The Umbrella Academy: Klaus Hargreeves (ENTP)

Ne:

“What’s our cover story? … I mean was I really young when I had you, like 16, like young and terribly misguided. Your mother…whoever she was. We met at… The disco.”

Easily distractible and always quick with something to say, Klaus is the quintessential Ne dominant. No matter the situation, he never fails to riff off of what his other siblings are saying, whether that be turning it into a joke or making some kind of semi-related sarcastic remark. Unfortunately, this is precisely the reason none of his siblings take him seriously.

Klaus is very good at coming up with things on the fly. A good example of this is when Klaus and Five need to come up with some kind of story about their relationship before going into the place that manufactured the false eye. He immediately starts to fabricate a story about how he is Five’s father, and starts rambling about how he was born, his mother, and etc. When inside, it’s Klaus’ quick thinking that gets them the information that they need.

His Ne is also pretty prevalent when he is kidnapped by Hazel and Cha Cha. He can’t help but make a bunch of snarky remarks to them as they are trying to probe him for information. Even though he would have been better saying as little as possible, Klaus can’t help himself and keeps rambling on and on until they finally duct tape his mouth shut.

Luther further confirms Klaus’ carefree nature when comparing himself to Klaus. Luther states how Klaus has always been so carefree and not afraid to do whatever he wants, expressing a desire to be more like him.

Ti:

“Cult is a very negative word, Allison. We prefer to call it an alternative spiritual community.”

Klaus’ internal world appears to be driven by Ti. While many of his siblings tend to get caught up in their past trauma from being raised by Reginald Hargreeves, Klaus does not appear to. He readily admits to the past, and makes the occasional snarky comment about their father or their messed up childhood, but he doesn’t appear to respond emotionally to it or dwell much on it. As a general rule, he tends to easily admit to the cold, hard truth of a situation (typically in a flippant, nonchalant way), even though he often doesn’t possess enough fortitude of character to drive him into taking the correct action. He is the only one that laughs when Diego made scathing comments about their father at the funeral, although he does not make any comments himself at the time.

Klaus lives life on his own terms, demonstrating an individualistic personality. He does whatever he wants, or whatever makes sense to him, occasionally twisting logic to rationalize what he’s doing or to re-frame the situation. He struggles to connect with others on an emotional level (and doesn’t really desire to do so anyway.) Although he starts a cult while stuck in the past and initially revels in their devotion, he eventually grows weary of it. After a while, he’s shown constantly trying to duck around his followers, and hide from his ever-growing popularity.

Fe:

“I feel like we should try and stop him, but then again I also just kinda want to see what happens.”

While Klaus isn’t one to often show sincere emotion, he is often shown attempting to use charm, or smooth-talking as a way to get out of a messy situation. He excels at dramatizing a situation, using emotional manipulation, or hiding behind fake emotion, if it’ll get him something he wants. We see some of this in his threats to the doctor while working with Number 5 to figure out the origin of the prosthetic eye. As mentioned in the Ti section, he enjoys the devotion/emotional feedback he gets from his followers, but only to a certain extent. However, his Fe prowess is demonstrated in his ability to gain a cult following. In fact, their devotion to him is so strong that he’s unable to convince them that he is a fraud later.

Klaus does care for his family, and demonstrates this when the situation is serious enough. When Luther is struggling with having learned that his mission to the moon was pointless, Klaus tries to console him, and prevent him from doing something he’ll regret (with the encouragement of Ben). He also tries to console Allison when she is struggling with her relationship with her husband. Granted, the consoling amounted to an incoherent metaphor and suggesting they drink alcohol. He also has a brief heart-to-heart with Diego, sharing in how they both had lost the person that they had loved.

Si:

“All I do is watch you make the same mistakes over and over and over and over and over again.” – Ben to Klaus

Klaus is the master of avoidance and procrastination, which is rooted in his unhealthy inferior Si. Avoidance is the main reason he turned to drugs, as he does not want to deal with the various ghosts that he typically sees when sober. He would rather live in a state of intoxicated stupor than deal with reality. Overall, his use of Si is relatively weak or unhealthy when it manifests. Other examples of his Si use are instances like when he uses song lyrics from modern music as insightful pieces of wisdom for his followers. Also, the amount of details he produces when coming up with for the fake story when with Five demonstrates his Si.

One of the most prevalent examples of his inferior Si would be his poorly thought out plan to convince Dave not to join the army. Klaus doesn’t really have much in the way of a plan to convince Dave. He intends to just tell him that war is terrible and that he shouldn’t enlist, figuring that will be enough to convince him. He uses his future knowledge and the details Dave had shared with him in the future in a clumsy way, failing to be convincing and instead causing himself to come off as creepy more than anything else. He also fails to realize that Dave is with his uncle at the time, which makes it a less than opportune moment to be trying to persuade him. In fact, his actions end up directly leading to Dave’s enlistment.