Every Sparrow Academy Member's Powers Explained In The Umbrella Academy Season 3

"The Umbrella Academy" has always been a show about how time-travel shenanigans tend to make things ... well ... very, very complicated. For proof, look no further than Season 3, when our eccentric heroes cross paths with their replacements, the Sparrows.

After traveling back to 1963 and getting involved with the Kennedy assassination, the Umbrellas return to an altered 2019 to find that their adoptive dad, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, is alive and has made some serious changes. Put off by the Umbrellas after their encounter back in the '60s, the explorer has adopted a whole new group of super-powered individuals, dubbing them the Sparrows. Needless to say, the Umbrellas and the Sparrows don't exactly hit it off. But who exactly are these new characters, and what incredible powers do they possess? Well, let's dig a bit deeper into the Sparrow Academy and learn about their otherworldly gifts. Warning — there are major spoilers below.

Marcus Hargreeves is #1, making him the leader of the Sparrow Academy and the obvious counterpart of Luther, the #1 of the Umbrella Academy. In the show's original timeline, the Umbrella Academy becomes dysfunctional when Ben, #6, dies on a mission. Five disappears into the future, and the family just drifts apart after that. But in the new timeline, the Sparrows are a disciplined unit who also generate a lot of money through action figures and tote bags. Marcus works out daily on the roof of the Academy, throwing his towel to a throng of admirers below. 

Marcus' powers include super strength and endurance, and while you might think Luther would be able to take him in one-on-one combat, you'd be wrong. Marcus defeats our hero with relative ease, matching him in size and physique and surpassing him in quickness and technique. Despite Luther's best efforts, he gets stomped in the chest until passing out, proving which #1 is truly #1. In addition to his physicality, Marcus is also a natural leader, charismatic, and a shrewd negotiator. 

In the Sparrow Academy, Ben Hargreeves is #2. In the Umbrella Academy, he was #6, reflecting his father's general perception of his overall usefulness and leadership potential. In both timelines, Ben has the same, bizarre power — he can open up a portal inside his chest that unleashes four horrifying black tentacles that are under his control. It's unclear if they're part of his body or if these "eldritch tentacles" originate from another dimension that he has some influence over. 

Either way, Ben has been trained how to use them with deadly skill and precision. He tries to use them on Five, without knowing about Five's speed and teleportation ability, so that doesn't exactly pan out. Ben is more successful attacking Klaus, using his tentacles to grab him and wave him in the air. Ever the clown, Klaus' response is to say, "See? We're hugging! This is progress!" Ben is less than amused by this, however. Other than using his tentacles to grab and bludgeon opponents, he never demonstrates other uses for them, but nevertheless, they always leave us completely freaked out.

The ruthless Fei Hargreeves is #3 in the Sparrow Academy. Born without eyes or conventional vision, she's able to see thanks to her ability to manifest crows from out of thin air. She can pick one of these birds — or multiple birds — to act as her eyes, making her an ideal spy because of her ability to cover so much ground and cover events surreptitiously. She can even literally see through their eyeballs if she so chooses. 

And these aren't crows you want to mess with. They're large and durable, pecking through a thick wooden door in just a matter of minutes. They strike so fast and in such large numbers that even Luther and Allison are terrified by them. Later, with the help of her avian army, she tracks Luther down while he's out jogging and then gathers them en masse in order to launch an attack.

Fei's power is one of the weirder ones, and she's obviously well-trained enough to take on two of the toughest Umbrellas. Fei is also highly ambitious and willing to take risks within the squad, but she's also happy to go along with Ben on her way to becoming leader herself.

Alphonso Hargreeves is #4 in the Sparrow pecking order, and his lumpen appearance doesn't make him seem like much of a threat at first. He's not in peak condition like the other Sparrows, and his face looks like it's disintegrating. But looks can be deceiving. When faced with a fight against Allison Hargreeves, he scoffs and tells her to hit him. She eagerly agrees and lands a powerful punch right on his jaw. The blow is not only easily absorbed by his doughy skin, it also activates his power — empathetic masochism. 

The person who hits Alphonso is the one who feels the effect of the blow. For Allison, it means feeling her jaw splinter and her nose get bloody from the impact of her own punch. However, Alphonso does meet his match when he faces off against Diego (#2 of the Umbrella Academy), as the hero's speed and pain tolerance help him out. Of course, it's here that were learn Alphonso is a bit breakable, as his chin falls off during the fight, prompting him to sheepishly say, "Yeah, it does that sometimes."

