OOC: Do you think that Grace would try to name Five when he came back? She was programmed to name the kids, but she never got around to him.
This is a very good question, one that I think is tied to a couple more questions, such as: At what point did each Hargreeves child even acquire their name? Do the names have significance? Is it possible that Grace may have already attempted to give Five a name, prior to his leaving?
In Season 1, we see some indication of the children being named even prior to Five’s abrupt departure, like with Allison in the bedtime scene, etc. I believe the consensus is that Mom determined names for her kids in a gradual, staggered fashion (rather than all at once), and that perhaps Five was one of the last to be named (if ever).
My theory is that Grace’s act of naming her children didn’t simply happen as a single action, in which she told them, “you will be known as __” and it was set in stone. I believe naming was a more cooperative effort than that, in which she asked each of her children what they felt would best represent them, and how a name might mean something to them.
My speculation is largely based on the diversity of the Seven’s names. Each known name has different etymology: Luther is Germanic, Diego is Spanish (or even Latin), Allison is French,Klaus potentially German/Scandinavian or Dutch, and Ben is both Jewish/English/Hungarian and (I’m told) a popular name for Japanese children. These aren’t names that were generated in a moment, without meaning… they were evolved from what (I believe) was each child’s personalities and unique history. We know through a flashback that Klaus had an accent when he was younger… could that have been a reflection of who he was? Could it have influenced the name Grace helped him choose for himself?
So what does this mean for Five? Well… A great deal more speculation. I would like to imagine that Grace was trying to uncover Five’s ‘true name’ at the time in which he went missing. I would even hope she’d gone as far as to start that conversation with him. But I have no proof of such a thing. Perhaps he just wasn’t ready for a name yet. Or perhaps Grace had offered Five a name, and he rejected it as a survival tactic during his time in the future. Season 1 of The Umbrella Academy did a woeful job of addressing Five’s return to the house for anyone whom might have been his parental figures (Grace or Pogo), and I can’t recall a single scene where he even acknowledges Mom’s presence in the room. So, again, I can’t be sure without more information – which we may or may not get in Season 2. I guess only time will tell…
I can say one thing. If Grace was not given the opportunity to provide Five with a name before he disappeared, then I absolutely believe that her programming would re-engage when she saw him again (especially looking no older than then day he left) and she would pick right up where she left off. It’s a painful thought, because it might very well give the impression that she was unaware of the many years he’d been gone. But considering how her code had begun to fail her… well…. perhaps that’s not so strange after all…
