This post contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy season three.
Elliot Page, who came out as transgender in December 2020, has now mirrored his real-life transition on Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. Viewers were first introduced to Viktor Hargreeves in March, when Page confirmed on social media that his character would transition for the show’s third season, which debuted on Wednesday.
When season three kicks off, Page is still portraying cisgender woman Vanya, as his character was known in the first two seasons. It’s not until the second episode that he’s reintroduced as Viktor. Grieving the loss of ex Sissy Cooper (Marin Ireland) to a different timeline, Viktor tells his adoptive sister Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), “She saw me for who I really am. I’m not ready to give that up.” When Allison calls Viktor a “good sister,” he appears to grapple with that label. At another point, Viktor stares longingly at a poster of men’s haircuts on a barbershop window.
After battling Sparrow Academy member Marcus, Viktor debuts his shorter haircut to the Hargreeves siblings. Each family member is accepting. “Love the haircut,” Klaus (Robert Sheehan) says, as Five (Aidan Gallagher) offers a smile and nod. But when Diego (David Castañeda) calls him “Vanya,” he corrects them: “It’s Viktor.”
“Who’s Viktor?” Diego asks.
“I am,” he replies. “It’s who I’ve always been. Is that an issue for anyone?”
“Truly happy for you, Viktor,” Five ensures. Then it’s back to the business of warding off the encroaching Sparrow Academy.
Toward the end of the second episode, Viktor discusses his transition with Luther (Tom Hopper) and Allison, who blames herself for not realizing who Viktor really was sooner. “You couldn’t have known,” Viktor says, “because, I mean, I didn’t fully.” He says that Sissy “opened something in me. Showed me I’d never be free hiding from who I really am. And after losing her, I realized I just can’t live in that box anymore. I won’t. You know, I always hated mirrors. I thought everybody felt so strange in their skin. I guess that’s not true.” When asked what he sees in his reflection now, Viktor replies: “Me. Just me.”
Page himself publicly came out as trans only weeks before production on The Umbrella Academy’s third season was set to begin. As such, most of the season’s scripts were already finished, meaning rewrites for his character were necessary. Series showrunner Steve Blackman and Page enlisted trans writer Thomas Page McBee to shepherd the story line with nuance and sensitivity.
“Because Elliot was returning to the screen in an established role and with a fully fleshed-out character arc that intersected with every aspect of the show, his story required that his transness exist as a texture, not a defining character trait,” McBee wrote in a recent essay for Esquire. “The creative obstacles didn’t stop there. The events of season three pick up immediately after season two, so Viktor could not have come to this realization about himself between seasons. Instead, his becoming would need to happen within the first episodes, and without the hand-holding usually provided for cisgender audiences. He was, like all trans people, always already himself—whether his siblings on the show, or the viewers watching, knew it or not.”
McBee said that he and Blackman “used Elliot’s insights as a jumping-off point to form and neatly overlay an economical narrative on those existing scenes—one that echoed where Elliot was in his own transition process at the time of shooting.” He explained that in the context of The Umbrella Academy’s established universe, Viktor’s transition is “a coming into focus, a sharpening of perspective that will only deepen the connection millions of viewers already have to Viktor and his family.”
