Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 3 of the Netflix series, The Umbrella Academy.
Season 3 of Netflix's The Umbrella Academy is bursting with chaos. A Kugelblitz swallows all of time and space, Luther (Tom Hopper) and Klaus (Robert Sheehan) die (Klaus, for the 57th time to be exact) and eat pineapple pizza in the afterlife, and Five (Aidan Gallagher) gives a drunken wedding speech, professing his love for his family. And that's not even the worst of it. Let's take a deep dive into that wild finale and unpack the season's most pressing questions, beginning with: what happened to Luther and Klaus?
What Happened to Luther and Klaus?
In the penultimate episode, "Seven Bells," we see Sir Reginald (Colm Feore) busting out his power move: committing murder in order to bring the family together. At the end of the episode, Luther talks to Reg in the White Buffalo Suite, and Reg asks for Luther's forgiveness for how his alternate timeline version treated him. Reg goes in for an uncharacteristic hug, during which he stabs an unsuspecting Luther through the gut with his alien appendage and slices him across the chest, making his murder look like it was inflicted by the Guardian's curved blade. The remaining Umbrella and Sparrow members find Luther's body shortly after, and it has the exact effect Reg was hoping for. With the Kugelblitz quite literally on top of them, the siblings, believing the Guardian killed Luther, escape through the tunnel in the White Buffalo Suite. Klaus is the last one to try and dive through the passage, but Reggie stops him. He tells him he's more trouble than he's worth, and pushes him outside the tunnel, leaving him to die in the final Kugel wave. Just before he is about to get blitzed, Klaus throws himself in the air and impales himself on the White Buffalo's horns.
The season finale "Oblivion" begins with Reg and the remaining Sparrows and Umbrellas stepping out into the other side. Reginald informs the group that, try as he might to save him, Klaus was claimed by the Kugelblitz. Five and Viktor know that Reg is up to something, but they haven't figured out what. What they do know, thanks to Five digging through the murky depths of his drunken memory, is that Reg and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) secretly made a deal of some kind. Five is certain that Reggie was responsible for Luther and Klaus's death. After all, committing murder to bring the family together is his modus operandi, as Five says. Five and Viktor (Elliot Page) know that Allison made some sort of deal with Reg, so Five is inclined to believe that Allison might have been in on Luther's murder. Viktor isn't so sure Allison is capable of going so far.
We quickly find out that even though Allison and Reg are indeed working together, Allison was definitely not in on Reg's plan to kill Luther and Klaus. She confronts Reggie, who denies he had anything to do with their deaths. He tells her that he is going to keep up his end of the bargain, and he expects her to do the same.
Meanwhile, Luther and Klaus are chillin' in the Void, eating pizza. It takes Luther a few moments to catch up and realize he is deader than a doornail. Unlike Klaus who has decided he's done with the other side, Luther is not so eager to settle down in the shitty desert Klaus calls his hood, eating pineapple pizza and watching cool science documentaries with him and his ghostly eternal pals. Even though Luther quickly realizes that you can't feel pain in the Void, he tells Klaus he is prepared to throw him through walls for all eternity unless he takes them back. He begs Klaus to think about their siblings who are in danger, and if not that, to consider that Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez), his new wife and love of his life, is walking into a death trap. Klaus reluctantly agrees.
What (or, More Accurately, Who) Are the Seven Bells?
Reginald gathers his "children" in the lobby of Hotel Oblivion to give them their instructions for their mission. As he explained to them in the previous episode, he heard the "legend of the seven bells" as a boy. Apparently if the bells are rung, the universe will be restored as it once was. The bells are essentially a safeguard that the creator of the universe left should the universe need to be reset.
Reggie tells them that the seven bells are actually a metaphor for something called the sigil. Reggie tells the group that once they find the symbol of the sigil, they will be one step closer to resetting the universe. He splits them up, and Five and Viktor insist that Allison be a part of their group. Once the three of them are alone, Five confronts Allison about the deal he saw her make with Reggie. Allison adamantly denies it before storming out of the room. Viktor runs out to follow her. A moment later, Five blinks out into the hallway to follow when he realizes that there is something very wrong with the layout of this hotel: the hallways are changing, causing Five to go in an endless circle.
Diego (David Castañeda) and Lila (Ritu Arya), split into a duo because no one wants to hear their bickering. The two share a sweet moment as Lila shares a rare vulnerable side. She admits that she is afraid she will fail their baby (who is in fact, not Stanley, who isn't actually their kid at all), just like her mom failed her. Diego assures her that she won't because she is a good and decent person, even despite all her crazy bullshit.
In another hallway, Sloane and Ben (Justin H. Min) are arguing while they look for the sigil. Ben is sulking like a teenager, because the Sparrows are gone, and he has no purpose. Five turns the corner, interrupting them, finally having found his way out of the endless maze of the hotel.
Meanwhile, down in the lobby, a certain self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, Klaus, has made his way back to the real world, popping in and surprising his dear old dad. Reginald hits him over the head and tells him, "Everyone's in place. The battle's about to begin." He won't let Klaus stop him from ruining everything and taking away his "prize." With that, Reginald rings the dreaded bell on the counter.
