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Breaking Down the Ending of The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Episode 6

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Aug 31, 2024 / 8126 Views

Evan Walker

Netflix’s popular superhero TV series The Umbrella Academy ended with the release of its fourth and final season. While there are speculations about its potential return in the form of a spinoff or even a reboot at some point, for now, fans have bid adieu to the show’s dysfunctional bunch of weirdos. The Umbrella Academy season 4 episode 6 concluded on a mind-boggling note as expected from the chaotic and frequently time-bending series. The episode highlights the emotional stakes like Allison’s daughter Claire and Diego’s extended family as they confront the need to cease their existence to restore the original timeline. Let’s explore The Umbrella Academy final season in some detail.

For those unaware, let’s do a brief recap of the whole thing. The continuity of character arcs from the previous season is crucial to understanding their development and the impact of earlier events on the overall storyline that ends with The Umbrella Academy final season. The show has been in existence since 2019. It was based on the Dark Horse comic book series of the same name by Gerard Way (writer) and Gabriel Bá (artist). The series straddles genres as disparate as superhero, black comedy, family, Science-fiction and more.

What is The Umbrella Academy all about?

Season 1 introduced us to these adopted siblings each of who have some kind of superpowers (though sometimes their powers are revealed later). They included Elliot Page as Vanya Hargreeves (later Viktor to mirror Page’s real-world transition), Tom Hopper as Luther Hargreeves, David Castañeda as Diego Hargreeves, Emmy Raver-Lampman as Allison Hargreeves, Robert Sheehan as Klaus Hargreeves, Aidan Gallagher as Five Hargreeves and Justin H. Min as Ben Hargreeves (though he only appears as a ghost in the first two seasons). Millie Davis portrays Claire, a significant character in the emotional story involving Lila Pitts (Ritu Arya) and Diego.

They were born in 1989 to women who had not shown any sign of pregnancy before the day the babies tumbled out of the wombs. Seven of those 43 babies were adopted by Reginald Hargreeves (played by Colm Feore), though not from the goodness of his heart. They were cared for instead by Grace Hargreeves (played by Jordan Claire Robbins), ostensibly Hargreeves’ wife but really an android, and the chimpanzee butler, Pogo (voice and motion capture by Adam Godley).

We have followed this team of people with strange superpowers over three seasons as they have saved the world from catastrophic doom — at least three times. (Modern pop culture really is obsessed with the end of the world, isn’t it? No wonder, Hollywood regularly makes apocalyptic movies). Anyhoo, in season 2, they are scattered across different points of time and have to reunite to prevent another apocalypse, creating a whole new timeline. Oh, and in this timeline, Reginald created another super-team called The Sparrow Academy, consisting of five members, including a version of Ben, who is alive.

In season 3, they deal with being in a world where they never existed as their mothers died in this timeline, creating the grandfather paradox (read up on this, it’s super-fun). They must work together to prevent yet another armageddon, for this time they are up against, Kugelblitz, a destructive force that’s unravelling the fabric of space and time. In the “reset” universe, they realise they have no powers.

What happens in The Umbrella Academy season 4 episode 6? The ending explained

I feel like it was an excellent idea to truncate the final season. I know it has backfired before, to end TV shows with shorter seasons (Game of Thrones comes to mind). But it had always been an issue with The Umbrella Academy that its episodes felt stretched to their limits and that the writers were not telling a story so much as they were filling out the runtime.

The Umbrella Academy season 4, thus, feels a lot more focused, with little to no subplots that promise much but go nowhere. As the season begins, our heroes, also called Brellies, have no superpowers, and you would think this newfound vulnerability would humanise them, but this is not that kind of show. One of the most intense moments is when Ben pushes Viktor to protect him from a bullet, showcasing their deep bond amidst the chaos. But of course, that’s about to change.

In the climactic scenes of The Umbrella Academy season 4 episode 6, titled “End of the Beginning”, we see Viktor and other’s desperate attempt to save Ben from the transformative process known as The Cleanse. The stake could not be higher and the familial bonds of the Brellies will be tested like never before.

Who are the Keepers? Everything to know about The Umbrella Academy’s final villains

This time around, the Brellies must face a cult called the Keepers, the husband-wife duo of Gene (Nick Offerman) and Jean Thibedeau (Megan Mullally) — or Gene and Jean. They are somehow aware that the timeline they are currently in is not the “original” timeline and seem to possess a knowledge of events that haven’t happened yet. They term it the “Umbrella Effect” where events that happened in other timelines bleed into their reality. They are also obsessed with collecting artefacts to offer as evidence of this phenomenon. Unlike real-world Doomsday cults, these two are actually correct…

The Keepers mean to initiate what they call The Cleanse, which is exactly what you believe it is. It is a reset of reality using a person called Jennifer (played by Victoria Sawal). Recall the Jennifer incident that had not been explained until now? She is somehow connected to the past of Ben. It’s Bennifer (as Celebrity pair Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are lovingly referred to).

