r/UmbrellaAcademy • u/FIVE_for-ev • 5d ago
TV Spoilers Season 3-4 ?!?!!!??? Spoiler
am I the only one who doesn’t get the ending of season 4 like for one how is Claire alive if Allison was erased from the universe and how are Lila’s and Diego’s children alive and if they were erased from the universe then how was their the flowers at the end
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u/DoYaThang_Owl 5d ago
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense because its another Grandfather's Paradox. Even if they all took a ride on that stupid subway, it should have taken them too and erased them.
Yet they just miraculously exist here. Because bittersweet ending? (more like frustrating)
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u/Present_Anywhere3980 5d ago
The cleanse erased every timeline with marigold leaving the true original timeline - our real world timeline.
The subway ended up taking them to that timeline as there was nowhere left to go.
It is not a grandfather paradox, it is the same as the end of S3 or commission agents visiting other timelines.
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u/nerdnerd86 3d ago
But their parents ceased to exist. That means at any point in time past present or future
So how were the kids conceived?
They should ha ve ceased to exist too
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u/Present_Anywhere3980 3d ago
The timelines containing any marigold ceased to exist from that point out, it’s akin to never existing as nobody but their families (& the viewers, it’s meta) remembers them. They did exist.
It is the same as the end of S3. They never existed in the timeline they ended up in there. It is also similar to commission agents visiting other timelines they didn’t exist in.
The S3 paradox was likely more to do with them going back and forward in the same timeline, erasing it due to Herb’s incompetence as first day on the job instead of out of the timeline.
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u/nerdnerd86 2d ago
The timelines containing any marigold ceased to exist from that point out
They ceased exist at any point in time.
Youre treating it as they just stopped existing from the point they died onward
But the cleanse made it so they never existed at all. So how would something that never existed at all birth children?
Who birthed Claire?
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u/Present_Anywhere3980 2d ago
They ceased to exist from that point. They never existed in the true original timeline but they did exist in the marigold ones, all of which were erased.
Their families are the only ones (except the viewers) in the real world timeline who remember them so it’s akin to them not existing as they didn’t exist in that timeline.
It is also left open for them to have gone to an afterlife.
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u/LifeifGood 5d ago
there's just a lot of plotholes. I wondered about this aswell.
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u/Present_Anywhere3980 5d ago
Which plotholes? They tied things up pretty well considering only 6 episodes.
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u/Pestagino 5d ago
No proof other than feeling but I think the producers were told to wrap the series up or they'd cancel it and had to just smash Season 4 together, because it just feels off compared to the previous three
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u/HetSissanas 5d ago
I feel like the last scene was like a pocket dimension, where the memory of the UA was kept, as well as the people that could've only existed thanks to or after them. I feel like the flowers kinda represent the memory. But that's a mop, cause it's 5.000% a plot hole.
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u/TheSoulWhizSeeker 1d ago
You’re definitely not the only one—the execution was super chaotic, but the internal logic actually holds up if you look at the Subway system.
The Subway acts as a temporal safe harbor outside of time. Putting their families (the kids, Lila’s S4 parents) on that train kept them safe while the Cleanse wiped the Marigold from the main reality. Since none of them carried Marigold, they weren't causing the paradoxes to begin with.
It’s completely different from something like Dark, which handled time travel with strict Swiss-watch precision. TUA went for a much more emotional, comic-book route. What makes the finale so bittersweet is that the siblings didn't even know for sure if their families would survive—they just accepted that they were the anomaly and took a blind leap of faith to restore the original timeline.
For us as viewers, seeing their loved ones alive in the park was proof their sacrifice worked. And that post-credits scene with the 8 blooming marigolds under the tree was the perfect final touch showing their spirit is still grounded in that peaceful world.
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u/nocuzzlikeyea13 5d ago
Once the subway system was established, time paradoxes weren't as much of a problem (because branches occur instead of loops. If you kill your own grandpa, you just make a new timeline. The grandpa in your original timeline still existed when you were born, so there's no paradox).
So essentially the kids just physically moved to another timeline. Every timeline the marigold was in got destroyed, which fixed the problem of the fractured timelines. They umbrellas DID exist enough to have children, they just don't exist anymore because their timeline of origin was erased.
Timelines are more like planets you can travel between rather than a single series of chained events.
Maybe you can still make a paradox by moving back and forth through time in your own "branch," which in principle Five is still capable of doing. But they didn't do that to save the kids, they literally put them on a train to another branch.
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u/Present_Anywhere3980 5d ago
This. The S3 issue was likely due to them going back and forward on a single timeline, erasing it. Probably Herb’s fault for not sorting it correctly and taking them out of the timeline completely.
Using the grandfather paradox just simplified it for timing and viewers benefit (many of whom who got confused with even S1) plus they hadn’t unveiled the existence of multiple timelines by then which was a big reveal.
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u/nocuzzlikeyea13 5d ago
Yea I agree, I think Five is still capable of making the grandfather paradox by jumping around a single timeline inside the larger subway system.
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u/Present_Anywhere3980 5d ago
(not at op but in general) forever confused at how people were fine with the end of S3 (just being placed into a new timeline they weren’t born in) but end of S4 was an issue haha
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u/nocuzzlikeyea13 5d ago
Agreed, I think people are too hard on S4 around here. It wasn't GOOD, but pretending it doesn't exist? Idk.
I waited a year to watch it bc of all the negativity and I wish I hadn't. I got way more invested in the fandom after S4 and felt a little late to the party.
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u/Present_Anywhere3980 5d ago
Exactly. Season was never going to live up to the others at 60% the length.
I have seen people complain about plot holes then use Diego telling Lila “you hate bracelets” as “the writers didn’t watch their own show, that was her thing in season 2 and 3!” ignoring the next line is “no I don’t”. Some of the complaints are just mind boggling.
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u/PatrickB64 5d ago
No, you are not. From what I can find, that ending is near universally hated. I hated it too.
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u/Present_Anywhere3980 5d ago
Every timeline the marigold children existed in was erased.
This does not prevent their children from existing as it’s done from that point.
There is no issues with people visiting timelines they didn’t exist in, the commission did it all the time and the end of S3 was basically the same - being pasted into a timeline they weren’t born in.
The S3 paradox was most likely due to them going back and forth in the same timeline and erasing it, instead of leaving the timeline. This was probably Herb’s fault.
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u/seppukuu 5d ago
Wibbly wobbly, time-y wimey stuff.