The Umbrella Academy Timeline Subway Sums Up the Wasted Potential of Season 4

The conclusion of The Umbrella Academy was never going to be out-and-out happy. The disease-prone Hargreeves family that we have grown to love are not the world’s most sentimental bunch. Thus, in the series’ finale, when the siblings hold hands with their hands linked, willingly committing themselves to this-genus sacrificial deaths for the purpose of eradicating all these apocalypses once and for all, and when Klaus (Robert Sheehan) tenderly utters, “. . . I love you guys but you are all assholes,” it fits. Alas, there are so many other facets of Umbrellas’ conclusion that does not fit — and thus, the fourth and last season of the Netflix show about super-adults with a whole bunch of unresolved childhood issues turns out to be somewhat different than bittersweet. The Hargreeves children could have been sent off to their respective fates in truly satisfying fashion, though there are moments when that potential is sketched out; for the most part, the final scenes of the series are riddled with squandered endings. 
 
This entire sentiment is perfectly encapsulated in one of the major set pieces of the season: Subway called ‘the Timeline Subway’. Oh, the Timeline Subway — what you could have been! 
 
Season four falls six years after the events of the first three seasons when the Hargreeves siblings emerged from Oblivion, into a reset 2019 not having their powers anymore. The type of frustration that is being felt by every single person is some or the other frustration with life. Oh, joy, welcome to being a normie, kids! When a man named Sy Grossman (David Cross) approaches them to find his “missing” “daughter” Jennifer (Victoria Sawal), they end up in possession of the jar of marigold — or, the essence that a once-heartbroken Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) released into the universe in order to create 43 babies out of In short: marigold is the element through which all the Hargreeves’ siblings gain powers. 
 
Finally it is revealed that Abigail (Liisa Repo-Martell), wife of Reginald who created the marigold as well as Durango, was in fact imitating Sy with the purpose of getting that marigold into the hands of the Hargreeves siblings – to combine it with durango and with the help of it, bring the apocalypse – as a form of retribution for having created something so destructive in the first place If you’re saying to yourself, ‘Hey, that looks like a pretty weak reason to initiate an entire apocalypse, buddy boy,’ then you wouldn’t be alone. 
 
We are not here, however, to turn our noses up in disbelief at the Abigail scenarios of life. Her plan does, of course — when Ben Hargreeves (Justin H. Min) understands what that jar of marigold means , he poisons his sibling’s drinks and regains his powers as does everyone else. But these powers will be a tad different this go-around — they are intensified. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), for instance, does not need to say ‘I heard a rumor’ and make people do things her way; by just thinking it, they sha kes things into reality. Diego (David Castañeda) can work with metal very effectively now, not only can he make it move to where he wants it to go or stop bullets in midair, now he can take those bullets and turn them around on his foe at the blink of an eye. Klaus can levitate now. And as for Five (Aidan Gallagher), when the kid blinks, it isn’t just through space or time, though now he ends up in one of those semi-creepy subway stations between timelines. The final stations are the same but depending on which timeline the character got there, things at the stations could be very different. Wow, it sounds actually awesome, does not it? And so clever! Learned it actually was the end that played well to conclude four seasons of a show that kept the viewers leaping from one era to another throughout the series. If Five is jumping through timelines, then some serious Umbrella Academy moments might be revisited! The cast could very much have fun going at it playing different dimensions of the respective characters. The Timeline Subway could be that convenient avenue to express both memory and festivity by the time the show is laid to rest. 
 
And yet, the Timeline Subway isn’t used for any of that – it doesn’t depict tribal logos or archaic symbols. Yes, we briefly glimpse Five in his original apocalyptic world with Dolores the mannequin [End of Ep. 1], and there’s a little detour into a timeline where the Umbrella Academy doesn’t exist and instead there’s the Phoenix Academy [End of Ep. 3]; other than that no real toying around with Umbrella Academy time-line. 
 