Enter the Guardian, or, Guardians, we should say. It turns out there are more than one, as each of the three groups of siblings battle a different Guardian, who turn out to be growling samurais in almost indestructible armor with weird bugs crawling from their bodies. They all manage to kill their Guardians, narrowly escaping with their lives. Before Viktor and Lila take down their Guardian with their sonic blast, Allison admits to Viktor that she did make a deal with dad. She begs Viktor to trust her and tells him that she made the deal for all of them, thinking that it would make everything okay again.
The Sparrows and the Umbrellas arrive back in the lobby and are shocked to find Klaus, who tells them that Reginald killed Luther, locked him out of the tunnel, and rang the bell, releasing the Guardians. They confront Reggie who is, unsurprisingly, unapologetic, insisting that he had no choice but to kill Luther since they were refusing to come together as a team. Somewhere in the hotel, he says, there is the key to resetting the universe if they can just find the sigil. A look of recognition dawns on Five's face as he realizes that the sigil is on the floor, which has seven stars spread out on the tiles. Before he can say what he has just figured out, a fourth and final Guardian bursts through the ceiling and throws a sickle at Five, severing his arm completely.
The siblings face off against the Guardian. It's not looking so good as he raises his sickle in the air above Sloane, only to be stopped by — surprise! — Luther, seemingly back from the dead. Using his super strength, he hurls the Guardian into the air, temporarily knocking him out. Luther embraces Sloane and tells Reginald that he wasted his life on the moon for no reason. Reginald insists he had a purpose: he left him to guard "the most precious thing in this universe." As Luther touches Sloane's cheek, he starts to slowly disappear. He turns back to look at Klaus who is laying on the floor, his hand outstretched, twitching and bright with blue light. He faintly tells Luther that he can't hold it. Luther tells Sloane he will love her forever before he disappears.
Five manages to tie his makeshift tourniquet around the remaining part of his arm and scrambles up to find the Guardian is waking back up. He yells out that the sigil is the stars in the lobby floor. Reginald tells them all to each stand on a star. It turns out that there are seven stars: the seven remaining Umbrellas and the Sparrows themselves are the bells. The Guardian stands back up, leaving them with no choice. They all step onto a star except for Allison, whom Reginald tells to stay behind.
Five is the last one to step onto a star. As he lands, beams of light connect the seven members and the hotel begins to break down. As energy surges and painfully drains the life out of the five Umbrellas and two Sparrows, Reginald reveals to a horrified Allison (who definitely wasn't aware of this part of the plan) that the Hotel Oblivion was just a facade. It is in fact a machine stuck inside another dimension, built by whomever created the universe. The particles inside the Umbrellas and Sparrows (and presumably, any one of the superpowered babies born on October 1, 1989) are the only things that will power the machine. Allison kills Reginald with the Guardian's sickle as he is operating the machine, releasing the seven members from their energy binds. She slowly approaches the machine where there is a glowing red button.They beg her not to touch it, but she presses it anyway.
What Happens to the Umbrella Academy?
Allison succeeds in resetting the world after pressing the red button, but as expected, the Umbrellas and the Sparrows are in for a rude awakening in their new timeline. Five, Viktor, Ben, Diego, and Lila step out of an elevator into the Obsidian Memorial Park. It appears that the universe is restored, and much to everyone's surprise, it has also brought Luther, who comes through the elevator a moment later, back to life. But something is off: Luther is no longer an ape/human hybrid. As Five tries and fails to blink, they realize that somehow, they have been restored without their powers. Not only that, but Sloane, strangely, is mysteriously missing, leaving major unanswered questions that will hopefully be answered in another season: Where is Sloane? Why don't the siblings have their powers? Is Lila still pregnant?
Moving over to Allison, it turns out that Reggie may be many things (mainly, a horrible father in all timelines), but he keeps his promises. We see Allison enter Claire's bedroom, and this time, it really is Claire. Allison breaks down into tears and hugs her. Then, a surprising person appears in the doorway and welcomes her home: Ray Chestnut (Yusuf Gatewood), her husband from 1963 who died in 2010. Somehow, both of them appear to now live in Allison's Los Angeles home as one big, happy family.
It's a complete mystery how exactly Allison ends up with both her husband from 1963 and her present daughter in the same timeline, and it's likely that Allison herself doesn't even understand how Reginald made it possible. What we do know is that Allison may have gotten her family back, but likely at a terrible cost.
So, What Exactly was Reginald's Plan?
As the camera pans away from the Obsidian Memorial Park, we see that the city is filled with Hargreeves-owned buildings and businesses. In the tallest skyscraper is Reginald, looking out amongst the city. A woman with curly blonde hair walks up next to him and takes his hand. The woman is Abigail Hargreeves, the "most precious thing in this universe" that Reg sent Luther to guard on the moon. In a flashback sequence of Luther on the moon at the start of Episode 9, Luther runs into a force field. What he doesn't realize is that on the other side of that force field is Abigail, frozen inside a cryogenic chamber. Abigail was briefly introduced in Season 1 in a flashback as Reginald's beloved wife, now long dead, and clearly a pivotal figure from Reg's past.
Reggie told his "children" that the purpose of their mission was to reset the universe, but it appears that his plan all along — the very reason he adopted and rigorously trained exactly seven super-powered children, seven "bells" — was not to simply restore the universe, but to bring Abigail back with it.
Netflix hasn’t renewed the series yet, though with a major cliffhanger such as this one, we are keeping our fingers crossed that an announcement will be coming soon! In the meantime, hold your loved ones close, avoid going down any secret hotel tunnels, and ask Alexa to play "Footloose" on repeat.