Breaking Down The Umbrella Academy‘s Bittersweet Apocalyptic Finale

As a longtime fan of the Umbrella Academy, I must say that this final season was nothing short of a rollercoaster ride! The revelations about Ben’s death and the Jennifer Incident truly added depth to the series, making it clear that no stone was left unturned in this gripping narrative.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the series finale of The Umbrella Academy.

How would one conclude a series that has traversed various timeframes, brought back to life and revived its main characters on numerous occasions, and destroyed the world at least thrice? One could simply restart the entire storyline from the beginning.

In 2019, Netflix debuted the series “The Umbrella Academy,” which is based on a comic book series created by Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance. The show quickly gained praise from both critics and viewers, introducing us to the Hargreeves family, a classic example of a troubled family. This led to countless discussions on Reddit as the plot was full of intrigue. The narrative started with an engaging premise: “On October 1st, 1989, at precisely noon, 43 women worldwide gave birth, which was peculiar because none of these women were pregnant at the beginning of the day.”

The series chronicles the lives of seven children, adopted by a peculiar billionaire and transformed into a band of teenage superheroes called The Umbrella Academy. As they grow older, with Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, Robert Sheehan, Emmy Raver-Lampman, David Castañeda, Aidan Gallagher, and Justin H. Min portraying their adult counterparts, the scars of their unusual upbringing create discord among them. However, when a looming apocalypse threatens to destroy the universe as they know it, they are compelled to reunite to save the world for what they believe is the last time. Yet, things may not go as planned.

After a two-year wait, the long-anticipated fourth season of the show is now streaming, picking up where it left off. The initial apocalypse was just the beginning, and with its thrilling finale, viewers were given answers to questions that had been building throughout a series that developed into a complex tapestry of time travel, parallel universe leaps, and paradoxical chaos.

In the finale of Season 3, the Hargreeves found themselves in a new timeline, devoid of their extraordinary abilities. Although they harbored tentative optimism for a mundane existence, there were far too many lingering mysteries: How did Ben perish? What transpired during the “Jennifer Incident”? And what would be the consequences now that Reginald had crafted a reality where his late wife, Abigail, appeared to thrive? With four fewer episodes than previous seasons, Season 4 of The Umbrella Academy skillfully resolved these enigmas.

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Everything is not well in this new timeline

At the onset of the fresh season, the Hargreeves find themselves adjusting to their ordinary lives without superpowers (with differing levels of contentment regarding this situation). Despite the complete erasure of all remnants from their former lives, echoes of their past selves surface and are amplified by a new adversary: the Keepers.

Led by Gene (Nick Offerman) and Jean (Megan Mullally), the Keepers espouse “The Umbrella Theory,” a concept dividing the universe into numerous alternate realities that occasionally overlap, causing temporal anomalies. They propose “the Purge,” an action intended to eliminate all existing timelines and reinstate the original, unaltered reality. Remember this scenario for future reference.

The mystery around Ben’s death and the “Jennifer Incident” is finally explained

As a cinephile, I find myself immersed in the gripping tale of “The Umbrella Academy” season 3. In this installment, our protagonist Elliot Page’s character, Viktor, finds himself in a precarious situation when he is abducted by an enigmatic figure named Sy, played brilliantly by David Cross. The motive for this kidnapping? To manipulate the gang into a desperate search for Sy’s missing daughter, Jennifer, raising immediate red flags (especially considering her name).

Following Ben’s (Justin H. Min) drugging of the siblings’ drinks with the Marigold, the revitalized superpowered group ventures to a small town, suspecting that Jennifer is being kept there captive. Upon encountering Rosie, the owner of a diner, Ben unknowingly triggers a town-wide hostility towards them. It is then disclosed that this entire town operates like a Truman Show setup, designed to safeguard Rosie, who in reality is none other than Jennifer (Victoria Sawal).

Regarding Ben’s initial demise, there’s a great deal of enigma surrounding it. However, it’s disclosed later on that Reginald was the one who fatally shot Ben and Jennifer, then erased these memories from the siblings’. The “Jennifer Incident” refers to an operation where the group was instructed to detonate a container containing a girl. Upon opening the container to rescue her (now known as Jennifer), they both met their end. This tragic event was justified by the claim that it would somehow preserve the world.

Read more: Elliot Page: Embracing My Trans Identity Saved Me

Marigold has a more dangerous counterpart

In this fresh reality, Reginald’s late wife Abigail, whom he grieved so deeply it caused the universe to split into countless threads, is surprisingly alive. She confides in the siblings that she was the one who brought Marigold into being, the fundamental essence of all life. However, as every action has its counterpart, a second substance named Durango also came into being simultaneously.

