WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy Season 2, streaming now on Netflix.

Each member of The Umbrella Academy has their own path to travel, but the longest is perhaps Number Five's. He travels decades into the future and is stranded in a post-apocalyptic landscape, only being saved by the grace of the Commission. They transform him into history's greatest assassin, carrying out dozens of murders throughout the timestream. He escapes from his grim duty only to arrive mere days before the apocalypse kills his entire family. And even once he tries to avert it at the last possible second he overshoots by several decades, stranding his family throughout the early 1960s.

Knowing all of this makes the line Five utters to his father in Season 2, Episode 4, perfect. It's the first line of Homer's Odyssey, which he throws out without stumble or pause: "Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ." There are countless translations of Homer's famous story of Odysseus, but in this case, American poet Robert Fitzgerald's seems most apt. "Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end."

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Number Five in The Umbrella Academy Season 2

Five's intention is to rattle off something he couldn't possibly know without having a personal connection to Reginald. After all, the Hargreeves patriarch forced each of his children to learn the Odyssey when they were young. And while Five fails in his overt objective as Reginald hasn't actually taught any children yet, the line is meaningful all the same.

"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story" is merely Homer's way of opening his story. He invokes the muses, the Ancient Greek goddesses of (among other things) poetry, verse and storytelling. But in this case, it's personally meaningful for Five, as he is literally trying to have this line tell his life's story, the story "of that man, skilled in all way of contending." In the original text, this line refers to Odysseus, one of the foremost generals of the Trojan War, coming off of his great victory against the Trojans and attempting to sail home. But in this case, it can just as easily refer to Five -- an assassin who's hardly ever defeated in single combat at any point in the show. One of the character's earliest scenes is even him killing an entire squad of Commission enforcers.

And while it could refer to Five, it can also be applied to Reginald. There's only one instance of Reginald fighting in the show, but it involves him easily dispatching Diego, who made a point of being a superpowered vigilante for years. Beyond that, Hargreeves is definitely someone for whom "skilled in all ways" applies to -- he plays the role of a high-society polymath, as at ease reciting Greek poetry as he is hosting a high-society party or stabbing someone in the gut.

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Reginald from The Umbrella Academy

And then there's the final part of the line: "the wanderer, harried for years on end." This is at its core a line that perfectly describes Five. His journey throughout the years has been about his own wandering throughout both space and time as he tries to reunite himself with his quarrelsome family. And even once he does make his way back, he struggles to make sure they can live in peace without the world ending. Unlike the rest of the line, it doesn't seem like it would apply to Reginald. He hardly seems to be someone who is defined by traveling, but a twist later in the season made things more clear.

The second-to-last episode of Season 2 sees Reginald Hargreeves reveal that he's an alien. One of the other members of his shadow government organization comments he has "interests on the dark side of the moon," and the end of the scene culminates in Hargreeves peeling off a rubbery mask he uses to hide his alien form. This was an element of Hargreeves' character that wasn't hidden at all in the comics but hadn't made the transition to the show -- until now. An alien from a faraway planet is certainly someone who could be described as "the wanderer, harried for years on end." So while Five's recitation of Homer seems like a throwaway line at the moment, it's in fact a powerful summation of what makes the time-traveling assassin and his father so similar.

Streaming now on Netflix, The Umbrella Academy Season 2 stars Ellen Page, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher and Justin H. Min, with Ritu Arya, Yusuf Gatewood, Marin Ireland, Jordan Claire Robbins, Kate Walsh and Colm Feore.

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