I can accept a lot of explanations for a lot of things but the cluelessness of the kids is puzzling. They know a lot of not normal stuff is in their lives and even the dumb ones haven’t shown enough curiosity about it.
Don’t forget the violin, which Reg later gives to Vanya. Why would an alien have a human violin?
I must have missed the body-double part. When did that happen? Are you referring to his full-body disguise as a “body double”? That’s not what a body double is.
The guy with the umbrella on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza was a Reginald Hargreeves lookalike.
By the way, does anyone else have the tendency to want to spell it “Hargreaves”?
Oh, right. And he certainly held up to close scrutiny, didn’t he?
Who says it was his first visit to Earth?
No one. Why did you bring it up?
The question is why would an alien would have a human violin not how would an alien have a human violin.
It actually makes sense that it wasn’t. It seems pretty likely he scouted before sending his “seeds” out. Maybe he met his wife there and brought her home with him. It would explain keeping his human form around her.
Or if it was a really long time ago, maybe Reg “invented” the violin on Earth.
A basic principle of fantasy is that you can set up any rules you like but you need to then keep them. This is like that. Fine that an alien looks human and has a violin - convergent evolution biologically and culturally, what evs. But if the alien is humanoid you don’t change it on a whim like a new writer didn’t know they showed a true humanoid form.
Also unimpressed with how time travel alters things. Worse than timey-whimy. Could have made sense to have paradox bootstrapped that Reg knew the kids were destined to prevent an apocalypse but not what or how because they told him he raised them to do that before they were born. But instead it’s a different or altered timeline and the how he knew is just ignored.
Show is fine. Characters written well and some given decent growth arcs. But not good enough that it’s huge lapses can just be handwaved away.
Having read the comics, I see this as more of a freewheeling pulp fantasy action. It’s about the crazy situations and the interactions of the quirky characters. The comics didn’t define any rules of the world, just went with whatever is fun, including superpowers that don’t follow any consistent rules.
The show takes that but adds human drama. It does an excellent job showing human interactions and emotions and the impact of emotional abuse. It’s not a world building story and I see no need for it to be one. So long as it gives me drama crossed with entertainment I’m happy and I consider it to be one of the best fantasy shows on television in recent history.
And quite a few people agree with you. I agree that it is fun.
Because it was in context of a discussion about whether that scene show he was an alien or a human. “Why would an alien have a musical instrument” is not a meaningful question.
Also, in my dialect of English, “Why?” and “How” aren’t quite as distinct questions as in yours, it seems.
Same reasons anyone else would have a violin. To play music, as an aesthetic prop, to pick up chicks, to perform cons, or to have an excuse to carry a Tommy gun.
That’s a good one…except for her turning into the jar of fireflies.
But I rewatched the scene and it’s quite clear the violin is hers. So maybe Abigail is human and he turned her into the jar of fireflies himself.
Watched a bit more, and i was wrong that she turned into the fireflies, they were there all along. So possibly alternate Earth. But not future, because of “Long ago…”
Also noticed that he said something about “bought something special for the occasion” when she said he looked dapper. Of course, the assumption is that she meant his clothes. But maybe she meant his Reggie-suit.
Also, Liisa Repo-Martell is not, in fact, an old woman. Only reason I can think of is that they intend to use her again, unaged.
Just noticed another bit in Season 1, Episode 5: In the scene in which Five confronts Hazel and Cha-Cha on the open road and is interrupted by the Handler. When Klaus drives by in the ice cream truck: Does it look like Ben is steering the truck?
Just finished Season 2 (actually just binged both season in the last couple weeks) and it was really, really fun! I quickly read through the comments and I agree that it’s a fun pulpy sort of fantasy shows that really doesn’t care to explain the time travel in all that much detail. It’s a good thing that it’s on Netflix, because when you binge, it doesn’t really matter that much. If it was a weekly show that sort of thing would be nitpicked to death though.
Okay, I get that there’s some consternation that Reggie is alien enough to shapeshift and do…whatever he did to the Guild’s Council of Thirteen, and yet humanoid enough to not have his appearance raise any red flags to Quincy when he performed the autopsy.
But the thought occurs to me that the Council’s screams were a lot like the screams of the Red Army when Ghost Ben/the Horror was tossing them around. It makes me wonder what an autopsy of Ben’s body would have looked like. if normal, there’s no reason for Reginald’s autopsy to have looked out of the ordinary.
So you’re saying that the screams of people being torn apart sounded the same? Weird; that. 
We don’t see Reg change his form, tho; we see him remove a suit, which reveals that his form is not human.
Exactly. Not shapeshifting, taking off a human costume.
@MrDibble’s fanwank that he was dressed up as a human as special spiffy thing as his (possibly human) beloved was dying on a planet long ago is the best version so far.
The autopsy report not documenting his alienness is trivial to explain as its being a fiction, part of a cover-up be it governmental, supra-governmental, or just orchestrated by Reg (who still has to really be dead given his meeting Klaus as a dead one) …
Right, Reg doesn’t shapeshift - he clearly pulls off a Mission Impossible-style mask, revealing an inhuman horror underneath, and lays the human mask on the back of a chair.
Extreme fanspec: there was an X-Men character named Husk who shapeshifted by shedding her skin, revealing a new form underneath. I suppose it’s possible that Reg is a shapeshifter with a similar power profile. And that would be consistent with the fact that his eyes, the inside of his mouth, and so forth appear human, even though the “mask” he sheds is just a fake skin. But…