In season 4 of The Umbrella Academy, the siblings a brought back together to stop yet another apocalypse.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary:
It has been a few years since the universe was restored and everyone has settled into a life of their own.
Lila and Diego have three children and are living a boring suburban life, Luther is an exotic dancer and stays in the old condemned academy building.
Allison is doing commercials and raising her daughter Claire with Klaus’s help. He has gotten sober and is now a germaphobe.
Ben gets out of prison after serving almost four years for a crypto-scam that bankrupted thousands of people.
Viktor owns a bar in Canada and Five works as an agent of the CIA. He is investigating a group called ‘The Keepers’, people who claim that they are in the wrong timeline.
The Keepers are led by a couple named Dr. Gene and Jean Thibedeau and they believe in the theory of multiple timelines and something called ‘the cleanse’ that will make everything right.
The siblings gather for Diego and Lila’s daughter’s birthday but when Viktor gets there, he is kidnapped by a man named Sy Grossman.
Five and Lila meet at one of the Keepers’ gatherings and she asks him to keep it a secret from Diego.
She got tired of their life and wanted something more so she started going undercover. Diego follows her and assumes she is cheating, not recognizing Five.
Luther gets a letter telling him that Viktor was kidnapped and they need to meet at Sy’s laundromat to find him.
They find Viktor, and Sy tells them that his daughter Jennifer was taken by the Keepers and asks them for their help finding her.
Five says he will take the case and reveals that he found a jar of marigold in the box that Sy gave them.
Ben is eager to get his powers back and so is Diego but the others aren’t so sure. Ben decides to spike everyone’s drink but Klaus doesn’t drink his.
They all wake up with powers the next day and head to Sy’s where they just find a map with the town of New Grumpson circled on it.
They drive for hours until they eventually reach the town but get into an argument about what to do next.
They split up, and Ben finds Jennifer. The others are browsing around town when the townspeople start firing at them.
Everyone’s powers are upgraded and when Five tries to blink, he finds himself at a subway station.
He takes a train one station over and comes out at the same place and time but in a different timeline. He heads back and doesn’t tell anyone else about it.
Klaus was left behind in the van when a woman came rushing claiming to be Jennifer. The others show up too and the woman shoots Klaus.
Allison pours some marigold into his wound to save him, but their van is t-boned by Gene and Jean, who take Jennifer and drive away.
The people at New Grumpson were all Reginald Hargreeves’ people and they were protecting Jennifer, so everyone agreed that someone needed to go talk to him.
Ben touched Jennifer while they were in the van and a reaction occurred. He wants to find her so he heads out on his own.
Klaus is not happy that they gave him the marigold and goes back home to relapse. Allison, Luther, and Viktor head to Reginald’s place.
Lila, Diego, and Five go to Gene and Jean’s office to look for more evidence. While they are there, Lila forces Five to take her to the subway.
Diego finds a file on the mission where Ben died in the original timeline, and it is called the ‘Jennifer incident’.
Luther, Diego, and Allison realize that they don’t know how exactly Ben died and that the original Reginald wiped their memories.
The Reginald of this timeline helps them regain their memories with a machine, and Viktor chooses to watch it as well.
They were sent on a mission to destroy a weapon inside a container, but Ben opened the container and found Jennifer inside.
The same reaction happens but the original Reginald shows up and kills Ben and Jennifer. Abigail explains that this is all her fault.
She created the marigold, but another substance called durango was created and when the two come in contact, the cleanse is born.
Jennifer has the durango with her and Luther reveals that Ben touched Jennifer so the end has already begun.
This timeline’s Jennifer was found inside a giant squid and the first words she said were “the cleanse”.
Gene and Jean ask her what they need to do to start the cleanse but she has no idea. Ben meets Sy who tells him how imperative it is to find Jennifer.
Ben goes to the ranch where she is kept and massacres the people there before escaping with Jennifer.
Gene and Jean mobilize some of the Keepers to look for them. Sy shows up to help and Gene immediately feels jealous about them.
The others show up at the ranch after and then split up again. Five asks the director of the CIA to keep Luther and Diego occupied while he investigates.
He takes Lila and goes back to the subway station so that they can return to the original timeline and stop Ben’s death.
Viktor travels with Reginald because he believes he can still save Ben. Klaus finds his old dealer who wants to collect on his debt.
He finds out about Klaus’s powers and then uses them to collect. Klaus acts as a medium to provide services, and a woman comes in to find out where her dead husband hid his money.
Klaus finds out that it is buried somewhere but when he tries to get it for himself, he is interrupted and ends up getting buried alive.
Allison and Claire go looking for him and eventually find him. Lila and Five get lost in the subway and spend six years together looking for a way back.
They fall in love and decide to stay in a different timeline but Five finds a book that explains how to get back home in his handwriting.
When he reveals it to Lila, she says that what they had is over and she wants to go back to her children.
Luther goes looking around in the CIA office and discovers that Fives’ boss is a Keeper and that their reach is more than they could imagine.
Diego and Luther fight them off and get to Lila and Diego’s house. So do the others, while Viktor sticks with Reginald to try and stop Ben.
Ben and Jennifer walk into an abandoned mall where Jennifer feels sick. Ben stays by her side and the reaction between them intensifies.
Gene tries to send Sy away but is killed as Sy is revealed to be Abigal Hargreeves. She then takes Gene’s place and they gather all the Keepers to protect the mall.
Gene kills Jean before she can figure out it is Abigail and then orders everyone else to stand firm.
The truth about Five and Lila comes out but they don’t have much time to process it because the news of Ben and Jennifer is on TV.
Ending explained:
Brawl at the mall
Viktor sneaks into the mall and finds Ben and Jennifer completely disfigured. He explains that durango to Ben and tries to get him away, but Ben doesn’t want to leave.
The rest of the family blinks into the mall, and Viktor tries to pull the durango out of Ben. Reginald gives the signal for a sniper to take the shot.
Viktor gets a vision, and then Ben pushes him out of the way of the shot. He goes down and then Jennifer fuses with him to form the cleanse, a giant monster.
Diego and Five starts fighting over what happened with Lila, and the others try to attack the cleanse but whatever they do it just grows larger.
Lila breaks up their fight so he blinks away.
The reason for all this
Abigail joins Reginald and tells him that she brought about the end of the world because it was the right thing to do.
Reginald changed the course of the universe to save her, even though dying was her penance for creating the cleanse in the first place.
They are then consumed by the cleanse
The rest of the siblings head back to the academy while Five travels on the train and then sees another version of himself at the station.
He follows him to a diner with several versions of himself and one of them explains that everything is happening because of the broken timeline.
There is supposed to be only one timeline and the original Five rushes back to fix things.
Saying goodbye
Five goes to the academy and tells everyone that they are the reason the world keeps ending and that to fix things, they must cease to exist.
They do that by giving their marigold to the cleanse, but not everyone is on board with that idea.
Viktor confirms this by saying that Ben showed him a vision of the true timeline where everyone was happy.
Lila takes her family and Allison’s daughter on the subway after Diego suggests it. They need her for it to work and Five goes after her to reconvince her.
She leaves her family on the train and then goes back with Five. Everyone gathers around and waits for the cleanse to swallow them up, saying their teary goodbyes.
The alternate timelines disappear and the true one remains, where all the people who were involved with the Umbrella Academy are living normal, happy lives.
Also Read: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder summary and ending explained