Television is sorely missing superheroes right now. A format that was once dominated by Arrowverse shows like The Flash, Stargirl, Black Lightning, and Supergirl, they've all been snapped away faster than Thanos thanks to hiatus season. We won't be seeing many of these shows again until the fall - or, in some cases, early next year - and it's honestly leaving a void in our hearts.
Thankfully, Netflix recently came to the rescue. Not only by releasing their original superhero movie Project Power, but by releasing the second season of The Umbrella Academy, about a dysfunctional family band of superheroes, helmed by second in command Diego (aka Number Two, or The Kraken). With this being an adaptation of a comic book, there are some stark similarities and differences to how Diego is played in both mediums.
10 Same: Loves Knives
In both the comics and the show, Diego's main power is that of object manipulation, meaning that he can curve or even stop objects while they are thrown in mid-flight. Typically, he manipulates the weapons that he uses, and more often than not, his weapon of choice is a knife.
The ability has helped Diego move quickly in hand to hand combat and has proven a valuable asset in influencing him to perfect his secondary skill of mastering martial arts. When this man has a knife in his hand, no one can stop him.
9 Changed: He Has Another Power
Diego's impressive knife throwing abilities are not his only powers in the comics, even if they are his only powers on the show. A little less impressively, he also has the ability to hold his breath underwater indefinitely. Yeah ... we can totally see why the Netflix producers opted to leave that part of Diego's history out of the show.
Even Reginald Hargreeves was less impressed with Diego's underwater ability. He basically viewed Diego as useless until he started highlighting his skills with knives. In due time, even after viewing Diego as predictably reckless, he viewed Diego as a second in command.
8 Same: Hero Complex
It's no secret that Diego has a bit of a hero complex. It's even bluntly described as such when Diego is psych evaluated in the second season of the show. Diego also feels compelled to launch himself into action at a moment's notice, to the point that long after the Umbrella Academy has already disbanded, years prior to the events of the first season and first issues, Diego begins to moonlight as a bonafide vigilante, a la Batman.
As a reckless hero, Diego is bound to constantly find trouble in hopes of saving someone and feeling important as a hero, much like he did as a superhero child with the team.
7 Changed: Close To Vanya ... Too Close
In the show, Vanya and Diego aren't very close. We can only count on one hand the few times they even share one-on-one scenes and in the first season is visibly angry with her after she recounts her family history in a book.
In the comics, their relationship is a bit more tight knights; maybe too tight. Because they view themselves as outsiders in the family, the two are able to bond to the point that they even start a punk rock band together. Things get a little weird when Diego starts to develop romantic feelings for his adoptive sister.
6 Same: Tension With Luther
Diego and Luther always had a bit of a ... thing, so to speak. Reginald Hargreeves let it be known that Luther was his favorite out of all of the children, mostly by appointing Luther as the leader of the Umbrella Academy and even going as far as to dub him Number One. No matter how hard Diego fought for Hargreeves' affections and no matter how badly he himself wanted to be the leader, he was only ever Number Two; literally.
That bitterness which Diego harbors often sees him butt heads with Luther, usually with them having conflicting ideas on how to lead their siblings, and who should be the one leading.
5 Changed: He's Missing An Eye
One key aspect of Diego's appearance in adulthood during the comics run is that he's missing one of his eyes. It is never explained exactly why or how he lost his eye, but it would be safe to assume that this will be addressed in a later issue of the comics.
The same can be said for the Netflix show, where David Castañeda plays Diego with a perfect pair of eyes. Perhaps this means that Diego is destined to have one of his eyes plugged out in a future episode. Maybe in Season 3?
4 Same: He Tries To Save JFK
During the comic book's "Dallas" arc, Diego, Luther, and Klaus learn that Five goes back in time to 1963 to assassinate John F. Kennedy, unaware that he's doing so to save Luther's life. Ultimately, the trio is motivated by the fact that the present timeline is out of whack and insuring that JFK living might save some things.
In the show, Diego's the only man motivated - practically obsessed - with saving the life of JFK simply because he thinks saving a genuinely good man's life is the right thing to do.
3 Changed: His Role In The First Mission
In the show, it's established that The Umbrella Academy reveal themselves to the world by stopping a bank robbery during their first mission. Everyone on the team - except Vanya, for obvious reasons - chips in and no one really stands out.
Their first mission goes about very differently in the comic books, where their first mission is a bonafide supervillain plot helmed by Zombie-Robot Gustave Eiffel. Everyone does their part in saving the day, but Diego proves an equalizer by killing Gustave by tossing a knife squarely in the middle of his forehead and in turn, sending both him and his disguised spaceship - the Eiffel Tower - into outer space.
2 Same: Daddy Issues
As mentioned earlier, Diego feels a despicable bitterness towards their father for appointing Luther as his Number One over him. As a result, Diego feels no love lost towards Reginald Hargreeves. Such feelings particularly pronounce themselves during the funeral for Hargreeves in both the comics and the show.
In both cases, Diego doesn't care about his father's death and feels no inspiration to investigate it despite his brother Luther's insistence to do so. In fact, Diego goes as far as to say whatever happened to Hargreeves, he deserved to die alone.
1 Changed: Diego Has Love Interests
Besides an urge to date his own adopted sister, Diego does not have any love interests to speak of in the comics. One would think he's one of those vigilantes who doesn't want a lover to distract him from crime-fighting.
This isn't the case in the Netflix series, where he has love interests in both seasons to soften his edges a little bit. In the first season, he has a short-lived foray with Detective Eudora Patch. Then, in the second season, he starts something new with Lila, until he finds out she's the daughter of The Handler.