What they end up using the subway for isn’t uninteresting; it’s just that it can’t fuel the media’s sensationalism. It serves two primary purposes: Lila is a deeply unfulfilled housewife who feels that she is trapped in her marriage and motherhood; Five happens to get on the subway with her with the intention of helping her stop the whole end-of-the-world thing, but, they lost their way and they are stuck in the subway for seven years; out of struggling to find their way home, they fall in love. In one episode we get to see all the unfolding of this particular love story. Despite the impression that it has irritated some of the show’s supporters, this is, in fact, one of the best side plots considered for the season. Forgive me, I am a big fan of stories where the main characters start as rivals only to find themselves falling in love (Five and Lila, when they met each other they were on the verge of killing each other, aren’t enemies-to-lovers on steroids?) But much more than the romance aspect, the storyline makes Five a well-developed character in a season where almost all the other characters are poorly endowed. Of course, one can say that it would be at least something interesting and fully developed if the authors did something with the siblings, at least with one of it, and here we are. In Five’s transition from a grumpy old man to someone in love, and even to someone who is willing to give up love, first to bring Lila back to her kids and then to save the world. It also helps that Gallagher and Arya are both joy to see on the screen whenever they are together.

The other major way in which this series employs this particular locale is that it is a convenient plot contrivance by which Five can come across a whole host of Fives. He enters a subway in order to get away from her and find a diner with other versions of himself from other timelines. It's here that he learns what the season has been leading up to all along: There will be apocalypses in any timeline that they appear in as long as people carrying marigold are alive. The marigold babies were born in the original timeline and split that timeline into thousands and thousands of branches. The only way to return the Chabernascher and revert to the original timeline is by deleting Marigold out of the universe — indeed, deleting the Hargreeves siblings. I'll admit it: It is entertaining to witness all the Fives come together, which even if it is for a short time and even though they are conveying a rather menacing message. 
 
But even while the Timeline Subway isn’t entirely wasted, all that I could ponder while admiring this story in six episodes is how effectively it might have been used. Ultimately, the Timeline Subway is just a shining neon arrow pointing to the fact that some of the high points of The Umbrella Academy were thrown to the wind in the last six episodes. It is true that SPA Studios and The Umbrella Academy had some delightful fun while dealing with some somewhat bleak stuff before; that was the show’s hook as a superhero show. Of course, seeing the Hargreeves family unable to stop vomiting in a van to the ‘Baby Shark’ song can be somewhat cute and amusing; this is where a great deal of the audacity that made the show so enjoyable was lacking from this season. 
 
Even more egregious: The ground level was that the Umbrella Academy as a show, like its characters, is stronger when the family is together — when the characters and cast can feed off each other. This season broke up many of the siblings, or put them into couples, in frivolous side plots for large chunks of the season. Amidst all of it, did Diego and Luther, the man who had been virtually reduced to a glorified background character this season in Tom Hopper, need to take a detour to the CIA? Yes, Viktor (Elliot Page) has daddy issues and might need to work some things out with Reg (he doesn’t in any meaningful way), but don’t they all? And poor Klaus! He finds himself tied up in a solo sex worker arc which provides little to add to the overall plot of the show. Ben, who dies in the timeline of the first season – the so-called ‘the Jennifer Incident,’ before which the events of season four are to take place – never gets any kind of real redeeming before he meets Jennifer, the holder of the durango, and they become a gigantic world-destructing creature. Not even the most fleshed out of the minor plots, Five-Lila-Diego, gets any chance to unfold in the last stretch of the film. At six episodes, this season was half the length of the three preceding it (10 episodes each), but rather than building a compelling narrative to ensure that the show deserved a send-off –assuming the creators were planning one–the season felt as though was 10 episodes arc compressed to a six and everyone suffered the consequences. 
 
Yeah, well, it’s very convenient to say all this now — perhaps, this is what fan fiction is for, though it is saddening that the show producers seemed to really forget about these issues, and then the solution was just sitting in the Timeline Subway all this time. It would have been a fun way of rallying people with the message for everyone as a family, playing around with character archetyping, and focusing on the joyful aspects of The Umbrella Academy before our Hargreeves protagonists willingly give up the ghost in order to save the world. What an odd turn it is to arrive at this point feeling as though one is Reginald Hargreeves, of all people (or aliens) lecturing about squandered opportunity, is there not the sound of a subway car continuously rolling, yet standing still?