Umbrella Academy season 3 has arrived on Netflix, and the Hargreeves family is up to their usual antics of fighting each other and facing off against a massive, cosmic-level threat that may or may not consume all of reality. You know, normal dysfunctional family stuff. This season took things bigger and somehow stranger than ever before, and we don’t mean that lightly considering Season 2 saw them travel back in time to the ’50s and take on a group of Swedish assassins. and also a man who was actually a sentient goldfish in a robotic body.
We’re going to break it all down here, but be careful if you haven’t finished Season 3, there are major spoilers ahead--and most of them probably don’t make much sense if you’re not at least mostly stuck with the Umbrella Academy as a whole. Please proceed with caution!
We learn right away that this new present the Hargreeves family find themselves in has changed drastically. By interacting with their father in the past, they inspired him to adopt better children, which is entirely possible, after all, they weren’t the only mystery babies born on that day in 1989. So the Umbrellas have been replaced by the Sparrows, a well-oiled fighting machine that is basically better and more successful than the Umbrellas in every way. But there’s a problem: inconsistencies in time and space have created what Five calls a Kugelblitz, an anomaly that grows larger and larger until it eventually consumes all of reality and destroys the universe.
Oh!
So adjusting to their new lives isn’t an option, the Umbrellas, with the reluctant help of the Sparrows, must figure out what’s going on and stop the Kugelblitz, or just let it go. It turns out that three consecutive existential crises are no fun for anyone and the option of letting the universe end is definitely on the table.
While this is happening, several other mysteries unfold, the most important of which revolves around Reginald Hargreeves himself, who manages to convince Klaus that he is a different man in this reality and wants to be a good father. This, of course, is a lie, and it turns out that Reginald has actually been (unsurprisingly) manipulating everyone in an effort to funnel seven of his children (he doesn’t particularly care if they’re Sparrows or Umbrella) into a project secret that he has been organizing for decades inside a building he built called Hotel Oblivion. Inside this hotel is a secret pocket dimension, guarded by monstrous Guardians, that holds the key to creating a whole new universe. The problem is that the machine that can create the universe needs seven superpowered people to run it.
So, in the midst of all their personal problems (Diego and Lila may have a child, Luthor falls in love, Five wants to retire, Viktor must deal with a figure from his past, Klaus is being manipulated by Reginald, and Allison is consumed with post-traumatic stress and the pain that caused him to turn his back on the family) and with the universe slowly ending, the Umbrellas and Sparrows try to find ways to stop the Kugelblitz. However, they ultimately fail and are forced to turn to Reginald for possible solutions.
Reginald tells them that Hotel Oblivion is a means to save the world, but the team can’t come to a consensus on whether or not they should trust him. Allison, however, makes a secret deal with him to convince the family to join him, and we are never actually told what that deal is or was.
However, we see what happens as a result. The Umbrellas (plus Sloane and Ben, the only two Sparrows to survive the Kugelblitz and/or other fights) end up inside the dimension inside Hotel Oblivion and are ultimately tricked into powering up Hargreeves’ machine. In the process, they realize that the machine will likely kill them, all while Allison watches, weighing her options in the heat of the moment as Reginald shows her true colors. He never intended to create a new world that was safe for everyone and he never cared about making peace with his abused children, he just wanted to achieve something for himself.
Allison tries to intervene at the last moment, but it is (possibly) too late: the machine works, as far as we know, although the people who acted as batteries survive. About.
The Umbrellas suddenly find themselves in a memorial park dedicated to Hargreeves, inside what seems like a new Earth, one where Hotel Oblivion never existed. However, mysteriously, both Sloane and Allison are missing. Allison’s absence is explained, when it is shown that she obtained her wish to reunite with her family (although it is unclear how that happened, or where happened, could be in an alternate reality or something else entirely), but Sloane seems to have faded away. Critically, all of Umbrella’s injuries appear to have healed as well, including Luthor’s mutated body.
The mysteries continue to grow as the camera zooms out and we see that Reginald has also arrived in this new world, and seems to be, in one way or another, running things. Giant signs of Hargreeves-owned companies cover a crowded skyline as the man himself stands in a skyscraper looking on, along with his wife, who was apparently resurrected as a result of the machine.
Confused and finally exhausted by the chaos, the Umbrellas end the episode by going their separate ways. It’s unclear what they plan to do, or how this new world will affect them, but given Reginald’s apparent seat of power, we can assume they won’t move on to lead peaceful, uneventful lives.
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