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

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Season 4 of The Umbrella Academy. Read at your own risk!]

The end of The Umbrella Academy was always going to be bittersweet. Our rough-around-the-edges Hargreeves family have never been ones for too much sentimentality. So, in the series finale, when the siblings stand with linked hands, sacrificing themselves in order to finally end all of these apocalypses for good, and Klaus (Robert Sheehan) sweetly says, "...I love you guys, but you are all assholes," it feels perfectly right. Unfortunately, there are so many other elements of the Umbrellas' ending that do not feel right — and so the fourth and final season of the Netflix show about superpowered adults with a whole lot of unprocessed childhood trauma winds up being bittersweet in a different way. There was so much potential to send the Hargreeves siblings out on a high note, and there are individual moments that live up to that potential, but for the most part, the end of The Umbrella Academy is littered with missed opportunities to say goodbye in a truly satisfying way.

This entire sentiment is perfectly encapsulated in one of the major set pieces of the season: the Timeline Subway. Oh, the Timeline Subway — what you could have been! 

Season 4 begins six years after the Hargreeves siblings came out of Oblivion into a reset 2019 and learned they no longer have their powers. Everyone is experiencing some level of dissatisfaction with their life. (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 wind up in possession of a jar of marigold — or, the essence that a once-brokenhearted Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) released into the universe that caused those 43 mothers to get pregnant and give birth on Oct. 1, 1989. In short: marigold is what gives the Hargreeves siblings their superpowers. 

In the end, it turns out that Reginald's wife, Abigail (Liisa Repo-Martell), who created the marigold and its opposite element, durango, was pretending to be Sy in order to get that marigold into the Hargreeves siblings' hands in order to set them on a path to combine the marigold and durango and thus bring about the end of the world, as a sort of penance for ever creating such devastating power in the first place (and to teach Reginald the lesson that he should have left well enough alone and never touched the marigold in the first place). If that sounds like a pretty weak reason to bring about an entire apocalypse to you, you are not alone. 

ALSO READ: The Umbrella Academy cast share reactions to bittersweet Season 4 ending

But we're not here to shake our heads in disbelief at the Abigail of it all. Her plan works, of course — when Ben Hargreeves (Justin H. Min) realizes what that jar of marigold means, he spikes his siblings' drinks, and everyone gets their powers back. But these powers are a little different this time around — they're heightened. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), for example, doesn't need to use the phrase "I heard a rumor" to get people to do what she wants; she just has to think it. Diego (David Castañeda) can manipulate metal so well now that not only can he bend it to his will, direct it where to go, or stop bullets in midair, but now he can turn those bullets around and send them flying into his enemy with ease. Klaus can levitate now. As for Five (Aidan Gallagher), when he blinks, it's not just through space or time; now, he winds up landing in a mysterious subway station — one that travels between various timelines. You wind up at the same place, on the same day, but depending on the timeline, things could be very different at each station. It sounds so cool, right? And so clever! What a perfect way to wrap up four seasons of a show that sent us bouncing around in various timelines for its entire run. If Five is hopping timelines, we could revisit some major Umbrella Academy moments! The cast could have a blast playing different versions of their characters. The Timeline Subway could offer an easy outlet for both nostalgia and celebration as the show takes its final bow. 

And yet, the Timeline Subway isn't used for any of that. Sure, we get a quick look at Five in his original apocalypse with Dolores (mannequin), and there's a brief pit stop in a timeline where, instead of the Umbrella Academy or Sparrow Academy, we find the Phoenix Academy, but that's it as far as playing with Umbrella Academy history. 

It's not that what they wind up using the subway for isn't compelling. It serves two primary purposes: When Five and Lila (Ritu Arya), who is feeling stuck in her marriage and motherhood, wind up hopping on the subway to help prevent the whole end-of-the-world thing, they get lost and are trapped together for seven years trying to get home, and they eventually fall in love. We see this whole love story play out in one episode. While it has seemed to rankle some fans, this is actually one of the best subplots of the season. Listen, I'm a sucker for enemies-to-lovers, and I won't apologize for it (and Five and Lila, who literally wanted to murder one another when they first met, are enemies-to-lovers on steroids). But more than the romance, the storyline gives Five a fully realized character arc in a season where almost everyone else is given the short end of the stick. Admittedly, the bar is low when you're saying to yourself, at least they did something interesting and fully developed with one of the siblings, but here we are. We watch Five go from grumpy old man to falling in love to giving up all of that, first to get Lila home to her kids, and then again to save the world. It doesn't hurt that Gallagher and Arya are so fun to watch on screen together. 

The other significant way the series uses this set piece is that it provides a way for Five to run into a whole gaggle of Fives. Within the subway, he finds a diner where various versions of himself from other timelines are hanging out. It's here that he learns what the season has been leading up to all along: The apocalypses will never stop happening in any timeline as long as those infected with marigold exist. When the marigold babies were born in the original timeline, it broke that timeline into thousands and thousands of versions. The only way to get back to the original timeline is to wipe marigold from the universe — to wipe the Hargreeves siblings from existence. I'll admit it: It's fun to see all the Fives interact, even if briefly, and even if only to deliver such a dire message. 

And yet, while the Timeline Subway isn't completely wasted, all I could think about while watching this story play out over six episodes is that it could have been utilized in much more meaningful ways. In the end, the Timeline Subway simply serves as a glaring signal that some of the best elements of The Umbrella Academy were cast aside in its final six episodes. Even while dealing with some grim subject matter, The Umbrella Academy always found ways to make things fun before; that's what set it apart from other superhero shows. Sure, watching the Hargreeves family uncontrollably vomit in a van while "Baby Shark" is playing on a loop has a certain charm to it, but so much of the spark that made the show a hoot was missing from this season. 

ALSO READ: The Umbrella Academy Season 4 review: Netflix's biggest superhero drama has lost its zany appeal

Even more egregious: The Umbrella Academy, like its characters, has always been stronger when the family is together — when the characters and cast can bounce off one another. This season separated, or paired off, a lot of the siblings in half-baked subplots for major swaths of time. In the middle of everything, did Diego and Luther (Tom Hopper), a character given zero development this season, need to go off to spend time at the CIA? And 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 gets stuck in a solo sex worker storyline that has no real payoff as far as the main story is concerned. Ben, whose death in the Season 1 timeline — known as "the Jennifer Incident" — is supposed to be the impetus for Season 4, never gets any kind of real redemption before he connects with Jennifer (who contains the durango), and that connection turns them into a giant world-ending monster. Not even the most fully developed of the subplots, the Five-Lila-Diego triangle, gets any real time to breathe in the end. The episode order for this season (six episodes) was significantly shorter than the three previous seasons (10 episodes each), but instead of crafting a story designed to give the show a well-deserved send-off in a limited amount of time, the season plays out like a 10-episode arc was sandwiched down to just six, and everyone paid the price. 

It's admittedly easy to Monday morning quarterback here — and that's what fan fiction is for, anyway — but the missteps in Season 4 felt especially frustrating because it seemed like the answer, or, at least, the framework to fix these problems, was right there all along in the Timeline Subway. It could have been an easy, fun way to get the whole family together, play with character development, and celebrate the best parts of The Umbrella Academy before watching our beloved Hargreeves siblings sacrifice themselves to save the world. What an unexpected twist to end things feeling like Reginald Hargreeves, of all people (or, aliens), yapping on about wasted potential, but here we are, sitting in a subway car that feels like it never really leaves the station.

The Umbrella Academy Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.