Commentary: A Shortened Final Season For ‘The Umbrella Academy’ Leads To Plot Holes

It’s tricky trying to develop a final season for a streaming show. A lot of times, studios will give a series a final season as a send-off rather than just cancel it outright and never allow the story to wrap up. It’s a move seemingly made out of respect for those involved in the production. The problem is studios might do this reluctantly, which pushes the story into a corner. In the case of The Umbrella Academy, they were given an incredibly short season of just six episodes to generate a brand new plot and wrap up the story in a bow. Unfortunately, things moved so quickly that the story is riddled with plot holes that unravel the entire thing.

The show’s final season takes place many years after the previous one, where the various members of the Umbrella Academy are trying to live out their lives without any powers. This changes when a group of zealots try to end the world through a mysterious process called the Cleanse. It involves a woman named Jennifer (Victoria Sawal), who is destined to combine with Ben (Justin H. Min) and wipe out reality. To prevent this from happening, Hargreaves (Colm Feore) keeps Jennifer imprisoned in an artificial town of his own making.

In the original timeline, the Umbrella Academy learned that Ben was actually killed by Hargreaves to prevent this Cleanse from happening. It occured on a mission where they were supposed to kill Jennifer. But in this alternate timeline, Hargreaves decides to imprison her instead, which makes no sense. He’s already proven himself to be a terrible person who would kill without hesitation, but he doesn’t kill Jennifer. He only opts to kill her and Ben after they touch. This is a tremendous plot hole that doesn’t make sense. And it’s not alone. There are a lot of potholes in this final season, which is evidence of a rushed production that tried to give the show a worthy goodbye without careful storytelling.

The Umbrella Academy is now streaming on Netflix.