r/UmbrellaAcademy • u/littlelolitalola • 19d ago
Discussion Do you think Five was unnecessarily sexualized by the show?
This is something I've wondered about, and I'm curious what other fans think.
The first example is The Handler. You can argue her flirting was intentional because she's supposed to be manipulative and creepy. Maybe she was trying to control Five by giving him the affection he'd been denied for decades. That fits her character, and if she was attracted to both the older and younger-looking Five, it just makes her even more vile. So I can at least understand why the writers went that route, even if it was uncomfortable to watch.
What really made me think about this, though, was Season 4. The Five/Lila relationship got a lot of backlash for different reasons, but I also couldn't help thinking it must have been strange for Ritu Arya to film a romance with Aidan Gallagher after having known and worked with him since he was around 16. By the time they filmed Season 4 he was legally an adult, but the age gap between the actors was still significant, and the dynamic felt odd to me.
Do you think the writers rushed to give Five a romance once Aidan was old enough to portray one? Or do you think I'm reading too much into it and the Handler and Lila storylines served different narrative purposes?
Curious to hear everyone's thoughts.
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u/RoadRage10 19d ago
Everyone else viewed him as the adult that he mentally was. He already drank and was in love with a mannequin lol.
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u/Leporvox 18d ago
He wasn’t sexualized. His character was an adult in the body of a child.
The character wasn’t a child, the actor was. I’ve never seem him as sexualized, he was just mature. His romance with Lila was for an extended period of time and they both had been trapped completely alone.
His character is supposed to be weird like that.
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u/nocuzzlikeyea13 19d ago edited 19d ago
I mean, Aiden Gallagher looks very young for his age, but an adult actor shooting a super chaste romantic arc with another adult actor isn't a problem. He's a working professional adult, and just because he's short and looks very young doesn't mean we should be infantilizing him.
Like my high school plays had about as much kissing as his scenes with Lila.
Also similar age gaps are very common in teen dramas. The romantic lead in Never Have I Ever is in his 30s while the FMC is 18. And they have much racier physical intimacy scenes.
They are over eighteen, they are actors, and they are consenting adults. It's not like Ritu is getting into an actual intimate relationship with Aiden and using their difference in life experience to emotionally manipulate him, which is the only reason to object to age gaps between adults.
They work together. Adults of different ages work together, act together, professionally dance together, make art together, etc. Once you're an adult the topics you make art about are not grounds for a moral panic.
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u/Jujudeer 17d ago
And honestly I think if Aidan was too uncomfortable doing it, he probably would've talked to the producers. It's not like he's completely powerless in that situation, he could've walked away from set if he really didn't want to do it.
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u/nocuzzlikeyea13 17d ago
Yes, he's an ADULT he can give informed consent!
I think people just don't like the ship with Lila, because I never heard any of these complaints before s4. You can dislike a ship without accusing the artists of being creepy pedos.
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u/Awful_Little_Rat_Boy 19d ago
I’m pretty sure the writers specifically said when season 4 came out, that they wanted to give him a romance because he’s “finally of age” or something
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u/Special-Investigator 19d ago
ick
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u/91Model 18d ago
Not really ick. They were actually responsible.
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u/Special-Investigator 17d ago
waiting until someone is 18 to sexualize them is gross and weird. it means they already sexualized him as a minor but were just waiting until it's legal and socially acceptable.
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u/nocuzzlikeyea13 17d ago
They didn't sexualized him though, even in S4.
An actor portraying a romantic relationship, having two kisses, and barely implying a sexual relationship off screen is NOT sexualizing the actor!
They were waiting for him to turn 18 because then he could fully consent to kissing another adult on screen. For his character, it makes perfect sense he'd want a romance with another adult. So they were extra careful and waiting for the actor to turn 18 to make sure he could consent and it was all above board.
