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Season 4 of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy wrapped up the story of the Hargreeves siblings. However, the series finale made some creative decisions that left fans scratching their heads and wondering what that controversial ending means.
Warning: the following article contains spoilers for season 4 of The Umbrella Academy.
Season 4 of The Umbrella Academy revolves around the Cleanse, an apocalyptic-level event caused by Marigold and Durango’s interaction. Over the season, the Hargreeves siblings try to prevent Ben (Justin H. Min) from inadvertently kicking off the Cleanse – Viktor can’t always be the one to destroy the world, right? Of course, they fail. So, in the final episode, we learn exactly what the Cleanse is, as Ben and Jenniffer’s (Victoria Sawal) bodies unite due to their respective Marigold and Durango particles.
Ben and Jennifer metamorphose into a mass of flesh, tentacles, and sharp teeth, destroying everything on their path. As it absorbs the attacks of the other Hargreeves siblings, the Cleanse monster grows bigger and stronger. Nothing can stop it, and the Cleanse is destined to rampage on the planet until it devours everything.
As the members of the Umbrella Academy contemplate the end of everything, Sir Reginald (Colm Feore) and his wife Abigail (Lisa Repo-Martell) have one final heart-to-heart where they discuss their past sins.
Why did Abigail Hargreeves started the Cleanse?
Abigail has developed Marigold on her original planet, willing to master the creation energy of the universe itself. Playing god is a dangerous affair, as she bitterly learns. With Marigold, Abigail also accidentally creates Durango, a destructive particle that balances Abigail’s god-like element. The interaction between Durango and Marigold destroys her birth planet, eventually turning Sir Reginald into the last survivor of his species.
Sir Reginald has brought Marigold with him on his exile on Earth. Feeling lonely after his wife’s death, Sir Reginald releases the golden particles, which eventually lead to the birth of the 43 miraculous children, including the members of the Umbrella Academy. Later, Sir Reginald adopts seven of these babies and trains them to use the Oblivion machine, reboot the universe, and resurrect his wife.
In season 4 of The Umbrella Academy, Abigail manipulates the Hargreeves siblings, giving them their Marigold back and leading them to find Jennifer. Her goal is to cause the Cleanse to correct Sir Reginald’s mistakes. She tells Sir Reginald he was wrong to bring her back, as her death was the just punishment for creating the dangerous technology. Furthermore, Sir Reginald had no right to mess with the timeline and bring so much misery to the Hargreeves siblings.
In short, Abigail plans to destroy the world so she can be dead once more, and Sir Reginald’s influence on the world might cease to exist. There must be better ways to teach your husband a humbling lesson. Plus, if Abigail thinks Marigold is so dangerous, why did she give it back to the Hargreeves instead of letting them live a power-free life? Aliens must use reason in a different fashion than humans.
If that were the only questionable choice in season 4, fans could forgive this sloppy plot point. Unfortunately, the series finale becomes even more controversial.
Are the siblings dead at the end of The Umbrella Academy?
After the members of the Umbrella Academy reunite in the old Hargreeves mansion, Five (Aidan Gallagher) escapes to the timeline subway. There, he meets other versions of himself, who suddenly vomit a lot of last-minute lore to justify the series’ tragic finale.
As Five learns, Reginald has created the multiverse when he unleashed Marigold into the world. Now, there are uncountable timelines, with uncountable versions of the Hargreeves siblings, and all of these timelines always lead to some apocalypse. The time travel shenanigans we followed through the show’s multiple seasons are equally happening all across the multiverse, leading to the existence of the Five who found the Commission, for instance, and many more.
This plot point is confusing because, until season 4, there was no mention of a multiverse. Instead, The Umbrella Academy dealt with a single flexible timeline, which changed according to the sibling’s meddling. However, this gets retconned in season 4, with the time stream mimicking the functioning of Marvel Studios, as we see in Loki.
After learning how the multiverse works and that the Hargreeves cause the infinite apocalypses lurking at every corner of the time-space, Five concludes that the only way to stop the Cleanse is to let the monster absorb all the Marigold. That means the Hargreeves must sacrifice themselves if they hope to fix the broken timelines.
As Five explains, by feeding themselves to the Cleanse monster, the Durango and the Marigold will completely cancel each other. As a result, the Hargreeves siblings will be erased from history and cease to exist. Then, all the alternate timelines will vanish, and only the original timeline will remain without an apocalypse. It’s a lot of assumptions, but Five is actually right.
Once all the siblings allow the Cleanse monster to engulf them, all the multiverse problems are instantly solved. There’s no mention of the other 36 superpowered children created by Sir Reginald, who were also supposed to be at the source of the problem. As for the members of the Umbrella Academy, it’s like they never existed. Not exactly a happy ending, right?
What does The Umbrella Academy season 4’s post-credit scene mean?
Before their ultimate sacrifice, Lila (Ritu Arya) sends her family and Claire into the timeline subway so that they can escape the Cleanse. After the multiverse dissolves, we are taken to the one and only timeline to see that the children survived. There’s no sugarcoating it: that makes absolutely no sense. If Lila and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) were erased from existence, their children should not be happily playing in a public park. The grandfather paradox was the cause of the apocalypse in season 3, but in the series finale, parentless children can exist without threatening the multiverse.
To make things even weirder, this final shot also brings back side characters from previous seasons. For instance, Hazel (Cameron Britton) is there with Agnes (Sheila McCarthy), the Swedes (Jason Bryden, Kris Holden-Ried, Tom Sinclair) are playing frisbee, and even Herb (Ken Hall) and Dot (Patrice Goodman) are enjoying the sun. It’s like all of these characters, for unexplained reasons, live in the same place and time in the original timeline, which is hard to justify.
To make things even weirder, the post-credits scene takes us back to the park, where eight marigolds blossom. As their petals open, we can see golden particles floating in the air. The flowers represent the eight Hargreeves siblings, who ceased to exist. It’s a symbolic image that marks their sacrifice but makes everything even more complicated.
If those flowers expelled Marigold, the Cleanse wouldn’t have worked, and the Umbrella Academy sacrifice would have been in vain. In the furor of making an emotional series finale, people let go of coherence. Unfortunately, that adds to the messy ending of an otherwise brilliant TV show.