The Biggest Problem With the End of Umbrella Academy

Author's note: This is a pop culture bonus edition of Organizing My Thoughts. If you're not interested in my thoughts about television shows, or you would simply like to avoid Umbrella Academy season four spoilers, please feel free to skip this one.

Fans of the Umbrella Academy have not been shy about their hatred of the show’s final season. As one social media user put it, “Please spare a thought for your local Umbrella Academy fans this weekend. They’ve just suffered a Game Of Thrones-level catastrophe. Arguably worse.” From the bizarre decision to have Lila and Five form a romantic entanglement to the rushed nature of the abbreviated season, condemnations have been plentiful. As a longtime fan, I have to agree there isn’t a lot to like here. Luther’s grief over the loss of his wife Sloane, who vanished at the end of season three, and Allison’s heartbreak over the apparent collapse of her marriage receive only passing mentions. Klaus being sex trafficked is played for laughs. None of the time travel or multiverse stuff even tries to make sense. Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally are wasted in roles that simply aren’t funny. However, the worst offense of this final season is its ultimate conclusion: the total erasure of the show’s main characters.

The climactic moment, when our heroes are gobbled up by a blob-like monster, thus erasing the entirety of their existence, was so jarring that it took me a moment to get my bearings. I knew I hated the show’s finale, but it took me about an hour to fully grasp why. At first, I thought my outrage over the ending was grounded in its rushed nature and a total absence of catharsis. Perhaps I could have tolerated an ending where all of the main characters perished if it felt more meaningful and earned. Then, I wondered if I was simply upset because I loved these characters, and I thought they deserved better. Finally, the root of the problem occurred to me. The reason I loved this band of problematic siblings in the first place, despite all of their mistakes and misdeeds, was that ultimately, they were a group of horribly abused children who were trying to navigate survival, forgiveness, growth, and responsibilities that never should have been thrust upon them. Those are themes that resonate deeply with many people. To make the end game of all of their struggles and conflicts that they simply never should have existed feels hurtful and utterly out of touch with the severity of the themes the writers had invoked.

Even before the pandemic, anxiety and depression had been on the rise among young people for at least a decade. Suicide rates have continued to climb, and tens of millions of people in the United States are suffering from substance abuse disorders. Rates of “climate anxiety” are rightfully soaring. In The Umbrella Academy, we saw characters struggling with trauma, addiction, grief, and the feeling that no matter what they did, the world was doomed. The ultimate resolution for those characters – the discovery that they are incapable of saving themselves or others, are responsible for perpetual disaster, and that the world would ultimately be better off (saved, in fact) if they never existed – feels especially cruel in these times. 

While some will quibble, arguing that the characters chose self-erasure (to allow themselves to be absorbed by a blob monster that wipes people from history) rather than “death” by suicide, the parallel is significant enough to unnerve me.

After so much exploration of abuse, trauma, redemption, and forgiveness, this show deserved an ending that involved some hope and healing. While I expected some casualties along the way, we deserved to see some of the Umbrellas find some peace. Diego and Lila should have danced into the sunset and raised their children. Klaus should have discovered that he could embrace his powers and maintain his sobriety. Viktor should have found some modicum of happiness and kept it. These characters deserved those outcomes because we deserved those outcomes. 

However, I recognize that not every story has a happy ending. I am a huge fan of The Americans, a show that my friends and I would often joke “doesn’t give a fuck about your feelings.” Umbrella Academy, on the other hand, did seem invested in its viewers' feelings – at least for a time. The show’s second season grappled with trauma and redemption with a tenderness that seemed to reflect a caring relationship with the show’s audience. When I watched those episodes, I believed the people making this show had a grasp of the tumultuous times we were living in and what it felt like to endure them. (To be fair, it's possible that some of the writers who made the show's second season great were fired by showrunner Steve Blackman, who has been accused of "toxic, bullying, manipulative, and retaliatory behavior" toward staff, including writers.)

In the penultimate episode of season two, when Ben (Justin H. Min) told his brother Viktor (Elliot Page), who was poised to destroy the world, “It’s not too late,” those words touched my soul. When Ben rejected Viktor’s arguments that he was a monster who didn’t deserve to live, we were clearly meant to agree, in spite of Viktor's brutal past. Ben recounted the abuse Viktor had suffered as a child and told his brother lovingly, “Maybe you have a right to be pissed off, sad, and messed up. It’s a shitty world full of shitty people sometimes.” Ben’s reassurance that Viktor was not alone and that he and the world could be saved conjured a sense of possibility. If there was hope for Viktor, if someone who had caused an apocalypse could find his way to love and decency, perhaps there was hope for us all. Perhaps humanity itself could be redeemed.

Of course, that possibility came at a cost. The close of the show’s second season was marked by painful sacrifices, as Viktor and Allison left true love behind to return to the future. In Allison’s parting letter to her husband, a Civil Rights organizer named Ray, she left a message that felt like it was intended for viewers as well:

I wish I could tell you that it’s going be easier from here, but it’s not. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. So, I need you to hold on. Keep faith. Believe that good things will happen. Because the fight for a better world is never over. And we all have choices to make.

In the absence of a happy ending, Umbrella Academy could have given us something akin to its season two finale: loss, uncertainty, hope, and a call to never give up, no matter how bleak things might seem. In the age of doomerism, in a society that shamelessly reenacts normalcy while the world burns, there’s nothing edgy or impressive about characters surrendering to the forces that would devour them. The idea that people who’ve been batted about by abusers and set up for cycles of destruction are to blame for everything that’s wrong with the world and have no meaningful recourse, aside from surrendering to oblivion, is as creatively lazy as it is morally vacant. Perhaps the show should have ended after two seasons and left the fates of our heroes to our imaginations. I am sure that many fans have dreamed of better endings for these characters. May we continue to do so. 

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