David Castañeda explains why Diego's powers were changed for The Umbrella Academy on Netflix
5 March 2019, 19:15
In the Umbrella Academy comics, Number Two aka Diego also has the power to hold his breath underwater. Here's why Diego doesn't have that power on the Netflix show.
Netflix's The Umbrella Academy brought to life the story of a dysfunctional family of would-be heroes racing against the clock to stop the apocalypse. Despite their powers, and the unusual events that led to their present circumstances, the family's story feels grounded in far more than their super human abilities. One character whose powers changed from the comics to the TV series was Number Two, aka Diego.
In the comics Diego's powers include both super accurate knife throwing as well as holding his breath underwater. As David Castañeda explains, Umbrella Academy showrunner, Steve Blackman, had a perfectly reasonable explanation for excluding Diego's under water abilities.
Speaking to Digital Spy, Castañeda revealed that Blackman had a specific reason for making his power more realistic.
"[Showrunner Steve Blackman] wanted to ground the comic book even more," he explained. "So for example, Klaus doesn’t levitate in the show, whereas in the comic book he does."
"And there’s something about seeing someone who has actually no real supernatural powers and only being able to throw things with precision that kind of makes people be like, 'Oh, I can see that, I can put that person in real life and I can see it play out as a human being'."
Fascinating! Diego is also known as The Kraken in the comics so a couple of major details were altered.
In a show that is as much about familial dysfunction as it is about powers, giving Diego a more practical ability is, indeed, an interesting way to ground the series. We have to remember that The Umbrella Academy wasn't originally written as a TV series so these small creative changes are often beneficial to the series as a whole.
Between Allison's "rumour" power, Number Five's time jumps, and Vanya's powerful abilities, Diego's knife throwing skills seem delightfully human, don't they?
