‘The Umbrella Academy’ Season 4 Review: Netflix Superhero Drama Wrecks Its Ending

For the Hargreeves siblings, the end of the world is getting a little old hat. After all, they’ve thwarted an impending apocalypse every season since “The Umbrella Academy” premiered on Netflix in 2019 (nevermind that they’ve also inadvertently caused all of them), so it makes sense that after sidestepping the kugelblitz at the end of Season 3, they’d be ready for a break.

That’s where we meet them at the beginning of Season 4, which picks up six years after we last saw the dysfunctional family stumble into a new reality where none of them had superpowers. For some, such as Viktor (Elliot Page) and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), getting to live life as regular humans was a relief. For others, who defined themselves by their superhuman abilities, “normal” life presented a unique challenge, and they struggled to adapt. But after six years, they’ve all settled into their new, somewhat disappointing lives, and still remain close … for the most part.

Lila (Ritu Arya) and Diego (David Castañeda) are married with multiple kids and struggling to get through each day. Viktor owns a bar in Canada, which he has apparently used to alienate every single woman within driving distance. Allison still works in show business, albeit in a less glamorous capacity than her former life, and is raising her daughter Claire (Millie Davis) by herself after her husband, Ray (Season 2’s Yusuf Gatewood) walked out on them between seasons. The previously immortal and recently sober Klaus (Robert Sheehan) has become excessively conscientious about every potential threat in his life, from crossing the street to human contact in general. And so on and so forth.

Still, superpowered or not, it’s always been easy to love the Hargreeves siblings. Each of them has come a long way since they first gathered at their childhood mansion back in Season 1, and nearly all of them get an opportunity to shine in the final season. If the series had given them a satisfying ending, it may have been easier to overlook some of the questionable choices made early on in the final season, such as Ray’s unexplained departure, or the fact that Luther’s new wife Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez) apparently no longer exists (and Luther seems shockingly fine about it).

Unfortunately, those questionable choices only compound as the season progresses, driven yet again by an impending apocalypse. And this time, with no future seasons in sight, the end really is the end — which means each misstep carries that much more weight.

Driving the action following the demise of the Commission in Season 3 is a new villainous organization, and the Hargreeves family is their primary focus. It turns out that while the Hargreeves siblings have spent the past six years trying to make new lives for themselves, another group has been working just as hard to get back to the old ones.

Calling themselves the Keepers, this fringe group of conspiracy theorists are led by the husband and wife team of Gene and Jean Thibodeau (played by real-life couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally). They are convinced that their timeline is “wrong” and are determined to get back to the “original” one. Supporting their theory are various artifacts from the other timeline — a VHS tape of one of Allison’s movies, a copy of Viktor’s memoir “Extra-Ordinary,” photos of Klaus’ cult Destiny’s Children, and Umbrella Academy comics and action figures, the latter of which gives a name to their false memories: The Umbrella Effect. All of the Keepers also sport wrist tattoos of an inside-out umbrella, so that they’ll recognize each other when it matters.

The Keepers are operating without a lot of information, but manage to figure out that Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) is at the center of it, and that the key to finding answers may lie with his estranged alternate-timeline children. It will come as no surprise to any seasoned “Umbrella Academy” fan that it doesn’t take long for that conflict to escalate, and for everyone’s plans to fly off the rails — especially within the Hargreeves family.

As the siblings work together — reluctantly, as always — to get to the bottom of the Keepers’ plan and prevent catastrophe, they each face conflicts both global and personal, and are ultimately forced to decide as a group what they are willing to sacrifice for the greater good.

Emmy Raver-Lampman, Elliot Page and Tom Hopper in “The Umbrella Academy.” (Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix)

None of this sounds particularly novel for fans of “The Umbrella Academy.” After all, we’ve watched this group come together and break apart repeatedly for the past three seasons, while also grappling with their relationships with each other and their controlling alien father, and trying to save the world. And to a certain extent, Season 4 gives us more of the same, once again splitting the Hargreeves family into various smaller groupings as they each try in their own way to uncover the answers that will fix everything.

