‘The Umbrella Academy’ Season 3 Ending Explained by Showrunner
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Note: Spoilers for “The Umbrella Academy” Season 3 finale follow below.
“The Umbrella Academy” Season 3 packed a lot of story into just 10 episodes, and it all came to a head in the finale, titled “Oblivion.” The ending leaves a number of questions up in the air for a potential Season 4, so we asked showrunner Steve Blackman to break down those twists and turns for us.
Episode 10 finds the Umbrella Academy members entering into Hotel Oblivion just as the world is being consumed by the Kugelblitz (i.e. another apocalypse). We learn that getting into Oblivion and unlocking its secrets has been Reginald Hargreeves’ (Colm Feore) plan all along, making it seem all the more calculated and cold that he murdered Luther (Tom Hopper) and left Klaus (Robert Sheehan) to die just to make it to Oblivion.
Oblivion, as it turns out, is a pocket universe of sorts that itself hides a key to resetting the entire universe. Towards the end of the episode, Hargreeves (who, we musn’t forget, is also an alien) has the bulk of the Umbrella Academy members (plus Lila, Ben and Sloane) serving as batteries of sorts to power up a device that will reset the universe.
With her family dying, Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) takes action and stabs Hargreeves in the head, killing him. But she is transfixed by the idea of hitting a reset button in order to get her daughter and husband back, so she hits the button despite protests from Viktor (Elliot Page) and others.
We then cut to the characters (minus Sloane) exiting out of an elevator into the space where the Umbrella (or Sparrow) Academy should be, but it’s empty save for a garden and statue noting it was donated by one Reginald Hargreeves. The reset button appears to have worked.
But that’s not all. The characters also now find themselves without their powers. Excited at the opportunity to discover themselves, they split off one by one, and the camera then zooms through the city to reveal that Hargreeves has amassed a grand business empire, until we find him atop a tower standing with his wife. You know, the one he left dying on his home planet when he came to Earth in the first place.
So what kind of world have the Umbrellas just entered into?
“I think the better way to see it, without giving too much away, is Reggie Hargreeves didn’t get to quite finish his reprogramming of the universe before he was hit over the head by Allison, who’s finally decided to choose her family over him,” Blackman told TheWrap. “And in that moment, she has no idea what pressing a button does. She just knows that, in a conversation that we haven’t seen but is alluded to, Hargreeves has made promises to her which is, ‘I will give you back your daughter and your husband. I will do that, but you have to work with me.’”
Blackman stressed that while the universe has been reset, it may not exactly be to the specifications that Hargreeves was looking for since he was killed before he finished his work, and that’s something Blackman hopes to tackle in a potential “Umbrella Academy” Season 4.
“Alison blindly presses that button, but she has no idea the forces she’s playing with by doing that,” the showrunner continued. “So everything is reset, and how it is reset and the ways it will be reset is a place we’re going to be going to hopefully in Season 4. And it’s a huge twist that I hope the fans don’t see coming, but I have a good idea what I want to do for Season 4.”
Netflix has not yet renewed the series for a fourth season, it should be noted, but clearly Blackman knows what he’s setting up here – including stranding the characters without their powers.
“I want to pose to the viewer and the fan, ‘Would they be happier without their powers?’ I mean, all they do is complain about being who they are,” Blackman said. “So will Victor, will Diego be happy without it or will they feel like they’re missing an appendage? Will the world not be right for them anymore without powers? Can they be ‘normal’?”
Another question that Blackman sets up for Season 4 is how cold is Hargreeves, exactly? When asked if Reggie actually loves his children after seeing him kill Luther and Klaus, Blackman countered that if Hargreeves knew by going into Oblivion they would reset the universe and Luther and Klaus would come back, he wasn’t actually as heartless as it seems.
“I’m going to pose it to you in a different way,” Blackman began. “If Reggie knew that by resetting the universe, all the kids came back anyway, he knew no matter what he did leading up to that point, the way he was going to reprogram it brought them back anyway, I would posit – and I’m not saying this is necessarily all of what we’re going to do – I think Reggie probably thinks he did a good thing.”
In Reggie’s mind, he’s “fixed” the problems that have plagued his children in various timelines.
“Everyone’s alive and well, at least we think they’re all alive and well. Everyone is intact. And no one has the powers they’ve been bitching about forever. So in some ways, Reggie may come out of this thinking, ‘I’ve done the ultimate good for my children. They’re free of the curse of the powers. I have my wife back. We all should be happy.’ Now of course it’s ‘The Umbrella Academy’ and nobody will be really happy, but that’s for another season.”
Blackman also unpacked Reggie’s murder of Luther.
“He is not a murderous killer,” the showrunner began. “I mean, that scene with Luther is pretty hard to watch, but in his very scientific alien mind, the means will justify that end because he really knows what kind of sausage comes out the other side, which is when I press that button all will reset. These people will all come back. If only I could tell him the truth and trust them with it. If they were different people maybe he’d trust them and tell them what the plan is. But he doesn’t trust them, because historically they screw things up so he’s doing this solo plan. The only thing he promises to Allison is that if you if you back me up, you get your daughter and your husband back in the same timeline.”
Of course, Reggie turns out to be right. But the implications of Allison’s actions and what this new world looks like remain to be explored.
That sound you hear is fans clamoring for Netflix to renew the show for Season 4 already.
“The Umbrella Academy” Season 3 is now streaming.
