While The Umbrella Academy series finale has been met with mixed opinions, there is no doubt that it is an ending. There is no coming back from this.
The season started with the Hargeeves siblings dealing with normal lives for the last six years. Viktor is in Canada running a bar, Luther is a male stripper, Alison is trying to make it in acting, Ben lives with her in her basement, Diego and Lila have a family of their own, Five is working with the CIA, and Ben is just getting out of jail.
It’s clear that they have all gone their separate ways, but they do still try to connect as a family here and there. However, they have mixed views about their normal lives, and they soon get pulled into a new end of the world. This time, it’s the last one.
Ben and Jennifer are the end of the world in The Umbrella Academy
There is something known as The Cleanse, which is what Jean and Gene would like to see happen. They are not alone, either.
Jean and Gene have found out that items from an alternate reality are dotted around this universe. They’re not just from one universe, though. Five learns that these items are from different universes that the Hargreeves siblings have set up in their attempts to protect apocalypse after apocalypse. In fact, it was Five that set up the time authority group to help prevent it all from happening again.
That didn’t work. The Cleanse needs to happen to put the timeline back in good standing.
Ben died to prevent the Cleanse in the first place
As Ben and Jennifer started to be taken over by this red power that threatened the end of the world, the Hargreeves siblings had to go back through memories to find out how the original Ben died in the first place. It turned out that he came across a young Jennifer in the past. While on a mission, Reginald told his children not to look into a certain boxed area. That was where Jennifer was. If Jennifer touched any of the Hargreeves siblings, it would start The Cleanse, and Reginald didn’t want that.
Reginald killed Ben and Jennifer to prevent it. However, then Jennifer turned up in a squid in this new reality. History has a way of repeating itself in The Umbrella Academy.
Reginald tried hard to prevent The Cleanse. He had someone close to him working against him. His wife wanted The Cleanse to happen. She had destroyed their planet with the marigold. Now she needed to right the wrong of that, and it meant destroying all of the marigold. If that didn’t happen, another alternate universe would be created.
The Hargreeves make a sacrificial choice in The Umbrella Academy series finale
The Hargreeves siblings realized they needed to be killed off to prevent more timelines from being created. At first, Diego sent Lila off with their family and Alison’s daughter, Claire, to the subway that would take them all to another reality. Five made it clear that if not all the marigold was destroyed then all this would start over again and it would be for nothing. Diego and Lila didn’t care.
In the last seconds, Lila decided not to get on the train. Her children wouldn’t remember her, but they would have her parents to raise them. She knew they would be safe.
So, the six remaining Hargreeves siblings and Lila allowed themselves to be consumed by the beast that Ben and Jennifer became. We cut to the new reality, where there were no Hargreeves siblings. We saw The Handler and others we had come to know in the past living normal lives. The only appearance of the Hargreeves were the seven marigolds that blossomed by a tree, indicating that it was all done.