Notice: Spoilers ahead for the series finale The Umbrella Academy.
How do you end a series that has jumped multiple timelines, killed and resurrected all of its main characters more than once, and ended the world at least three times? Well, you do it all again.
Netflix The Umbrella Academy, loosely adapted from My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way’s comic book series of the same name, debuted in 2019 to critical and fan acclaim, introducing the world to the Hargreeves clan, the classic definition of a dysfunctional family. It immediately launched thousands of threads on Reddit as its plot was filled with dissections. The show opened with the intriguing premise detailed in the opening narration: “At 12 noon on the first day of October 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth. This was unusual only in that none of these women were pregnant when the day began.”
The show follows seven of these children after they were adopted by an eccentric billionaire and turned into a super-powered group of crime-fighting youngsters known as The Umbrella Academy.. As the children reach adulthood, with their older peers played by Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, Robert Sheehan, Emmy Raver-Lampman, David Castañeda, Aidan Gallagher and Justin H. Min, the trauma of their strange childhood causes a break. But when an imminent apocalypse threatens to collapse the universe as they know it, they are forced to come together again 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 its last release. That first initial apocalypse turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg, and with its explosive finale, viewers ended a series that evolved into a time-hopping, parallel-universe-hopping web of paradoxical chaos.
At the end of Season 3, the Hargreeves landed in yet another timeline, but now without their powers. Despite the reluctant hope of finally being able to live a normal life, there simply remained 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 late wife, Abigail, was apparently alive and well? With four fewer episodes to work with than previous seasons, here’s how season 4 of The Umbrella Academy managed to tie everything together.
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All is not well in this new timeline
When we rejoin the Hargreeves at the start of the new season, they’re moving forward in their new super-powered lives (with varying degrees of happiness about it all). But although all traces of their past lives have been erased from existence, the ripples of their former selves are felt and exposed thanks to a new enemy: the Guardians.
Led by Gene (Nick Offerman) and Jean (Megan Mullally), the Guardians believe in the “Umbrella Effect,” which has fractured the universe into multiple timelines that occasionally intermingle and create temporal paradoxes. They then present the idea of “the Cleansing,” which will cleanse everything and restore the only true and correct timeline. Keep this one in your bag for later.
The mystery surrounding Ben’s death and the “Jennifer Incident” has finally been explained
Viktor (Elliot Page) is kidnapped by a mysterious new character named Sy (David Cross) as a way to convince the gang to help find his daughter, Jennifer (alarm bells should be ringing now!), who he believes is being held hostage by the Guardians. In the trunk of Jennifer’s car, Viktor found a box of timeline artifacts, including a pot of marigold, the glowing substance that initially gave the Umbrella Academy its powers.
After Ben (Justin H. Min) spikes the brothers’ drinks that night with Marigold, the once-again super-powered gang heads to a small town where they believe Jennifer is being held. When Ben meets a diner owner, Rosie, the entire population begins to turn against them, and it is revealed that the entire town is a Truman Showstyle orchestration built around the protection of Rosie, whose real name is Jennifer (Victoria Sawal).
When it comes to Ben’s original death, everything is shrouded in mystery. But it is revealed that Reginald shot Ben and Jennifer and erased it from the brothers’ memories. The “Jennifer Incident” refers to a mission in which the gang was instructed to blow 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 with the justification that doing so 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 to the point of fracturing the universe into a million strands, is still alive. She reveals to the brothers that she created Marigold, the source of all existence, but, as 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 it, or else the end of the world is imminent. The problem is that Ben has approached Jennifer several times and is currently hiding in a motel with her on the run.
Fives in different area codes (and timelines!)
‘Cause there’s nothing linear about The Umbrella AcademyWhile all this is going on, Cinco (Aidan Gallagher) and Lila (Ritu Arya), Diego’s (David Castañeda) wife with similar superpowers, find themselves trapped in a subway system that takes them to alternate versions of the same moment in time. . Although they’ve barely spent an hour in their world, the pair end up riding the rails for seven years just trying to find their way home. Eventually they do, but things get complicated down there and the lines get blurred, so Five ends up going back underground to decompress.
There, he finds a deli full of alternate Fives from alternate timelines. One of them reveals that there should only be one timeline, and until the Cleansing happens, the endless cycle of fractured apocalypses will continue to spread (turns out they’ve already tried to save the world 140,000 times!). The brothers’ birth is what caused the initial fracture, so the only way to ensure the world restores itself is to erase themselves from the map of the universe completely.
What happens at the end of season 4?
We have reached episode 6 of the final season of The Umbrella Academy with an uncomfortable but obvious truth: the only way this series would end is if the brothers had never existed.
After staying at the motel, Ben and Jennifer experience the worst case of post-coital regret ever when they break out in bulbous, pulsing, glowing rashes. They are trapped in an abandoned department store as many different Guardian factions mobilize around them to begin the Cleanse. The pair continue to transform and warp into monstrous creatures, as the brothers try to find a way to save them from being killed by Reginald and the Guardians.
Outside, it is revealed that Sy was actually Abigail in an extremely realistic disguise made from her own skin (think Buffalo Bill’s fur costume from Silence of the innocents but with a much cleaner removal process). She later adopts Gene’s body as a way to hurry in the face of pressure from the Keepers. Abigail wanted to bring about the Purification as final penance for the creation of Marigold and Durango and eliminate everything from existence forever.
Although the brothers do everything in their power to try to save Ben and Jennifer from transforming further, the two merge when Ben is hit by a sniper shot orchestrated by Reginald. Together, they evolve into something even more bestial, an ever-expanding bubble of destruction that causes Weird stuff‘ Vecna looks like a puppy.
The brothers learn from Five that the only way to rid the world of an endless series of alternate timelines filled with apocalypses and destruction is to destroy every remaining Marigold in the universe. This means sacrificing yourself, as they are the ones incubating it. It’s not an easy decision, as both Lila and Diego and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) have families in this timeline that they will have to say goodbye to. The plan is to get their families into the subway, which will take them to the one true timeline once they allow themselves to merge with Jennifer and Ben’s Durango and perform the Cleanse. There, they will be safe.
The six remaining siblings and Lila form a circle and strengthen the Marigold within them. The colossal evolution of Ben and Jennifer bursts through the house and envelops them, encompassing them from the beginning. The group joins hands and says a final goodbye. Through tears, Klaus (Robert Sheehan) says, “I love you, but you’re all idiots,” as everyone laughs at the universe.
The screen cuts to this exact day in 2024. Everyone we’ve seen throughout the series – from Kate Walsh’s icy Handler to Cameron Britton’s Commission assassin Hazel – is seen living happy, ordinary lives in an almost parodic bliss. As soon as the series began, Reginald’s narration exploded, saying: “At 12 hours on the eighth day of August 2024, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened. You can tell it was just a normal day.”
She The Umbrella Academy ends, five years after it originally appeared – although, in the world of the series, there are millions of years intertwined in that time. It’s poignant that the only way the series can exist is if it completely erases itself at the end, a fitting paradox that only this show showcases. could be work. The series begins with six brothers separated from each other’s lives, reluctantly forced to try to heal wounds that were never their fault, and ends with them all together, united by their love for each other and the world they chose to sacrifice themselves for. . It might be the saddest happy ending ever.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
