The time for do-overs, creating new realities, and escaping into the past has finally come to an end as The Umbrella Academy concludes the final chapter of its maddening adventures with the recently released fourth season. The Hargreeves siblings—the extraordinary members of the eponymous group—have stuck together through thick and thin, found and lost happiness, doomed and saved the world—and gradually the viewers have come to connect with them in more ways than one. Farewells are tough, and with this bunch of weirdos, it ends up being emotionally painful in more ways than one.
The final moments of the third season saw a new reality being created, where the Hargreeves siblings no longer possessed their superpowers. In the fourth season, future, past, and all the timeline-related troubles culminate in one massive catastrophe in the form of Cleanse, which takes the siblings back to their roots and questions the significance of their existence in the process. The final season is by no means the best the series had to offer, but it brought proper closure to the beloved characters, and sometimes that’s more important than anything else.
Spoilers Ahead
Episode 1: Hargreaves Are Back in Business
It has been six years since reality was reset, and the Hargreeves siblings have settled into their own lives, drifting apart from each other in the process. White rewriting reality, Allison got what she wanted—her husband from the past, Raymond, by her side—and her daughter, Claire, with them as well to make her family complete. But at present, Raymond has left Allison, and she has been raising Claire with Number Four, Klaus, who has sobered up for the last three years. Luther is making ends meet by working as a stripper, while Viktor is leading a decent life as a barkeep in Canada. Diego and Lila are having a tough time raising three kids; Ben is an ex-con who served jail time for crypto-fraud, and Number Five is working for the CIA. Occasionally, the siblings miss using their powers and being their former selves, but overall they are more or less content with this life. However, their temporal shenanigans have left a ripple effect on the lives of people worldwide, which poses a major crisis in the final season.
Along with Lila, Five is looking into a cult known as the Keepers, founded and led by an eccentric old-timey couple, Jean and Gene Thibedeau, who have come across relics of past alternate timelines and are among the people who have retained memories and experiences from alternate past timelines—afflicted by timeline sickness, or as they like to call it, the Umbrella Effect. The couple believes that the Cleanse, a final restoration procedure, will allow them to restore the original timeline and take them back to their real lives. The main objective of the Keepers, who have secretly become a nationwide phenomenon, is to find the means to bring about the Cleanse. Lila and Five fail to learn much about the Cleanse, and later on, while searching for an abducted Viktor, the duo join the other Hargreeves siblings. The team identifies the abductor of Viktor, a mild-mannered guy named Sy Grossman, who abducted Viktor only to draw the attention of Umbrella Academy to seek help in finding his daughter, Jennifer, who was allegedly a member of the Keepers. To everyone else’s surprise, Five decides to take up the case and brings Jennifer’s box of past timeline relics with him after spotting a jar of Marigold—the energy essence that granted them superpowers—inside the box. By the end of the first episode, except Ben, none of the siblings seem interested in regaining their powers.
Episode 2: Small Town Killers and Timeline Traversing Subways
As expected, all the siblings get their powers back early into the second episode, and it is revealed that Ben had spiked their drinks with Marigold to make it happen. Viktor is extremely infuriated, as his powers had caused so much ruckus in the past, and he was living a happy life away from his family and all this nonsense. A scuffle ensues between the two, and the others blame Ben for his actions as well. However, the team agrees to continue the investigation to rescue Jennifer, and from clues left by Sy, they pinpoint her possible location to be a small town in Maine, New Grumpson. As the team reaches the town, Ben meets Jennifer and quickly forms a bond with her, only to realize later that the townsfolk have kept her captive in a brainwashed state. The presence of outsiders doesn’t sit well with the townsfolk, who start attacking the siblings with murderous intent.
All the time-related fiascos had begun with Five, and this time, six years since reality changed, when Five tries to use his powers to move through the spacetime continuum, he arrives at the subway of alternate timelines, where he discovers the existence of multiple realities. Five eventually returns to his reality, and the group somehow manages to escape the town after rescuing Jennifer. Klaus didn’t regain his powers, as he had thrown his drink away, but as he gets fatally shot while escaping from the town, the members have no other option except to jumpstart his immortality powers by using Marigold. However, by the end of the second episode, Jean and Gene Thibedeau manage to topple the team vehicle to momentarily incapacitate the Hargreeve siblings and abduct Jennifer right in front of them. During the assault of the Thibedeau couple, bodily contact between Ben and Jennifer results in a strange affliction, shaping in the form of pulsating energy marks in their body.
Episode 3: Back to Father and A Dreadful Rescue
The third episode begins by showing Jennifer’s origin; as a young kid, she had inexplicably appeared by bursting out of a freshly caught giant squid. Frustrated by a series of drawbacks and bickering among the siblings, Ben decides to head off on his own to search for Jennifer, while the rest of the team goes to the office of the Thibedeau couple in the Keepers’ HQ to search for clues. Five takes Lila with him to show her the subway of timelines. Diego finds mention of the exact date Ben had died in the original timeline (from UA perspective), deducing that the Jennifer incident in the past, which had resulted in Ben’s death back in the day, must be somehow connected with their present investigation. As a result, much to the dismay of all the siblings, Five and Diego implore everyone to meet with Reginald Hargreaves in this timeline to look for answers. Additionally, they learn that the violent bunch of townsfolk were working under the command of Reginald as well. Klaus goes his own way to flee from the group and Allison’s family, as he fears that with the return of his powers, his hedonistic, self-destructive lifestyle will resume once again.