And for most of Season 4’s six episodes — a truncated order from the 10 episodes each of the previous seasons got — things proceed as we’ve come to expect. We learn a little more about the mysterious events that led the Academy to disband as teenagers, including the real cause of Ben’s (Justin H. Min) death. We discover a new quadrant of reality. We find out what happened to Reginald and Abigail’s (Liisa Repo-Martell) planet that prompted them to relocate to Earth. We even learn a little more about the origins of marigold, the sparkly substance that gave the Hargreeves siblings their powers. And all of this happens while watching the Hargreeves family do what they do best: bicker, complain, undermine and nurse petty grudges, all while pushing themselves to be heroes.

At its core, “The Umbrella Academy” has always been a show about family, generational trauma and the idea that being a “hero” is not an inherent personality trait, but a choice that imperfect people have to make for the good of others. For much of Season 4, as in prior seasons, those are the themes that reign supreme, even as Offerman and Mullaly chew villainous scenery and the Hargreeves family slings barbs and quips like fast-food burgers. There is plenty to love in Season 4, especially just how much these siblings are still able to wriggle under each others’ skins, and into viewers’ hearts. The relationships between the eight of them (because Lila is technically a Hargreeves now through marriage, and would honorarily be one anyway) have always been the beating heart of this series, and that remains true throughout the final season.

However, when it comes to the storyline of Season 4, it’s a mixed bag. Character-wise, the show is as good as ever. Every single performer understands the assignment, and inhabits their character with such deep empathy and commitment that it’s hard to think of any other actor being able to do the role justice. 20-year-old Aiden Gallagher, in particular, will be hard to accept going forward as anything but a crotchety 58-year-old time traveler after embodying Five so fully for four seasons. Everyone from the principal cast to the guest stars does such an amazing job portraying their characters that it hurts to critique any part of the show, even the parts that they had very little hand in.

But it’s hard to ignore the numerous loose ends that are left dangling, and how unsatisfying it feels to wrap things up in a way that prioritizes twists over the emotional core of the series. Maybe we could ignore unresolved plot threads if we got a finale that was both emotionally resonant and true to the themes of the show.

Sadly, when considering Season 4 in light of the entire series, it feels like a betrayal of those wonderful characters that we all invested in so much. Like the show promised a bill of goods that it never fully delivered. While that may have been the point, “The Umbrella Academy” and the Hargreeves family deserved better than to be short-changed in their final act.

It’s hard to get into the nitty gritty without spoilers, but suffice it to say that when the last end credit sequence rolled (note: there is a brief stinger following the final credits), it almost felt like a cruel joke. Make no mistake, series creator Steve Blackman, along with comics creators Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, deserve plenty of credit for dreaming up this zany world and the quirky, lovable characters who inhabit it. But launching a plane and landing it are two different skill sets, and while “The Umbrella Academy” had the former in spades, the latter is another story.

Too many questions were left unanswered. Too many character arcs were left unresolved. And while the lead-up to the finale pushed each character to make hard choices that helped highlight their growth since Season 1, their ultimate destination didn’t feel worthy of the journey they took to get there. It felt rushed and unearned, and entirely outside the scope of the show we’d previously invested in. For three and a half seasons, viewers invested in this show with the understanding that this story and these characters mattered. After Season 4, that no longer seems true.

Let’s be clear: if you watch “The Umbrella Academy” for zany sibling shenanigans, superpowered hijinks, world-ending stakes, and absurd twists and turns that keep you on your toes, Season 4 absolutely delivers. In that sense, it’s a fabulous send-off for this bizarre family, and never fails to entertain.

However, if you watch for the characters and hope that the final season will bring satisfying closure to the wild ride we’ve joined them on for the past five years, it’s hard to square the series finale with the journey we took to get there. It’s hard to justify where it ends with where it’s been. And if we had it all to do over again, maybe we’d ask much earlier in the process, what’s the point of it all?

“The Umbrella Academy” Season 4 premieres Thursday, Aug. 8, on Netflix.