The Umbrella Academy season 4 ending was always bound to be an emotional one, with the six episode series concluding the Netflix show's run once and for all. However, after growing attached to the weird and wonderful Hargreeves over the past few years, many fans were left perplexed, outraged and disappointed with that ending for several reasons.
If you're still trying to come to terms with it all, here we unpack The Umbrella Academy ending, including what happened in its post-credits scene, how it measures up to Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's comic book series, and how the My Chemical Romance frontman felt about the plot changes.
Needless to say, The Umbrella Academy season 4 spoilers ahead.
Fan reactions to The Umbrella Academy ending
Fan reactions to the final season of The Umbrella Academy were pretty intense, with these few posts on X rounding up general sentiment:
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But while fans were generally upset with the conclusion of the show, what does the ending actually mean for the infinite timelines, the Hargreeves' kids and so on? Let's get into it…
Only Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally could pull this off.
The Umbrella Academy ending, decoded
Season four picks up with the Umbrella Academy (Luther, Klaus, Diego, Allison, Number Five, Ben, Victor and Lila) finding themselves in a reset timeline and without their powers, with the show skipping six years ahead to show the separate lives that the Hargreeves have built for themselves.
However, when Jennifer (Victoria Sawal) crops up, the gang gets back together again to help rescue her, with it being revealed that she's the very same Jennifer from the "Jennifer incident" that led to Ben's death in the OG Umbrella Academy timeline.
In case you need a refresher, in the original timeline the Hargreeves were sent on a mission to find and detonate a deadly weapon inside a container, however on finding the container Ben disobeyed instruction, instead opening it and pulling Jennifer out from it. As Ben didn't follow his adoptive father Sir Reginald Hargreeves' orders, he shot him and Jennifer immediately.
We learn that the reason Reginald didn't want them to interact with Jennifer is because she contains a particle element called Durango. Unintentionally created by the Reginald's wife Abigail, when Durango interacts with the Marigold that gives the Hargreeves their powers, the two elements create a catastrophic reaction capable of destroying the entire world, AKA The Cleanse. Eek, fair enough Reg.
This means that when Sparrow Academy Ben spikes his adopted siblings' glasses with Marigold, he's not only giving them their powers back, but also triggering a whole lot more consequences down the line.
After Ben and Jennifer meet and bond, The Cleanse begins unfolding, with the pair's bodies morphing into one terrifying creature.
We also learn why the Hargreeves find themselves stuck in an infinite time loop, with Five discovering through a conversation with an alternate version of himself that the siblings are directly responsible for the infinite number of timelines, with the Marigold that infected the siblings' birth mothers fracturing the original timeline into several countless alternative loops.
In order to stop the unending loop, therefore, the Hargreeves must allow the Marigold in their bodies to react with the Durango from The Cleanse and neutralise their abilities.
Before the Hargreeves concede to engulfing themselves in The Cleanse, though, they send Allison's daughter Claire and Diego and Lila's three children to the underground subway station to reach the waypoint between the alternate timelines.
With the kids secured (although we have questions about the logistics of that all as well, tbh), the Hargreeves do the selfless thing and save the world, destroying the other timelines once and for all – though likewise erasing themselves from all timelines.
AKA, they never existed. We know, we're upset about it too.
As we see the gang taken over by The Cleanse, we see some of the series' best bits play out in a montage before it cuts to the singular timeline in which the saved family members and characters such as The Handler from previous seasons exist.
All of the characters are seen relaxing and picnicking in a beautiful park, with a voiceover from the Reginald saying “On the 12th hour of the eighth day of August 2024, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary occurred. You might say it was just a normal day.”
But that's not all!
We do get one other final bit of closure in the form of The Umbrella Academy post-credits scene, as explained below.
The Umbrella Academy post-credits scene meaning
Before The Umbrella Academy post-credits scene we get a look at some photos from behind the scenes of previous seasons, featuring pictures of the crew who made the entire series what it is today while This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by Talking Heads plays in the background.
Starting with the photo Luther took earlier on, this time round we also see the view from the other side of his face as he takes the photo before the post-credits scene itself kicks off.
The post-credits scene is essentially a tribute to each of the Umbrella Academy members: Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Five, Ben, Viktor, and Lila. Even though they no longer exist, their memory lives on in the form of eight blooming marigold flowers in the park where the series finished.
We're not crying, you are.
How does The Umbrella Academy ending compare to the comic books?
On how the latest season compares to the original comics, showrunner Steve Blackman said "Well, for starters, there's no graphic novel for what we would call season four and while our series is coming to a close, Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá are actually working on their next volume, and they have a pretty good roadmap of where the story is going for many years to come."
He explained, “That said, we have deviated from their version and, in a wonderful way, they're making changes based on what we're doing in the TV series. So, we're symbiotic in some ways. But there are major elements - like The Cleanse and The Jennifer Incident - that are entirely from Gerard and Gabriel. I've done my interpretation of these events in season four, but these are both things that are forthcoming in the graphic novels in slightly different way.”
When asked whether the comic book's creator Gerard Way had any objections to how the fourth series played out, Blackman said "No, he's been so kind throughout this process and was very gracious about the different paths we took."
"He said, 'Look, I love it. Do what you want to do. Go where you want to go.'"
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