Elsewhere, Ben continues searching for Jennifer, who is being tormented by the energy wound, and Sy Grossman appears before him to manipulate his mind and motivate him even more to find Jennifer. Eventually, Ben finds the farmhouse where the Thibedeau couple had held Jennifer captive, and using his vicious tentacle powers, he massacres all of the Keepers’ guards while rescuing Jennifer on his own. At Reginald’s villa, the team gets welcomed by Abigail, Reginald’s wife, who is alive in this timeline. Reginald chastizes the team for letting Jennifer be abducted, and reveals that she was guarded by the townsfolk as her presence is of seminal importance for the very existence of the world itself. discussing the Jennifer Incidents from back in the day that had caused Ben’s death, the team realizes that the original timeline’s version of Reginald Hargreeves had wiped the memories of the siblings, and none of them can remember the fateful incident in exact detail. After initial bickerings with his adopted children, Reginald from this timeline agrees to Abigail’s request to use a psychical mechanism to bring out the repressed memories of the siblings so they can learn the truth about Ben’s death. Elsewhere, Klaus gets captured by one of his former associates, Quincy, whom he had owed some money, and after learning about Klaus’s immortality and spirit-oriented powers, Quincy forces him to work as a medium.
Episode 4: A Terrible Truth And Further Rifts
From the psychic connection, the team learns the horrible truth that in the original timeline Reginald himself had shot Ben during a mission while he was rescuing a girl named Jennifer. It should be mentioned at this point that the team knows that both Jennifers are the same person. As the siblings lash out on Reginald in the present timeline for the actions of his alternate version, Abigail comes to her husband’s defense, as she mentions that killing them was an unfortunate necessity. Long ago, Abigail had created the essence of the universe, the Marigold particles, which gave life and superpowers to the siblings, and right at that moment, the anti-matter equivalent of Marigold, known as Durango, was also created. While Ben and all the Hargreeves siblings are beings created from Marigold, Jennifer was the only being formed by Durango. A connection between Marigold and Durango implies inevitable catastrophe, which is why Reginald from the original timeline had no other option except to kill Jennifer and Ben all those years ago.
However, knowing that Ben has ventured on his own to seek out Jennifer in the present timeline, the team anticipates great danger, and Reginald, in his usual absolutist way, decides to get rid of the problem by killing Ben. Viktor lashes out at Reginald, pinning him down and delivering a much-deserved truth bomb by mentioning his terrible paternal skills, which ruined the lives of so many. Viktor opines in favor of discussing the situation with Ben instead of taking extreme measures, and later on, he tries to convince Reginald in a gentler way. Klaus gets himself buried alive by Quincy after botching an attempt to escape and trying to secure a fortune by tricking one of the séance seekers. Sy Grossman meets the Thibedeau couple and successfully infiltrates their ranks. Meanwhile, Lila shares her plan with Five about trying to stop all the ruckus by preventing Ben’s death by going to the original timeline through the subway, but by the end of the episode, the duo loses track of their present reality—getting stuck in the subway and multiple alternate realities. Ben and Jennifer grow close as their connection grows stronger, which results in terrible implications in the outside world as the Cleanse gradually starts spreading.
Episode 5: Lost in Timelines And The Beginning of End
In the penultimate episode of the fourth season, Five and Lila remain stuck in the subway for six years, and the duo form a romantic relationship. However, Five later finds a way to return to their timeline and takes some time before revealing it to Lila, much to her dismay. With the help of the spirit of a dog, and Allison and Claire’s combined effort, Klaus finally gets rescued. With Reginald’s help, Viktor is able to communicate with Ben but fails to convince him to leave Jennifer and return. Diego and Luther fight and kill a horde of CIA officials, who turn out to be the Keepers’ sleeper cell. Grossman reveals himself to be none other than Abigail, who kills Gene Thibedeau and takes his spot to launch a full-on operation to begin the Cleanse. Viktor saves Reginald’s life from the attack of the Keepers, which somewhat mends the relationship between the duo.
Episode 6: The End
Lila and Five return to their reality, and as their secret comes out in the open, Diego is heartbroken—especially because he was trying to change his perspective and focus more on his family life for a change. Led by Abigail disguised as Gene, Jean Thibedeau and the nationwide army of the Keepers gather around the area where Ben and Jennifer have sought refuge and slowly begin to transmute into hideous monstrosities as their contrasting energies worsen their condition.
Viktor tries for the final time to help Ben, but it has become too late as he and Jennifer merge to become a primal Eldritch monstrosity, and as the Hargreeves siblings try to neutralize the threat of the Cleanse, they find it to be an indestructible cosmic force that will annihilate everything in its path. Dejected by Lila’s rejection, Five goes back to the subway, where he stumbles upon multiple alternate versions of him—who mention that the root cause of the never-ending doomsday scenarios are the Hargreeves siblings themselves. Their creation through Marigold was an aberration that split the original, true timeline into infinite alternate versions, thereby resulting in a never-ending crisis, which prompts Five to return to his siblings with the only solution to stop the Cleanse being by sacrificing themselves. If their Marigold essence gets consumed by the Cleanse, the timeline will finally be restored to its first, original form, and the world will finally be saved.
Lila ensures the safety of her family and Allison’s daughter by sending them through the temporal subway, and along with the Hargreeves siblings, she prepares to meet her end. Reginald learns Abigail was behind the creation of the Cleanse, as her husband’s action of bringing Marigold to this planet (the essence has caused the destruction of their alien world as well) demanded such a response—and the duo perished at the hands of the Cleanse monstrosities as well. With the end of the Marigold essence, the timeline restores back to normalcy, and in a tranquil landscape, all the characters associated with The Umbrella Academy are seen in new, peaceful versions of their lives. In a post-credits sequence, eight Marigold flowers bloom in the area, signifying the legacy of the titular team of beloved heroes.
