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nikkiwriteswords · 5 years

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Hey there! I have a TUA theory that's been going through my head for weeks, and I'd love to hear what you think of it/if you can expand it in any way. Basically, I wonder if the powers the Hargreeves siblings have are somehow linked to the country they were born in. Luther, who has a Norther-European-sounding name, has a Viking's strenght, Klaus is from Austria/Germany, countries with a long history of wars (and therefore, death), Vanya is from Russia, homeland to great composers... (1/2)

(2/2)… a friend of mine suggested that Five could be from England, a country which used to control most of the world, because he can go wherever he pleases. I have a couple of ideas about the others, but I’m less sure about them. I’d love to get your feedback on this, and maybe hear your ideas! I think you do a magnificent job on your account (I literally opened my account today cause I couldn’t get enough of the content in your blog!) All the love, and thanks in advance!

Hey! Oh wow, thank you so much!! It makes me so happy to know people are enjoying my blog - so much so that you started your own, that’s amazing! I’m looking forward to seeing what you write: this is a great theory to start with, and I have had some ideas about the characters’ origins before, so let’s see what we can tease out of it: Now, let’s start by saying that we don’t have actual canon confirmation of the siblings’ origin and ethnicities (at least not that I can recall). For one, it’d be inaccurate to try and assume anything from the comics because the style is not true-to-life. However, what we can say is that Netflix’s casting choices for the show brought a much clearer diversity to our (anti)hero family. This is a good backlash against the prevalent whitewashing in tv and film (specifically Hollywood) of the last few years, but (1, is it diverse enough? and 2) it raises the question of how far we should read into the ethnicities of the cast as reflective of the characters. We must be careful not to 1) confuse comic canon with tv canon, and 2) conflate or assume things about a character identity based on assumptions about the actor/actress, unless they are qualities the cast themselves want to give their character. For instance, I’ve no idea if Cody Ray Thompson is Jewish, but he has confirmed (along with sharing a ton of other personal headcanons) that Dave was Jewish, based on Dave’s surname in on the dogtags. Meanwhile, Robert Sheehan disguises his Irish accent, therefore we can’t assume Klaus is Irish just because Robert is. Accent is a pretty big signifier, tbf, so this one is probably pretty obvious.

So what can we use as identifiers? Language cues, for one. Although it’s not conclusive evidence, we can theorise that Klaus knows a little German, and speculate that he wanted to feel connected to his German/Austrian heritage and distance himself from his upbringing. Therefore, from a linguistic perspective, names are also quite telling.

(They could have always been picked out of a hat, of course, but that’s no fun, and name meanings are so beautifully subjective.) This actually ties in with my own ideas on name analysis and what they can tell us about each character. (It’s in my drafts somewhere, but it’s only rudimentary so far). I was inspired when I saw this post [x]. What I had not considered, though, is how their heritage might be alluded to through their powers. The point about Russian composers is really interesting. Of course, other countries have great composers too, so how do we prove that link? If I had any classical music knowledge, I’d look through both the comics and the show for songs Vanya plays, or music associated with her in the show, or see if there’s any background details that could point to Russian composers in association with her character. Klaus, Germanic, means ‘victory of the people’. It originated from the Greek Nikolaos (coincidentally… so does Nikki. Just throwing that out there). It sounds heroic, but Klaus is decidedly anti-heroic for most of the first season. So perhaps we can interpret him as, quite literally, not living up to his name. Then there’s the elephant in the room: his untapped potential. Within that meaning, ‘victory of the people’, there’s connotations of conflict (and therefore death); revolution; the underdog rising up out of oppression. As Klaus does. Of course, if we’re talking about German heritage and conflict, we’ve got to mention WW2. There could be tenuous parallels to be made between Reginald and toxic ideologies like Nazism, and the outfit he wears as he stands in the door of the mausoleum did remind me of the uniforms of SS soldiers in Schindler’s List. But honestly, that would need fact-checking against reality, not another movie, and I don’t really want to touch Nazism any further than that without proper research. Nonetheless, I do wonder what the reaction would be to a man with a German name meeting a man with a Jewish name just 20 years after the end of WW2. However, I’d be more inclined to think about that name meaning again - victory of the people - and how it might allude to the Berlin Wall. But again, I’d need to research, because I know next to nothing about it. Could any of this explain his power to see the dead, though? If Klaus was intended to be Germany personified, specifically history of Germany wars and ideological conflicts, I’d say - it’s a stretch. There could be something there about carrying your past with you, learning from it instead of rejecting it, but it’s too vague. I also had brief thoughts on Luther. It is also a Germanic name, likewise derived from Greek, and means ‘soldier of the people’. In Greek, it derives from a word meaning ‘free’. Now, Luther is the conventional hero to Klaus’s antihero. (Does that place them on two sides of the metaphorical wall?) Where Klaus does not live up to his name, Luther does. He is the people’s soldier, with the strong moral conviction to protect and dish out justice. To that end, strength plays into that image. That said, I don’t know if there’s any signifiers from Luther’s character about his ethnic origins other than his name. However, the German theologist Martin Luther, founder of Lutheranism, is thought to be a key namesake for ‘Luther’. Martin Luther was seminal to the Reformation of the Roman Catholic Church, from which Lutheranism was born. Of course, the topic of religion might not relate directly to Luther, but the ideological crisis surrounding the Protestant Reformation - devote worship of a higher power, and a crisis of free will following challenges to predestination (all events in one’s life are predetermined by God) - could be equated with Luther’s crisis of faith in Reginald. All that being said, I also have a very vague recollection from my research that it also literally means ‘strong’. So. Mystery solved?As for Five, I really don’t think we can conclude anything that wouldn’t be pure headcanon. He’s an enigma, and is likely to stay that way. The only thing I can say is that his name - just a number - makes him elusive, hard to pin down, just like his powers. And, just a final thought: what purpose would it serve, to have heritage linked to powers? Sure, there’s the implication of the effect it has on identity as a whole, which is the underlying assumption of this entire post. But what else does it imply, to use these powers for good (or bad)? Global unification? We know that Hargreeves’s entire purpose for the Academy is to ‘save the world’, but even though they are facing down the apocalypse, the show makes it feel very personal, not universal. A family united.

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