Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Umbrella Academy” Season 4.
“The Umbrella Academy” came to a close with its Season 4 finale this week, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few last threads worth explaining.
The shortened final season still jammed quite a bit into just six episodes and the finale, in particular, was fit to burst. The story followed the Hargreeves siblings facing off once and for all with The Keepers in order to stop The Cleanse from ending the universe. The Keepers’ hope was that The Cleanse would end the many broken timelines once and for all, ensuring the main one was restored.
Five (Aidan Gallagher) learns in the finale — in a diner full of his variants, no less — that the marigold that arrived on Earth with Reginald (Colm Feore) and granted the Hargreeves siblings their powers branched the main timeline into the multiverse. Five is told by his variants that the marigold-infused children have been ending the world across the multiverse whether they wanted to or not.
The Cleanse — which was sparked by marigold-infused Ben (Justin H. Min) and the durango-fueled Jennifer (Victoria Sawal) coming into contact with each other — would erase all the marigolds, and the Hargreeves clan, from existing. It wouldn’t be death, it would be never having been.
While The Keepers did all the dirty work, it was revealed in the end to be Reginald’s no-longer-dead wife, Abigail (Liisa Repo-Martell), who was behind it all. The two share a final moment on a park bench where Abigail tries to explain why she went behind her husband’s back to erase the marigold they brought from their planet — rememeber, Reggie’s an alien — and fix the timelines.
“I think she knows Reginald so well that I don’t think explaining it to him would have worked,” showrunner Steve Blackman told TheWrap. “She didn’t ask to be brought back from the dead first of all, she felt from her bad deed of creating the marigold durango and ending her own world her penance was basically ‘I lose my life.’”
He continued, “So when she’s brought back and seeing Hargreeves’ love for her wasn’t the right reason to bring her back and start this whole thing in motion again. She knew trying to walk him through and explain that to him would never have got him there. So she said I’ve just got to do this myself.”
With The Cleanse raging on, Lila (Ritu Arya) and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) take their children to the multiversal subway and ensure they’ll make it to the main timeline before they rejoin Viktor (Elliot Page), Luther (Tom Hopper), Klaus (Robert Sheehan) Diego (David Castañeda) and Five in the old Umbrella Academy mansion and are claimed by The Cleanse and erased. Blackman said he felt confident their ending was the right one.
“Everyone has to interpret if they were really killed off,” Blackman said. “Ceasing to exist and being killed — I know they’re nuanced, but in my mind, they cease to exist. I knew I wanted to do that ending from probably the first year, first season. I knew I wanted to do something special with the ending.”
“I love our fans and we have the most supportive fans, so I hope they’ll like it,” he added. “I know not everyone will, but I think it’s the right ending for the show. They make a certain sacrifice, which I think is the right sacrifice, and in doing so really makes them superheroes.”
Blackman also told TheWrap that the ending answers — or attempts to answer, at least — the ringing question in his mind since the show debuted on Netflix back in 2019.
“I wanted to ask the philosophical questions, and it’s not that profound, ‘Can a superhero be a superhero if nobody knows they exist?’” he shared. “If nobody knows they ever were and they don’t exist anymore, what does that mean to be a superhero? They make a sacrifice knowing that nobody will ever know who they were, that they never did anything, except for they did everything to save the world this time. I wanted to play with that idea. Superheroes are superheroes because we know they exist. If you can’t have those elements as a superhero, are you a superhero?”
The family’s fate was far from the only thread left hanging. In the lead-up to The Cleanse, Five and Lila spent years trapped hopping the multiverse and fell for each other despite only losing a day back home. Diego finds out and spends most of the episode fighting with Five and trying to apologize for being an absent husband to Lila. Those hatchets are never quite buried by the time the Hargreeves are erased, but Blackman has thoughts on how it would have panned out.
“I think Diego realized that he let Lila down in the marriage and in that relationship,” he explained. “I do think that Five is absolutely in love with her and they’re much more similar than anyone would let on. It makes sense for them to be together.”
Blackman further noted, “If things continued, I don’t know who she would have been with. If I had to pick, I think she probably would have stayed with Five. She loved both men for different reasons, but I didn’t see her and Diego getting back together. Things have deteriorated.”
After the Hargreeves are erased from existence, we cut to a park in the main timeline and see that Lila and Allison’s families made it there safely. We also see a number of familiar faces from the show’s past living healthy, normal lives. Blackman said putting that scene together was a lot of phone calls and begging.
“They were all great about it but Kate Walsh was in Australia and some of the Swedes were somewhere else,” he recalled. “They all had a great time on the show so I didn’t have to twist any arms. I couldn’t quite get Mary J. Blige to come back with her tour. She would have if we could’ve made it work in time but we just couldn’t because of scheduling. I got everyone I wanted in the ending.”
The park makes for a sufficient ending, but the finale had one last surprise in store via a mid-credit scene. We see a number of marigold flowers bloom under a tree in the park — one flower for each of the Hargreeves. Blackman was coy on a definitive explanation, preferring to leave it open to interpretation.
“I’m going to leave it to you and the fans to interpret that scene. I don’t want to say anything about it. Sometimes it’s nice to leave the show up to a little bit of interpretation and a bit of hope. Every fan can decide what that means,” he said.
All four seasons of “The Umbrella Academy” are now streaming on Netflix.
