Spoiler Warning: This article discusses spoilers from the series finale of The Umbrella Academy and other episodes from the series
Season four of the Umbrella Academy had a number of issues, but as messy as prior seasons were when it came to time travel, this one takes the cake. Spoilers are ahead.
With a time traveler as one of the main characters, nobody was likely shocked to see the mess caused by the Hargreeves after their time slip at the end of season 1; however, the chaos of those temporal shenanigans had nothing on this.
As Five discovers, the singular timeline split when Reginald created the forty-three children. The material of their creation, Marigold, is unstable, and its existence necessitates its counter, Durango. The two elements are fine until they touch, and upon contact, the two will do whatever it takes to combine, resulting in the Cleanse, in which these two elements eliminate each other from existence.
Considering Marigold allowed Five to time travel, leading to the whole Temps Commission, I can suspend my disbelief at these magnetic forces, but I’d also argue Marigold and Durango split the timelines in that case.
The show never fully explains any of this. Instead, we get the Cleanse, a monster formed of Ben and a young woman who, without any explanation, is the sole individual in existence who contains Durango. We never learn how she came into existence, and considering Reginald redesigned this new world from the ground up, you’d think he could’ve removed Durango from the physics of the universe.
Instead, we get a Deux Ex Machina of a season as Marigold makes its way back into the current timeline despite Durango apparently already being present, which tumbles into the ultimate self-destructive conclusion on the part of the Hargreeves children that they have to allow themselves to be taken by the Cleanse in order to reunify the timelines.
Would this need to happen if Ben hadn’t spiked everyone’s drinks with Marigold? Could they extract the Marigold and fix the timeline that way?
Apparently not. It’s not even considered.
Instead, we have the Hargreeves sacrificing themselves, combining with the Cleanse and not just dying, but completely erasing themselves from existence. While depressing, the ending could work. Unfortunately, the happy unified timeline where the Hargreeves never existed somehow can contain Lila and Diego’s children as well as Claire, Allison’s daughter.
Frankly, my conclusion is only Five needed to be eliminated. Without his powers, the Hargreeves don’t make sense as a functional fracture point, which explains why the children were fine in the aftermath. If that’s not the case, we’re dealing with a paradox as a power that should be erased with its host saves children that couldn’t exist if their parents never did.
Do you agree? Did you enjoy the ending? Share your thoughts and join the conversation on Boss Rush Network’s Discord and Facebook.
Featured Image: Netflix
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