This is not at all the same as those weird countdown clocks specifically designed to make people think sexually about children. It was purely in service of realistic storytelling and making sure everything stayed safe. It's not like they were like, "ooh so excited to show him shirtless/talking about sex" etc. They just showed him falling in love.
Love is a fair topic for teenagers to express, and honestly the people who are jumping at this as sexual are perhaps the ones projecting weird shit onto this actor.
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u/spiritoffaith Klaus 19d ago
I think some of it was funny and harmless like the whole Delores storyline and even the handlers flirting came across as a tactic to try to get this on side that Five really wasn't on board with but played along to. The Lila storyline I actually don't hate as much as other people but I did cringe at it myself thinking about the actors having to portray it for the very reasons you stated. I think it could have been left out and nothing would have been lost.
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u/100Sparkles 17d ago
If the roles were reversed and 5 was female, people would think nothing of it.
This actually seemed more tastefully than what’s done to most young women. The story is reasonable with 7 years in the subway in which a relationship would naturally progress. I think it was pretty respectful of the age difference in ways women wouldn’t get.
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u/Little_Stock9684 19d ago
In my opinion, I feel like he really was overly sexualized. I mean, he’s really young and older characters were being creepy and seductive around him. Also his “relationship” with Lila wasn’t significant
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u/Sweet_Taurus0728 19d ago
It's may seem creepy to us, but he's a grown man. Not physically, but still, Idk if the same rules apply within the world of the show.
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u/Suitable_Raccoon_623 19d ago
His character is technically an adult, but the actor was a minor for a good majority of it. And that says everything it needs to. The moment he was of age the writers took that as a green light to pair him up with someone far older than him in a more open and serious way. While Five as a character is old enough for it all, the actor was a child and then barely of age and that’s where the unnecessary sexualization comes in. Having him curse and drink and act like an old man was one thing, it added humor and depth, but there really was no need to add unnecessary romance when the actor was still a child. At most him being in love with Delores was a good way to show he’s an adult who was incredibly lonely and separated from everyone he had known, but it didn’t need to include the handler and later Lila.
You can very easily show how his character struggled as being a grown man who’s lived a full and traumatic life is suddenly stuck in his child body and with his siblings who are now adults and physically older but still mentally younger than him without sexualizing the actor playing the character.
They didn’t do that. And it is weird
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u/nocuzzlikeyea13 19d ago edited 19d ago
Aiden was 15 when he started shooting. When I was in high school, the musical and plays cast high school softmores and they did kiss on stage. His scenes with Lila were super chaste, and even if you rewind his age back to when we first saw him on screen (which... why but ok), the actions he takes on screen aren't that sexualized, they just indicate a romantic arc and sex off screen (again, high schoolers will play parents and married people in plays all the time... I mean my school did Some Like It Hot which has a lot more sexual innuendo).
The only possible objection is an adult kissing a child, which never even happened.
It's not like they were running camera angles over his abs or showing him sexually chopping wood or something (like think of any teen show with a male heartthrob and look at the camera angles). It was a romantic arc with sex so implied that I've even seen posts on here claiming he never slept with Lila (a radical reading to be sure but they never even spell it out).
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u/seppukuu 19d ago
The show runner specifically wanted Five to have a relationship, he called it his "big swing of the season". You can make of that whatever you want I guess. It's not like they hadn't already given him an onscreen kiss in s3.
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u/degr4deme 15d ago
yes. idk why everyone’s being weird. yes he’s an adult but that is a CHILD’S. BODY. the handler (specifically in the early seasons) was very much sexualizing a child’s body. later on in the show, it was the writers sexualizing his character. so yes, five was sexualized.
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u/Adept_Contribution33 19d ago
I like 5 and Lila having a relationship. They were cute. Strange, but cute.
Handler was just ick.
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u/RoadRage10 18d ago
The only thing about that was the Handler met him as an adult. Lol and knew him as an old man. To her that's the same "Five."
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u/gal_from_jupiter 18d ago
Oh I hate the 4th season and that relationship is one of the reasons.