We also see Alphonso struggle to keep up with Diego, suggesting that his power is will-based and that it wanes when he's out of breath. He even pulls out an inhaler in the middle of their fight (only for Diego to kick it away). Still, Alphonso is a brutal opponent for anyone who doesn't know what's coming and still pretty tough even if you do.  

The Sparrow version of #5 is Sloane Hargreeves, but don't be fooled by her mid-tier ranking. Sloane is one of the most powerful members of the Sparrow Academy. She has the ability to control gravity at a local level — canceling it out and manipulating objects and people. In the Sparrows' first fight against the Umbrella Academy, Sloane takes on Viktor and flings him into a wall. Later on, she spins him in the air before smashing him into a table.

Sloane often uses her power to hang out in places where others can't. When first seen, she's thumbing through a travel guide, and the camera reveals she's sitting on her ceiling the whole time. After she falls in love with Luther, she frequently uses her power to levitate herself up his level or levitate both of them together. That includes "dancing on the ceiling" for a romantic interlude, which gives Luther the idea to put that Lionel Richie song of the same name on a mixtape for her. 

Sloane's power is more about just flying around. She shows an intimate knowledge of how physics works when they attempt to capture the energy anomaly in the Academy's basement. She concocts a plan with Five so detailed that Luther looks on totally bewildered, and she uses her power to "calm" the energy before others shrink and contain it. 

Jayme Hargreeves, #6, is one of the nastier members of the Sparrows, and she has a power to match her personality. Inside the back of Jayme's mouth, she has two venom sacs. She can spit this green venom out, and if it hits her targets, they suffer from extreme hallucinations. For example, when the Umbrellas show up at their old house and meet the Sparrows, the families suddenly find themselves in a highly choreographed dance-off to Kenny Loggins' "Footloose." But soon enough, Diego snaps out of it and comes back to sweaty reality, realizing it's all been an illusion and he's the victim of Jayme's particular power. 

Later, she fights Five one-on-one. After he initially gets the drop on her with his teleportation ability, she nails him with her spit. He immediately starts hallucinating Delores, the mannequin he fell in love with in his isolated future. Seeing him kiss the air, she wonders aloud, "Are they all perverts?" Jayme is also a capable hand-to-hand combatant, fighting dirty to beat Ben at one point, proving that if you have to fight a Sparrow, you'd definitely want to stay away from her.

Christopher Hargreeves is a floating cube made of some unknown stone-metal hybrid, and he possesses some extensive mental powers. Instead of speech, he makes chirping, whirring sounds. However, those sounds are readily understood by all around him, and he's known as a trash-talking joker, insulting Diego's hair. 

He is #7 of his family. Ironically, unlike the black sheep Viktor from the Umbrella Academy — someone who was so powerful that his father locked him in a basement for years — Christopher is treated like just another sibling by his fellow Sparrows. In one of the early scenes of the series, he can be seen out clubbing with his brother Ben, who declares, "Next round's on Christopher!" to wild cheers. 

Christopher's powers are somewhat nebulous. He has a brain-scrambling ability that can paralyze and cause immense pain to multiple people at once, even Umbrellas as powerful as Viktor. Thanks to this menacing cube, Allison can't even concentrate to use her "rumor" power out loud. He can freeze people in place, as well as actually control the temperature in a room in order to render it freezing. When the Sparrows and Umbrellas team up to contain the energy ball that is destroying the universe, Christopher disassembles himself when the energy gets small enough and then reassembles himself around the energy. Unfortunately, even he can't contain the end of the universe for long, and it eventually blows him to pieces when Fei clinks a glass on him, creating a vibration that makes him vulnerable. 

Sir Reginald Hargreeves, the patriarch of both the Umbrella Academy and the Sparrow Academy, bills himself as an eccentric explorer with a thirst for knowledge. But really, he's far more sinister. Originally from another time and dimension, he knows there's an interdimensional rift he can use to remake reality, and he build a hotel around it. As for his physicality, he's functionally immortal in terms of aging, though not in terms of invulnerability. He's unusually quick, agile, and strong despite his seeming age, able to engage any of his children in combat. And needless to say, he's quite intelligent and devious.

Back in Season 1, Reginald arranges his own death initially as a way to get his children back together in order to save the world, as funerals tend to bring people together. He tries this trick later when he murders Luther in order to get his children to cross over through a portal to the Hotel Oblivion. When he kills Luther, he uses a sawblade appendage that comes out of his arm, stabbing his son right through his chest. When Allison kills him with a blow to the head, it reveals that his human body is entirely fake. Underneath, there's scaly reptilian skin, strange brain matter, and green blood. Of course, he later emerges alive from this yet again when the universe resets, so who knows what other abilities he has?