After four seasons of superpowered madness and dance scenes galore, The Umbrella Academy has streamed its final episodes on Netflix. And though the fourth season finale gave a relatively definitive finish to the Hargreeves siblings, there’s still the matter of that mysterious mid-credits scene. So with that in mind, you’re probably looking for an Umbrella Academy ending explained.
Weird coincidence, that’s the headline of this article! And not only that: what this whole article is about! How wild is that???
All weird meta-jokes aside, though, let’s get into it. I’ll give you a brief overview/recap of the season to get you caught up to speed, and then we’ll discuss the ending of Season 4 of Umbrella Academy, as well as the mid-credits scene… Which probably means what you think it means, by the way.
The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Recap:
In the wake of Umbrella Academy Season 3, the Hargreeves siblings are all in another universe where they have no powers, there never was an Umbrella Academy, and Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) is the most powerful businessman on the planet. Also, his wife Abigail Hargreeves (Liisa Repo-Martell) is alive — and not in stasis on the moon.
Don’t worry, it’s not long until the team has powers again. After Viktor (Elliot Page) gets kidnapped by a man named Sy Grossman (David Cross), they discover a bottle of Marigold in his daughter’s belongings. What is Marigold? Great question… It’s the particles Reginald had dispersed to give the kids of the Umbrella Academy powers, aka the thing that kicked off the series. It’s also the thing Reginald was sucking out of the siblings in the Season 3 finale to power his reality-shifting machine.
Now it’s in a jar, and Ben (Justin H. Min) tricks them all into drinking it so they can get their powers back. Side-note here: this is Ben from the alternate universe (another one) Sparrow Academy in Season 3, not the Ben who died years earlier and broke up the Umbrella Academy before the show even started.
Anyway, they all get powers back, though some are slightly different than before. Lila (Ritu Arya), for example, can shoot green lasers from her eyes, as well as copying other people’s powers. Though it also makes them violently ill at first, they decide to suck it up and find Sy Grossman’s missing daughter.
Meanwhile, in this new universe, there’s a quickly growing cult called The Keepers who believe they’re in the wrong timeline. Spoiler: they are, so they’re correct. The leaders of the cult are Dr. Gene Thibedeau (Nick Offerman) and Dr. Jean Thibedeau (Megan Mullally), and unbeknownst to them, Five (Aidan Gallagher) is undercover for the CIA trying to find out more about them.
After tracking down Sy’s daughter, Ben finds himself immediately drawn to a woman named Rosie (Victoria Sawal). There’s a pitched shoot-out because the town is run by Reginald and he doesn’t want Rosie to leave. That’s because she’s not Rosie… She’s Jennifer. Bum bum BUM.
Who is Jennifer, you may ask? Since Season 1, the show has referred to “The Jennifer Incident” to explain what happened to Ben. As the team realizes… They don’t actually know what the Jennifer Incident is. So they head to Reginald to find out what he knows. To further confuse things, he’s also not the Reginald they know. Without complicating things too much, when the team traveled back in time to the Kennedy Assassination in Season 2, they encountered a pre-Umbrella Academy Reginald. That’s who reset the timeline in Season 3, and that’s who is in Season 4. He doesn’t know about the Jennifer Incident, because that never happened to him.
Regardless, he helps them get their memories back, and it turns out that the final mission of the Umbrella Academy was to blow up a shipping container, with Jennifer in it. Ben touched her hand, some sort of weird glowing started, and Reginald — the original one — killed both Ben and Jennifer by shooting them in the head. Yikes!
Slight side-step here, but I will mention that Five has discovered that his powers changed thanks to the Marigold, too. Now, when he tries to jump through time, he ends up in a subway that takes you throughout the multiverse. He encounters his own post-apocalyptic future. He finds other, dead realities. And when Lila tags along with him, they both get lost in the multiverse for, per the title of Episode 5, “Six Years, Five Months, and Two Days.” In the process, despite the fact that Lila is married to Diego and they have kids, she and Five fall in love.
Five ultimately finds a way home thanks to a time loop thingy — he discovers his own notebook, and then later a diner in the subway with dozens of versions of himself trying to repair the timeline — but in the process loses Lila.
Anyway, back to the main plot. All season long, the Keepers have been teasing an event called The Cleanse that they think will return them to the right timeline. Turns out the Cleanse is what happens when Ben and Jennifer get together. Why? It’s because Ben has the Marigold in him, and Jennifer has an opposite particle called Durango.
As Abigail explains, on the home planet she and Reginald come from, she created Marigold — the “essence of the universe” — and as a side effect, Durango, it’s opposite, was also created. When those particles meet, they cause destruction. That’s how Reginald and Abigail’s planet was destroyed. When Ben and Jennifer bone down, their opposite particles start a chain reaction that will lead to the end of the world.
