Showrunner Steve Blackman provides insight into Season 3’s twist ending and discusses where he wants to take the heroes in Season 4.
The following contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy Season 3, now streaming on Netflix.
The Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman explains the Season 3 finale and where he wants to take the series for Season 4.
Speaking to TheWrap, Blackman provided his input and context to the Season 3 finale episode, “Oblivion.” In the episode, the surviving members of the Umbrella and Sparrow Academies fight the guardians of Hotel Oblivion in an attempt to reset the universe following its destruction by the Kugelblitz (a black hole-like creation resulting from a time paradox). Their father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore), then tricks the Academy into powering up Oblivion’s universe-resetting technology with their lives, though Allison Hargreeves (Emmy Raver-Lampman) intervenes and kills Reginald before her siblings die. However, she still presses the button to reset the universe, causing the Umbrella Academy to wind up in a new reality where they are powerless and Reginald oversees a corporate empire alongside his formerly-dead wife.
According to Blackman, this universe will not be everything Reginald planned on creating. “I think the better way to see it, without giving too much away, is Reggie Hargreeves didn’t quite get to finish his reprogramming of the universe before he was hit over the head by Allison, who’s finally decided to choose her family over him,” Blackman said. “And in that moment, she has no idea what pressing a button does. She just knows that, in a conversation that we haven’t seen but is alluded to, Hargreeves has made promises to her which is, ‘I will give you back your daughter and your husband. I will do that, but you have to work with me.'”
Blackman continued on to say that he has a “huge twist” in mind for Season 4 that he hopes “the fans don’t see coming,” but one thing he wants to explore is how the characters are without their superpowers. “I want to pose to the viewer and the fan, ‘Would they be happier without their powers?’ I mean, all they do is complain about being who they are,” the showrunner said. “So will Viktor, will Diego be happy without it or will they feel like they’re missing an appendage? Will the world not be right for them anymore without powers? Can they be ‘normal’?”
Blackman also suggested that Reginald may not be as nefarious as it seems, even though he murders Luther (Tom Hopper) and tries to kill Klaus (Robert Sheehan) to get what he wants in the end. “If Reggie knew that by resetting the universe, all the kids came back anyway, he knew no matter what he did leading up to that point, the way he was going to reprogram it brought them back anyway, I would posit – and I’m not saying this is necessarily all of what we’re going to do – I think Reggie probably thinks he did a good thing,” continuing on to say that “Reggie may come out of this thinking, ‘I’ve done the ultimate good for my children. They’re free of the curse of the powers. I have my wife back. We all should be happy.'”
However, not everyone is seen to be happy with their new universe by the end of “Oblivion.” Though Reginald has his wife back and a massive corporate empire, while Allison has both her husband and daughter back, the Sparrow Academy is nowhere to be found, save for Ben (Justin H. Min), who was originally a part of the Umbrella Academy in the show’s original timeline. For this reason, despite Luther returning from the grave and no longer having a gorilla-like body, his main concern is where his wife, Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez), may be in this reality (if she still exists). As for the rest of the team, not everyone appears to enjoy their powers being gone, with Ben demanding, “How do we get ’em back, you idiots?”
The Umbrella Academy has not been renewed for Season 4 as of writing. The first three seasons of the series are now available to stream on Netflix.
Source: TheWrap
Sean is a Weekend Comic News Editor for CBR. His typical trip to the comic store always follows the same sequence: promising to limit how many issues he will buy, seeing them on the shelf and buying them all anyway. He dreams of writing his own someday. Aside from comics and superhero TV/movies, Sean also enjoys musicals (both movie and stage), classic rock, stand-up comedy and podcasts. If you are interested, feel free to follow him on Instagram, Twitter and/or TikTok as your @localcomicsean for his personal jokes, thoughts and feelings about comics!
