Warning: Spoilers for the series finale of The Umbrella Academy.
How do you end a series that has jumped between multiple timelines, killed and resurrected all the main characters more than once, and destroyed the world at least three times? Well, you do it all again.
Netflix The Umbrella Academyloosely adapted from the comic book series of the same name by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way, premiered in 2019 to critical acclaim from critics and fans alike. It introduced the world to the Hargreeves clan, the textbook definition of a dysfunctional family. It immediately sparked thousands of Reddit threads as its plot inspired analysis. The show began with the intriguing premise, detailed in the opening commentary: “In the 12th hour of October first, 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth. This was unusual only in that none of these women were pregnant at the start of the day.”
The series follows seven of these children after they are adopted by an eccentric billionaire and transformed into a superpowered group of crime-fighting teenagers known as The Umbrella Academy.. As the children grow up (their older counterparts are played by Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, Robert Sheehan, Emmy Raver-Lampman, David Castañeda, Aidan Gallagher and Justin H. Min), the trauma of their strange childhoods causes a rift. But when an impending apocalypse threatens to bring down the universe as they know it, they are forced to come back together to save the world one last time. Or so they thought.
The fourth and final season has finally arrived on the streamer, two years after it last aired. The first apocalypse was just the tip of the iceberg, and the explosive finale gave viewers closure to a series that had evolved into a time- and parallel-universe-hopping, paradoxical web of chaos.
By the end of season three, the Hargreeves had landed in yet another timeline, but now without their powers. Despite the tentative hope of finally being able to live a normal life, there were just too many unanswered questions. How did their brother Ben die? What is the “Jennifer Incident”? And what would happen now that Reginald had created a world where his dead wife Abigail was seemingly alive and well? With four fewer episodes than previous seasons, here’s how season 4 of The Umbrella Academy managed to put it all together.
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Not everything is OK in this new timeline
When we rejoin the Hargreeves at the start of the new season, they’re chugging along in their new lives without superpowers (and with varying degrees of happiness along the way). But while every trace of their previous lives has been erased, the effects of their past versions are palpable and exposed thanks to a new enemy: the Keepers.
Led by Gene (Nick Offerman) and Jean (Megan Mullally), the Keepers believe in the “Umbrella Effect,” which has divided the universe into multiple timelines that occasionally merge into one another, creating temporal paradoxes. They then introduce the idea of the “Purge,” which will wipe out everything and restore the one true timeline. Keep that idea in your suitcase for later.
The mystery surrounding Ben’s death and the “Jennifer incident” is finally solved
Viktor (Elliot Page) is kidnapped by a mysterious new character named Sy (David Cross) in an attempt to get the gang to help him find his daughter Jennifer (now alarm bells should be ringing!), who he believes is being held hostage by the Keepers. In the trunk of Jennifer’s car, Viktor found a box of timeline artifacts, including a jar of Marigold, the glowing substance that originally gave the Umbrella Academy their powers.
After Ben (Justin H. Min) spikes the siblings’ drinks with Marigold that evening, the gang, once again equipped with superpowers, heads to a small town where they believe Jennifer is being held captive. When Ben meets the owner of a diner, Rosie, the entire population turns against them and it turns out that the whole town is a The Truman Show-like orchestration that revolves around the protection of Rosie, whose real name is Jennifer (Victoria Sawal).
As for Ben’s original death, everything is shrouded in mystery. But it is revealed that Reginald shot Ben and Jennifer and erased it from the siblings’ memories. The “Jennifer Incident” refers to a mission where the gang was tasked with blowing up a container with a girl trapped inside. But after Ben opened it to free who we now know to be Jennifer, they were both killed on the grounds that this would somehow save the world.
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Marigold has a more dangerous counterpart
In this new timeline, Reginald’s late wife Abigail, whom he mourned so much that he shattered the universe into millions of pieces, is still alive. She reveals to the siblings that she created Marigold, the source of all being, but since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, another substance was born at the same time – Durango.