As an ardent follower of The Umbrella Academy, I’m deeply concerned about the current predicament. Marigold has contaminated our team, and Durango affects Jennifer. It’s crucial that they never interact, or else catastrophic consequences may ensue. The issue is compounded because Ben, who should maintain distance from Jennifer, has developed a bond with her and is now hiding out in a motel with her, evading authorities.

Fives in different area codes (and timelines!)

As a film enthusiast, I’m utterly captivated by the non-linear narrative of “The Umbrella Academy.” In one of its intriguing twists, characters like Five (Aidan Gallagher) and Lila (Ritu Arya), who happens to share Diego’s (David Castañeda) extraordinary abilities, find themselves in a mind-bending predicament. They’re stranded within a subway system that transports them to identical moments across different timelines. Hours may pass in their world, yet they’re stuck on this railroad for seven years as they search for a way back home. Their eventual return is fraught with complications, and the boundaries between realities become blurred. Consequently, Five feels compelled to retreat beneath the city once more, seeking solace in the depths to process these complex experiences.

In that location, he meets a deli inhabited by various versions of Five from different realities. One of them discloses that there should be just one reality, and until the Cleansing occurs, the recurring catastrophes caused by the endless division of timelines will persist (apparently, they’ve attempted to save the world 140,000 times!). The appearance of the siblings triggered the initial split, so the only method to ensure the world returns to its original state is to completely eliminate them from the cosmic map.

What happens at the end of Season 4?

As a die-hard fan of The Umbrella Academy, I’ve reached Episode 6 of the final season, and it’s become painfully clear that the only way for this captivating saga to truly conclude is if our extraordinary siblings were mere figments of someone’s imagination – or perhaps, they never existed at all.

Following their encounter at the motel, Ben and Jennifer find themselves grappling with an unprecedented bout of post-sex remorse, marked by the emergence of unusual, swelling, luminescent rashes on their bodies. Trapped inside a deserted department store, they face encirclement by various groups of the Keepers, preparing for what’s known as the Cleanse. As time passes, Ben and Jennifer undergo grotesque transformations into fearsome creatures, prompting their siblings to search frantically for a means to shield them from the lethal intentions of Reginald and the Keepers.

In the open air, it’s disclosed that Sy was in fact disguised as Abigail, using a remarkably lifelike suit made from his own skin (similar to Buffalo Bill’s skin suit from Silence of the Lambs, but with a more sanitized removal method). Later on, Abigail takes on Gene’s body as a means to expedite the pressure from the Keepers. Abigail aimed to trigger the Cleanse as a final act of atonement for creating Marigold and Durango, intending to erase it completely from existence forever.

Regardless of the siblings’ best efforts to prevent it, Ben and Jennifer ended up merging due to Ben getting hit by a sniper bullet planned by Reginald. This new form they took on was even more monstrous than before, resembling an unstoppable, expanding mass of chaos that made the terrifying creature from ‘Stranger Things’, Vecna, look tame in comparison.

In simpler terms, Five informs his siblings that the sole method of eliminating an endless sequence of alternate realities plagued by catastrophes is by annihilating all remaining Marigold entities in the cosmos. This act requires their self-sacrifice since they’re the ones who are nurturing it. Making this decision isn’t easy, as Lila, Diego, and Allison (played by Emmy Raver-Lampman) have families in this reality that they must bid farewell to. Their strategy involves placing their loved ones on a subway system, which will transport them to the genuine timeline once they unite with Jennifer and Ben’s Durango vehicle. In the true timeline, they will find safety.

In simpler terms,

The scene shifts to August 12th, 2024, showing all characters from Kate Walsh’s chilly Handler to Cameron Britton’s Commission assassin Hazel leading peaceful, seemingly satirical lives. As the series initially did, Reginald’s voiceover echoes, “At precisely noon on the 8th day of August in 2024, there were no unusual events. It was simply an ordinary day.”

In my perspective as a movie reviewer, “The Umbrella Academy” concludes five years after its initial debut, yet in the series’ universe, those years encompass millions more. It’s heartrending that this show can only thrive by obliterating itself entirely by the end, a paradoxical twist that only this unique production could pull off. The storyline begins with six siblings estranged from one another’s lives, compelled to mend wounds that weren’t their making, and it concludes with them united, bonded by love for each other and the world they’ve chosen to protect selflessly. It might just be the most poignant example of a bittersweet ending ever crafted.

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2024-08-08 19:07