The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Ending Explained:
I’m skipping past a lot here, but frankly, I don’t think it’s important for understanding the end of the show. Klaus (Robert Sheehan) gets captured by a drug dealer who uses his body as a vehicle for spirits to have sex with people. Luther (Tom Hopper) and Diego (David Castañeda) hang out at the CIA and beat everyone up. Are these moments fun? Sure. I guess. But the main plot is about what happens with Ben and Jennifer get together.
Turns out, it’s way worse than when Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez get together… This Ben and Jennifer form the worst Bennifer ever, turning into a giant monster who is tasked with wiping the world clean. Reginald tries to stop them, and Viktor tries to suck the Marigold from Ben. None of that works.
In the meantime, Gene is killed by Sy Grossman, who turns out to be Abigail in disguise. “Gene” then kills Jean, while a horde of Keepers are protecting Bennifer from the law, trying to allow the Cleanse to happen.
It does indeed happen, and Ben and Jennifer turn into an enormous monster who has one goal: wipe the world clean. Abigail and Reginald allow themselves to be consumed by Bennifer, as they should have died years earlier. Meanwhile, Five, at the diner filled with other Fives, realizes the truth… The Umbrella Academy was never supposed to have the Marigold. The only solution is to let the Cleanse happen, wiping them from the timeline.
And that’s what they do. The team all stands in the ruin of their old home and allows the Cleanse to consume them. Their Marigold is taken from them, and they disappear from the timeline forever. And not only that, the multiverse collapses, too, into one single timeline.
And off of this, we get to see the idyllic world that would have been — and now is — thanks to the Umbrella Academy’s sacrifice. Specifically, a day in a beautiful park where characters from past seasons pop up without their arch, dark selves, and backstories… They’re just normal people. And it’s all to the tune of “I Think We’re Alone Now” by Tommy James and the Shondells.
As we zoom around and check in with everyone, we end with narration — just as we started in the first episode — from Reginald Hargreeves. “On the twelfth hour of the eighth day of August 2024” — hey, that’s today! — “…absolutely nothing out of the ordinary occurred. You might say it was just a normal day.”
…and that’s the end of the series! Hope you had fun! Oh wait, there’s a little bit more? Okay.
What Happens In The Umbrella Academy End Credits Scene?
At this point, “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” by the Talking Heads kicks in, and we get the closing credits. Beyond giving us, you know, credits, they also show off a ton of very sweet behind-the-scenes pics of the cast and crew having a great time making the series. That’s nice and all, but what about that end credits scene?
Well, first we get credits that reveal all of the folks who guest-starred, including those who popped up in the park scene in plain clothes:
- Adam Godley, who previously played Pogo
- Jordan Claire Robbins, who previously played Grace, aka Mom
- Millie Davis, who played Claire Hargreeves
- Victoria Sawal, who played Jennifer
- Liisa Repo-Martell, who played Abigail Hargreeves
- Kris Holden-Ried, who played Axel (one of the Swedish assassins)
- Jason Bryden, who played Otto (one of the Swedish assassins)
- Tom Sinclair, who played Oscar (one of the Swedish assassins)
- Kate Walsh, who played The Handler
- Sheila McCarthy, who played donut queen Agnes Rofa
- Cameron Britton, who played Hazel
- Martin Roach
- Aidan Devine
It’s lovely to see everyone again and all, but at the very end of the credits, there’s one more scene. We head back to the park and zoom down a tree to the flower bed beneath. And out of that flower bed grows… Eight marigolds.
So, there are seven characters who sacrifice themselves at the end of the show: Viktor, Luther, Allison, Five, Klaus, Lila, and Diego. If you add in Ben (sorry, Jennifer), that’s eight of them — matching the number of marigolds that spontaneously grow there.
That’s the basic idea behind the flowers, it is a tribute to the eight main characters of the show. But there’s the extra layer of: is Marigold, the particle, related to marigolds the flower? So is, perhaps, the cycle beginning again? The answer to that latter question is a definitive “maybe.” Since this is the end of the series, it’s really whatever you want it to be. If you think the Umbrella Academy is being reborn? Sure. Alternately if you just think there’s a nice garden under the tree where human Pogo can wander by and see it? Sure, that’s fine, too.
Marigolds are related to both remembrance AND resurrection, so it’s really however you want to interpret things. For me? I think it’s a memorial garden. But you do you.
Will There Be An Umbrella Academy Season 5?
There will be no fifth season of The Umbrella Academy on Netflix. Season 4 is the final season. There also won’t be a Sparrow Academy spinoff, though one was in development. Whether that has to do with the issues detailed in Rolling Stone‘s expose on showrunner Steve Blackman is unknown, but this is it for The Umbrella Academy. That said, if you haven’t read the comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá please do, because they rule.