While the Umbrella Academy was infected with Marigold, Jennifer was infected with Durango, and it is imperative that neither of them touch each other or the end of the world will loom. The problem is that Ben has already made advances to Jennifer several times and is currently holed up with her in a motel on the run.
Fives in different area codes (and timelines!)
Because nothing is linear The Umbrella AcademyWhile all this is happening, Five (Aidan Gallagher) and Lila (Ritu Arya), Diego’s (David Castañeda) wife with equally powerful superpowers, are trapped on a subway train that takes them to other versions of the same moment. Despite being barely an hour away in their world, the two ride the train for seven years just to find a way home. Eventually they succeed, but it’s chaotic down there and the boundaries are blurred, so Five goes back underground to relax.
There, he encounters a deli full of alternate fivesomes from alternate timelines. One of them reveals that there is only supposed to be one timeline, and that the never-ending cycle of splitting apocalypses will continue to spread until the Purge (it turns out they’ve already tried to save the world 140,000 times!). The birth of the siblings caused the first rupture, so the only way to restore the world is to completely erase themselves from the map of the universe.
What happens at the end of season 4?
We reach episode 6 of the final season of The Umbrella Academy with an uncomfortable but obvious truth: This series can only end if the siblings had never existed.
After sleeping together at the motel, Ben and Jennifer experience the worst case of post-coital regret ever when they begin to break out in lumpy, pulsating, glowing rashes. They are herded into an abandoned department store as the many different factions of the Keepers gather around them to do the cleanup. The pair continue to morph and deform into monstrous creatures as the siblings try to find a way to save them from death at the hands of Reginald and the Keepers.
Outside, it turns out that Sy was actually Abigail, in a very realistic disguise made of his own skin (think of Buffalo Bill’s skin suit from silence of the Lambs but with a much cleaner removal process). She later adopts Gene’s body to speed up the Keeper’s pressure. Abigail wanted to perform the purge as a final penance for creating Marigold and Durango and erase everything forever.
Although the siblings do everything in their power to prevent Ben and Jennifer from transforming again, the two merge when Ben is hit by a sniper shot orchestrated by Reginald. Together they evolve into something even more bestial, an ever-growing blob of destruction that Stranger Things“Vecna looks like a puppy.
The siblings learn from Number 5 that the only way to free the world from an endless series of alternate timelines filled with apocalypses and destruction is to destroy all the Marigolds left in the universe. This means they must sacrifice themselves, as they are the ones hatching them. It’s not an easy decision, as both Lila and Diego and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) have families in this timeline that they must say goodbye to. The plan is to take their families to the Underground, which will take them to the one true timeline once they merge with Jennifer and Ben’s Durango and bring about the Purification. There they will be safe.
The remaining six siblings and Lila form a circle and strengthen the Marigold within them. Ben and Jennifer’s colossal evolution breaks through the house, enveloping them and taking them over from the ground up. The group holds hands and says goodbye one last time. Klaus (Robert Sheehan) tearfully says, “I love you, but you’re all assholes,” while they all laugh their heads off.
The screen cuts to that exact day in 2024. Everyone we’ve seen in the series – from Kate Walsh’s cold Handler to Cameron Britton’s assassin Hazel – is living happy, normal lives in almost parodic bliss. Right at the start of the series, Reginald’s voice booms out, saying, “Absolutely nothing unusual happened in the 12th hour of August 8, 2024. You could say it was just a normal day.”
And there The Umbrella Academy ends, five years after its first outbreak – although in the world of the series, millions of years are woven into that time. It is poignant that the series can only exist if it completely erases itself at the end, a fitting paradox that only this show could work. The series begins with six estranged siblings, reluctantly trying to heal wounds that were never their fault, and ends with them all united, bound by love for each other and the world they chose to sacrifice themselves for. It might be the saddest happy ending ever.
