Season 1 of the new Netflix Original Series The Umbrella Academy ends with a bang, literally, as a wave of destruction consumes the world. But look to the very last shot to learn how the ending of the first season of The Umbrella Academy may not be as final as it first appears—the last shot of the last episode of The Umbrella Academy doesn't end with an explosion, but with a flash of blue light.
The Umbrella Academy begins on October 1, 1989, when 43 women around the world—women who weren't previously pregnant—give birth. Sir Reginald Hargreeves, a billionaire adventurer (and likely alien), hunts down and scoops up as many of the mysterious babies as he can find, ultimately adopting seven of them: Klaus, Luther, Diego, Allison, Ben, Vanya and Number Five. Each of them exhibit extraordinary powers, except Vanya (Ellen Page), who is seemingly powerless and, instead of a superhero, becomes a world-class violinist. While premised in the 80s, The Umbrella Academy is mostly set in the present day, after the now-adult Academy reunites for Hargreeves' funeral.
The Umbrella Academy Ending Explained
At the end of the first episode of The Umbrella Academy, Number Five (Aidan Gallagher)—who has returned from the future but inhabits his prepubescent body—describes to Vanya what he sees when he last used his power to jump forward. "When I jumped forward and got stuck in the future, do you know what I found? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. As far as I can tell, I was the last person left alive," Number Five says. "I never figured out what killed the human race; I did find something else: the date it happens. The world ends in eight days. I have no idea how to stop it."
Over the subsequent episodes, The Umbrella Academy does their best to avert this apocalypse, but end up going after the wrong target. It's only in the ninth episode, "Changes," that they learn the truth: Vanya doesn't just have powers, but is the most powerful of them all. They attempt to imprison her beneath the Academy, but by the episode's end, she's broken free and is very, very angry.
"Vanya destroys the Academy before the apocalypse," Number Five explains to the rest of the Academy. "I thought Harold Jenkins was the cause, but he was the fuse. Vanya is the bomb. Vanya causes the apocalypse."
At the beginning of the finale, "White Violin," Vanya destroys the Academy mansion room-by-room and confronts Reginald's assistant, a talking chimpanzee named Pogo (Adam Godley). Furious at being betrayed by her adoptive siblings and re-traumatized by her imprisonment in the same cell where the abusive Hargreeves would sometimes lock her, Vanya has become a force of destruction known as White Violin.
"Your father discovered that you were capable of great things, much like your brothers and sister. But your powers were too great. He only wanted to protect you from yourself, as well as your siblings," Pogo says, before confessing to his participation in the cover-up of her powers, for which Vanya kills him, impaling the talking ape on a set of deer antlers above the great room fireplace.
The rest of the Umbrella Academy confronts Vanya at the Icarus Theater, where she was supposed to perform. Instead, their battle tears the theater apart. Vanya is seemingly unstoppable, until Allison fires a gun right by her ear, disrupting her soundwave powers. Vanya falls back and her blast shoots upward, shattering the moon. The pieces fall back to Earth, consuming the world in a sea of fiery destruction. But just before the shockwave hits the Icarus Theater, Five uses his time powers to transform the Academy siblings—including an unconscious Vanya—into their teenaged selves, then teleports them through time, away from the destruction.
But where, or when, did they go?
"The truth is, we don't know where they are. We don't know what happened to them. I wanted this to really be the best of cliffhangers, in that you're like 'Wait, what? What happened?'" showrunner Steve Blackman told The Hollywood Reporter. "But yes, the apocalypse is not solved."
While we don't know whether Number Five has teleported the surviving Umbrella Academy children, but we do know there are many adventures ahead. According to the Blackman there are a total of eight seasons of The Umbrella Academy mapped out by the graphic novel's creator, Gerard Way.
The Umbrella Academy Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.
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