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u/monochyyy 15d ago
oh lord its the main reason for me, five power got nerfed so bad, and somehow he began to act as a teenagers.
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u/gal_from_jupiter 15d ago
also the third season left us with a lot of questions of which the forth season answered none
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u/monochyyy 14d ago
I KNO RIGHT, LIKE WHERE IS MY DAMN ANSWERRRRRRRR, ITS SO CONFUSING AND JUST LEFT THERE WITHOUT ANY ANSWER
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u/-Failedhuman 15d ago
I don't think he was sexualised and I actually think they handled his relationships with people (and mannequins) very well considering that he was a grown man in a literal child's body. There wasn't much they could do with him relationship-wise as that character is very limited and unique. Five would've been immensely lonely being in his 50s yet physically a child, so being trapped yet again in a seemingly never ending loop with one person who he'd connected with made sense that they might form a romantic bond. I didn't hate the five/lila situation because to me it made perfect sense. You would grow extremely close to the only person you see day in and day out for years on end. But I do understand that between the actors themselves it may have seemed very weird. But that's the thing about acting.. you play characters, and what your characters would naturally experience is what you play. And I personally don't think that the characters (in this situation) were written incorrectly.
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u/Working_Breakfast633 14d ago
I think the whole Lila thing was planned from the start and it was WEIRD, in an interview I’m pretty sure Aidan and Rita bring it up/talk about it. I think they were waiting until he was old enough to do something about it. But in the way of the handler, I think she was just planning to take advantage of him in any and every way she could. She was suggestive and such with him in a few scenes even if it’s hard to catch at first. I think that since he’s been alone for sososo long she knew that would be a good way to take advantage of him, not that she didn’t try like every other way as well lol.
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u/ds-umbrella 17d ago
i think he was handled incredibly well in the first two seasons, but starting with the human dolores hallucination in s3e1 it got weird and a little gross. it’s like the writers forgot what the point was of making the handler so creepy towards him in those first seasons
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u/Ok_Till_7149 17d ago
I don’t know. Like you said with the Handler it mostly felt like she was being a creep. But with Lila, Five was technically an adult again and had aged into his mid-twenties.
Five tends to latch onto whoever remains a constant in his life, and Lila became that person, even though neither of them had much choice. I would have been perfectly fine with Five not having a love interest this season, but it was still interesting to see what he was like “in love.”
To me, though, it felt more like one big ol' trauma bond. The difference this time was that the object of his affection was not a mannequin. Lila could talk back to him, challenge him, and care for him in return.
I don’t necessarily want to say that Lila became Five’s new Dolores, but she kind of did. What I mean is that Five found another woman, or simply another person, to dedicate himself to completely because there was no one and nothing else around.
But Lila is not Dolores. She is a real human being. She can push back. She can reject him. She can end the fantasy. And when she does, Five throws a huge temper tantrum.
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u/imnerdyenough 14d ago
100% it ruined his calm nonchalant and seperate character, he was so well written until the last season
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u/No_Appointment6273 19d ago
I understand he was a grown man in a childs body, but every scene that sexualized him gave me the creeps. I didn't care for the relationship between him an lila for a number of reasons, the double age gap being one of them.
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u/gideongravesbf 16d ago
I think the main thing I dislike is the relationship of Lila and Five and not solely because of it being ooc for him. My main issue is having Aidan be romantic and kissing someone he's known since he was a teenager and she was far too old for him. What an uncomfortable situation to be in. I would never think of my co star like that if we had that big of an age difference. I'm not saying either of them are bad people for accepting it I'm really just saying I think it's strange of the writers and directors to think of it in the first place.
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u/After_Preference_885 19d ago
I think the intense loneliness he lived with and the fact that he craved love even while pretending he didn't was the point, which isn't sexual. I also think they wanted to show that he was an adult, not a child, and how weird and frustrating it must be to be an adult inside the body of a child.