 years are still barely showing. Aside from a tiny twinge of gray, time is still being remarkably kind by the time Sir Reginald adopts seven children in 1989. When 2019 rolls around, Sir Reginald Hargreeves looks mere decades older than his earliest chronological appearance over a century before.
Reginald Hargreeves does not age in The Umbrella Academy because he’s an alien, and as revealed in season 2, the human exterior is nothing but a zip-up mask. Whether or not Reginald’s real face ages is not addressed in The Umbrella Academy. Season 3 still does not specify what species Reggie belongs to, what his extra-terrestrial face fully looks like, or how long his kind live for, so it’s impossible to deduce whether the body underneath is aging over time. Having said that, Allison’s face-slice in “Oblivion” exposes what appears to be wrinkly green alien skin … Audiences might also wonder why Sir Reginald ages at all if his human face is merely a synthetic facade. Maybe Reg adapts his disguise every couple of decades to avoid suspicion – he is, after all, a public figure throughout all of The Umbrella Academy‘s various timelines. Or maybe this human mask is made from such technologically advanced alien material, it automatically matures over time.
How Old Is Reginald Hargreeves?
The Umbrella Academy deliberately obscures Sir Reginald Hargreeves’ exact age. Season 3’s Hotel Obsidian flashback confirms his presence on Earth as early as 1918, but he arrived having already fallen in love with (and lost) Abigail Hargreeves on another planet. These flashbacks put the knighted alien in his 130s at the most conservative estimate, but when complaining to Luther about his failures in “Seven Bells,” Sir Reginald mentions “centuries wasted. “Reggie must be at least 200 years old, given such terminology, but others clues suggest even that guess falls short. His species evidently possesses greater longevity than humans, and when The Umbrella Academy season 1 showed Reginald and his ailing wife together, the caption simply read “long ago …“Such a vague description teases a span most humans could not comprehend existing for.
Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s comic books offer little help on this topic … but The Umbrella Academy season 4 just might. In the final moments of Netflix’s latest run, Reginald successfully molds the universe to his will, creating a timeline where his wife is miraculously healed and Hargreeves Enterprises is apparently the world’s only conglomerate. The Umbrella Academy season 4 (which has already been confirmed by Netflix) will now surely dig deeper into the big questions lingering over Reginald’s past, and along that path, audiences might finally get a sense of his true age.
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