As usual, and I don’t think this is a spoiler, The Umbrella Academy ended its most recent season with a big twist that set up a potential Season 4. And also as usual for The Umbrella Academy, the ending packed plenty of surprising, potentially confusing moments that probably need a little bit of explanation.
So official spoiler warning for The Umbrella Academy Season 3 past this point, but as we leave them the Umbrellas are all in a new reality, with no powers, and everything has changed — yet again. Wait, what?
Before we get to that, why don’t we talk through the plot of the season, and how we ended up where we ended up. Cool? Cool.
What Is The Plot Of The Umbrella Academy Season 3?
That’s a great question, and its own convoluted bag of worms. But here’s the (relatively) short version.
After traveling back to their own time at the end of Season 2, The Umbrella Academy found themselves in a strange, alternate timeline. What they very quickly discovered is that Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) hated them all so much from when they time-travelled back to 1963 in Season 2 that he adopted seven other powered children, and formed The Sparrow Academy. And in an unrelated event, Harlan, a young autistic kid who was given powers by Viktor (Elliot Page), accidentally murdered The Umbrella Academy’s mothers on the day they were all supposed to be born.
These two events — Harlan murdering their moms, and the Umbrellas then travelling forward in time — caused a Grandfather Paradox, which created a Kugelblitz. This Kugelblitz was a black hole of energy that resided underneath the Sparrow Academy, and steadily grew bigger until it consumed all of space and time.
The only way of stopping the Kugelblitz, Hargreeves told the remaining members of the Umbrella and Sparrow Academies, was by travelling to an alternate version of the Hotel Obsidian, the place the Umbrellas were crashing at, called the Hotel Oblivion. There, they fought a bunch of weird samurai creatures made out of bugs, and discovered that the Hotel Oblivion wasn’t what it seemed.
In fact, decades earlier Hargreeves had discovered the entryway to the Hotel Oblivion, which was in fact a machine built by the creators of the universe. He built the Hotel Obsidian around that entryway, seemingly as an out in case a catastrophic event — say, a Kugelblitz caused by a Grandfather Paradox — was about to destroy the universe. The thing that he didn’t reveal is that, and this isn’t entirely stated out loud, he seemingly created the super-powered kids of the Umbrella, then Sparrow Academies, in order to power the machine.
Basically, whatever Hargreeves is — space alien, man from an alternate dimension, etc. — he stored the particles in the children, and needed seven of them to power up the machine and reset the universe. He does that, essentially sucking the power out of the “kids,” almost killing them in the process — only to be killed and stopped by Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman). Taking over the machine, she makes some last minute adjustments to Hargreeves’ settings, and resets the universe herself.
What Is The Ending Of The Umbrella Academy Season 3? The Umbrella Academy Season 3 Ending, Explained
Okay! That all out of the way, let’s talk about what actually happens at the end of The Umbrella Academy Season 3. After nearly dying, most of the people who were in the machine emerge from a doorway, in a park. That includes Luther (Tom Hopper), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Ben (Justin H. Min), Viktor, Diego (David Castañeda), and Five (Aidan Gallagher). Of note, Luther and Klaus both died, but now they’re back. The twist? They all don’t have powers anymore, and in light of that, and over Viktor’s protests, they all head off in separate directions.
Noticeably missing are Luther’s new wife Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez), who remains missing at the end here, if she ever existed in this new reality, and Allison. Allison we do catch up with, and it’s clear what changes she made to reality once she took over the machine… In this new timeline, her daughter Claire, who ceased to exist because of the Grandfather Paradox, is back. And not only that, but Ray (Yusuf Gatewood), her husband in 1963, is in the present with her and Claire. Basically, whatever Hargreeves did, Allison added an addendum that not only saved the lives of her siblings, but also gave her a perfect, happy ending, with her perfect family.
…But what did Hargreeves do? That’s the big one, because despite getting his head sliced in half in the Hotel Oblivion, he is not only alive, he seems to be ruling this new world, which is covered with Hargreeves Industries billboards and related companies. And not only that, his wife, who we briefly saw was in stasis on the dark side of the moon earlier this season, is alive and standing with him. So it seems that at least in part, Hargreeves’ whole goal was to save his wife and remake the world in his image.
So that’s it, right? Nope, there’s one last scene to go.
What Happens In The Umbrella Academy Season 3 End Credits Scene?
After the reveal with Hargreeves, and the main cast credits, there’s one final end credits scene that could mean even bigger, weirder things for Season 4. In it, we head back to the same subway we visited in the very first scene of Season 3, where Ben’s parents gave birth to him in this new timeline. In this scene, we see Ben, dressed in a suit, reading a book. The stop is announced, and he looks up and into the distance.
Though the Ben we know from the original timeline died once early in Season 1, and then his ghost dissipated in Season 2, the alternate timeline Ben from Season 3 is very much alive in the scene in the park we just detailed. So what’s going on here? The short answer is, we don’t know. The slightly longer answer is that it seems that however Hargreeves reset the universe, he may have included non-powered, normal versions of the Umbrella Academy kids, and possibly the Sparrow Academy, too.
The big question is: why? Given he already powered the machine and got his ideal circumstances, there’s no real reason Hargreeves would have for creating the spontaneous pregnancies that led to the children he would need to eventually power the machine. So why does this new Ben, let’s call him Business Ben, exist? And if he exists, do other versions of the other characters exist, as well? And if they meet their counterparts, will they have a total meltdown, like when Five met another version of himself in Season 2?
We’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope we get Season 4, to find out.