How Should We Interpret The Umbrella Academy's Finale?

Everything is speeding toward yet another apocalypse in the conclusion of Netflix's popular series The Umbrella Academy, which follows a family of superpowered misfits who are constantly tasked with preventing the end of the world. This time, though, no one survives.

The siblings make one last attempt at saving the world in the show's final season, which is based on the comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. However, none of them will live to see it because, as it turns out, they were the main reason the world kept ending in the first place. The brief run of six episodes explains that although the powers bestowed upon them at birth were crucial in averting catastrophe, the science fiction magic that gave them superhuman abilities was never intended to exist. Significance: Their existence was never intended as well. Meaning: The only practical way to end it all was to remove them from the cosmos.

It's disorganized and unclear, and it's not advised to consider how we arrived at this decision. The team is dropped into a reset universe in the previous season, where none of them are affected by their bothersome powers or by their cruel and irrational adoptive father Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore). This is after the team diverts their third apocalypse in as many seasons. Season 4 picks up six years later, finding the siblings suffering mundanities they'd never had the chance to experience before in various states of helpless mediocrity. While Viktor (Elliot Page) runs a bar in Canada, Luther (Tom Hopper) works as an exotic dancer in a run-down strip club, Diego (David Castañeda) is a delivery driver, and his wife Lila (Ritu Arya), who was also superpowered in the past, is a stay-at-home mother with three children. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) stars in detergent commercials instead of the blockbuster movies she was used to.

Except for Five (Aidan Gallagher), a CIA agent looking into a group known as the Keepers, who are attempting to end the world because they believe there is something strange about the current timeline, everyone appears content but resigned to their dull lives. They are searching for Jennifer (Victoria Sawal), a woman who was discovered at the age of six inside a giant squid and who may be related to the end of the world. In their quest to stop the Keepers and avert this impending apocalyptic event, the siblings find themselves parting ways on individual journeys that aid in the healing of their early traumas and a deeper acceptance of one another, but do nothing to avert the show's inevitable catastrophic conclusion.

This is the point at which things start to feel a little out of balance. Five learns to teleport to a subway station that connects to all the different timelines, and he and fellow time traveler Lila begin riding this train system in search of their original timeline to stop all the bad things happening in the present, while the other siblings are off on their own side quests. This appears to be a clever solution—that is, until you start worrying too much about the ramifications: nothing would have happened if Five and Lila had been successful in resolving the issues that had arisen prior to the events of Season 1.

Plot holes abound in this season, with the potential to draw viewers in and hasten the end of the world if they persist. If Reginald never adopted these children in this timeline, we never learn how the Keepers came to know anything about them or how he is related to them. With a collection of cities and towns that feel as incomprehensibly unmappable as the timelines Five and Lila get lost in, it's impossible to establish even a sense of place. The lack of accuracy that results in this maze of contradictions and questions can come across as careless. Time-travel stories frequently end up this way: either they give the story so much structure that it becomes both tedious and stressful, or they give up on all organization and rely solely on a hazy sense of inspiration.

It should be annoying to watch a show like this and not be able to find a stable foundation to stand on, but The Umbrella Academy—both the comic and the series—has never been interested in that stable foundation; instead, it has always been a chaotic, aimless endeavor that is more about style than substance. The majority of its charm comes from there. Its pliable sci-fi and fantasy reality encourages us to experience the show rather than analyze it. We're here to share in the family's emotional journeys, from Luther's awakening to the fact that he's more than just a prickly leader to Klaus (Robert Sheehan) and Allison realizing that the intense love that lies beneath the resentment and rage they've harbored for each other over the past six years.

Although it doesn't end in the solution they desire, Five and Lila's unsuccessful timeline-hopping journey on the subway, which takes place over more than six years, isn't entirely pointless. When they finally return to the family and meet Diego, Lila's husband and Five's brother, it grounds them in real, painful emotions as they grow close, coloring in the edges of their characters and producing a tangible hurt. Diego is finally able to see his wife and realize how much he has missed her because of it.

The siblings bid farewell to each other in the series' last moments, but their farewells aren't sentimental; instead, Luther suggests they all go around and share their best memories, to which they all rightly respond with eye rolls and disgust. Since the majority of them didn't truly like each other, even though they were all the ones who loved them the most, it seems accurate to the characters. After the siblings' devastation, we see the ultimate apocalypse and a glimpse of the newly formed world. Lila's family, Allison's daughter, and all the side characters from the series who have failed along the way are all together in the park, enjoying a picture-perfect summer day that almost seems too good to be true. The scene appears to make sense, but it doesn't make any sense at all.

This last run of episodes would have been an unsatisfactory chore if I had spent it trying to figure out where we were, how things had come to be, or what had happened beyond the screen's borders. However, all those responses would have been superfluous set dressing for the program that The Umbrella Academy never shied away from presenting, obstructing my view with irrelevant information and causing me to miss everything that was important. This was always a crazy ball of conflict that took great pleasure in skewering its characters and audience with sharp edges and dramatic tales of suffering, loss, and trauma. However, beneath all of that, there is a warm, contented soft heart.