Only the Umbrella Academy showrunner knows what the cube is saying

New season The Umbrella Academy Seven new Hargreeves siblings join the fray. The reality of this reality makes it possible to be an alien and a millionaire. Reginald Hargreeves adopted another set of brothers and sisters, then raised them in his superhero family. Called the Sparrow Academy, they have totally different power sets than the Umbrella Academy we know and love, and also seem to get along better — at least well enough to project their outward image of an elite crime-fighting crew.

Christopher, out of all the Sparrows is most notable. Christopher, a new Sparrow named Existential Dread Inducing Pykronium Cube is an animated cube that can alter temperature and incite fear. And he’s treated like any other member of the Sparrow Academy — he hangs out with his siblings, trains with them, and is on all the Sparrow Academy’s promotional posters. Christopher, according to his character bios is the family mediator. He offers advice and support in times of conflict. It is a joy to watch.

He cannot talk and has no mouth because he is cube. Christopher instead speaks telepathically. On screen this usually means that he makes small chittering sounds and characters around him respond to his words as if they understood them. It’s a little bit like R2-D2’s bleeps and bloops in Star Wars, Blue’s little barks in Blue’s CluesBeaker or a mug in The Muppets. As the audience, we have no idea what he’s saying, but the characters clearly do.

Image courtesy of Netflix

But do they really? Actually, showrunner Steven Blackman revealed that Christopher’s lines were never written out.

“But I know what they are,” he explains. “So when the actors are saying like, What’s going on here?They get a feeling of it. We never gave the actors the real lines.”

Christopher was not properly introduced to the Sparrows, even though a floating cube is shown in the panel. However, the production notes for this season reveal that Gerard Way’s version of the character is made up of millions of dead flies (yuck). Blackman, however, opted to make Christopher out of “smooth volcanic rock,” which would mean Christopher is made out of something like obsidian (ba dum tss). Whatever his inner components may be, though, he’s a powerful ally and clearly a supportive sibling.

Season 3 The Umbrella AcademyAvailable on Netflix Now