Umbrella Academy Sneakily Prevents Season 4 From Making A Huge Retcon

The Umbrella Academy has prevented season 4 from making a time travel retcon by replacing Hotel Oblivion and thereby removing the time travel machine.

Umbrella Academy Sneakily Prevents Season 4 From Making A Huge Retcon

A location switch at the end of The Umbrella Academy season 3 covertly prevents season 4 from retconning the time travel storyline. After months of pandemic-related delays, The Umbrella Academy returned with the Hargreeves siblings, fresh off of another time jump, going head-to-head with the Sparrows, Reginald Hargreeves’ answer to the Umbrellas, while figuring out how to stop a newly-formed kugelblitz. After escaping yet another apocalypse, the Hargreeves find themselves in a strange new universe at the end of season 3.

The Hargreeves are no strangers to confronting the end of the world. In season 3, they face down the apocalypse from Reginald’s Hotel Obsidian, which is a front for an interdimensional portal. The siblings cross through the portal into Hotel Oblivion to help their father restore the universe and fuel the hotel, which is an enormous reset machine. Before their bodies can be depleted, Umbrella Academy‘s Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) kills Reginald and presses the reset button. However, the Hargreeves do not emerge back into the hotel.

Season 3 of The Umbrella Academy concludes with the team entering their new reality by way of Obsidian Memorial Park, which was donated by Reginald on October 1, 1989. The universe was indeed reset, albeit not to a timeline the team recognizes. Allison is reunited with daughter Claire, but she is also reunited with her husband Raymond, whom she married when she was stuck in the ’60s. The rest of the Hargreeves no longer have their powers, the most notable being Five, who is unable to time travel. Introducing Obsidian Memorial Park may prevent time travel from dominating the plot in future seasons, as it does not link to Hotel Obsidian or Oblivion. The machine used to save the universe, at least in this reality, doesn’t exist anymore, so Hargreeves’ children are out of luck in returning to anywhere familiar.

For the past three seasons, the Hargreeves have been able to manage the difficulties of time traveling and dodging various apocalypses, what with the Commission’s briefcases, Five’s ability, and now Hotel Oblivion’s system. The Umbrella Academy may very well raise the stakes in season 4 by denying the siblings as simple of a solution as a briefcase or portal. Since the end of season 3 has deprived the Hargreeves of their powers, perhaps season 4 will delve more into their individual journeys as normal, everyday citizens. Any retcon of season 3 is unlikely to happen, since no time-traveling outlet is available to them, at least not one apparent to audiences.

Judging by the last shot of Reginald in The Umbrella Academy season 3, who seems to have crafted a Hargreeves-centric city — most buildings in the metropolis bear his name — this reality may not be the one Allison hoped for. The mid-credits scene also complicates matters by introducing another version of Ben, this time on a train in South Korea. Does this mean other versions of the Hargreeves exist as well? Only time will tell if the Hargreeves ever truly return to the timeline they once knew, regain their superhero abilities, or eventually learn to settle in to their new power-free reality.