Everything appears to be going well for the Keepers. They were ridiculed by their peers in academia, but they appeared to have stumbled upon something that would prove them right and help them achieve their ultimate aim: to reset the timeline to its “original” state. In a poignant moment, Diego tells Lila that he finally sees her, highlighting the emotional farewells and personal sacrifices the characters must make for the greater good of their family and the timeline.

Will the real Abigail please stand up?

So it turns out it is Abigail (played by Liisa Repo-Martell) who has been manipulating the strings of Gene and Jean all along. Incidentally, it was she due to which Reginald fractured the universe into different timelines: creating the multiverse. Just like Marigold gave the Brellies their superpowers and is the source of all life, an equal and opposite substance was also born: Durango. Just like the Umbrella Academy got superpowers thanks to Marigold, Jennifer was infused with Durango. Never the twain shall touch, and if they do, it is the end of the world, again.

In the post-credits scene of The Umbrella Academy season 4 episode 6, the blooming of eight marigold flowers serves as a metaphor for the continuation of the Hargreeves siblings’ essence in nature, even after they may have been erased from memory.

Abigail initially appears to the Brellies as Sy Grossman (played by David Cross) who kidnaps Viktor but later pretends to be a good guy who just wants his daughter back, who is — surprise, surprise — called Jennifer.

Season 4 episode 6 ending explained: How does The Umbrella Academy wrap up?

As Abigail wanted, the twain, Marigold and Durango, do touch as Jennifer and Ben are fused together in what looks like a single creature that is vaguely Lovecraftian. It is stupefying to believe that the seeds of this ending were planted right from the beginning, the very first episode. This is outstanding writing. Best of all, unlike, say, Deadpool & Wolverine, there is little reliance on cameos and callbacks.

The Bennifer creature is horrifying but also fascinating. It clearly looks painful, too. The Brellies are lost for words, unsure of what to do and how to prevent The Cleanse. Five, the Academy’s foremost expert on time Travel, informs the team that the one and only way to save the world is to kill themselves, for they have always been anomalies and should ideally have never existed. It’s a sad thought but also comforting. They will, after all, save the world and undo all the apocalyptic mess they have wrought across sundry timelines.

In the thrilling final scene, the siblings band together for a final showdown against the forces of destruction. And this involves joining hands together, forming a circle and saying tearful goodbyes. Klaus says something to the effect that he loves them, but they are a bunch of a******s.

The Hargreeves siblings’ collective sacrifices and complex relationships are highlighted, as they confront apocalyptic events, ultimately leading to their self-sacrifice to resolve ongoing threats to the world. Reginald says in a voiceover, an echo from the very first scene: “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.”

The Brellies laugh, not at what Reginald says, but what Klaus says. They are then erased out of existence. Or have they?

What do Marigolds blossoming in the post-credits scene mean for The Umbrella Academy?

In the post-credits scene, we see a number of Marigolds (exactly eight, actually) cropping up. Does that mean the Brellies survived as Marigolds? Or they are the actual plant? We may never know, and the show’s creator Steve Blackman also wishes to leave the ending as fuzzy as possible, echoing other ambiguous endings such as Inception (2010), one of the most well-known Christopher Nolan movies.

In an interview with Netflix, Blackman was asked whether we can assume the Marigolds are the Brellies. He responded, “Not necessarily. You can assume many things from that. We can assume that some essence of Marigold still exists somewhere in the world. It may do nothing ever again. And it could just be flowers, or it could be what’s left of them because there happen to be eight flowers. And a couple of them kind of turn into each other. But I’m leaving it to the audience to decide what it really means. Does that mean there could be more of the Umbrella Academy, or is it just that a tiny bit of their essence does go on?”

Kate Walsh, who plays The Handler, also makes a notable appearance in the series finale, adding to the sense of closure and family among the main characters. Though she never became The Handler as none of the events we saw in the show earlier ever happened. Time went on as it did, smoothly.

What to watch to beat The Umbrella Academy withdrawal symptoms?

Now that the show is over, what do you watch instead? You can, of course, rewatch all the episodes, but there won’t be a sense of discovery. If you like such superhero shows involving a team full of weirdos that are almost a family, there is nothing better than the DC TV series Doom Patrol (2019–2023).

It is basically The Umbrella Academy level of weirdness… only dialled 11. There is a lot more quirkiness as the titular superhero team battles the most bizarre villains in all of fiction. To top it all, it is actually a superbly written and acted TV show with Brendan Fraser, last seen in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), giving some of his best performances in one episode after another. I would go as far as to say that it is the most entertaining superhero TV series around.

Watch all seasons of The Umbrella Academy on Netflix here.

(Hero and Featured image: Courtesy of Netflix)