'Umbrella Academy': What's Next After That Bonkers Season 3 Finale? Cast Breaks Down Ending (Exclusive)
Emmy Raver-Lampman, Tom Hopper, David Castaneda, Justin H. Min and Robert Sheehan dish on what the cliffhangers mean for season 4.
This story contains spoilers from season 3 of The Umbrella Academy.
All is right in the world again on The Umbrella Academy -- depending on who you ask.
Season 3 of the Netflix series ended in chaotic fashion with the Umbrella crew finding themselves back in the right timeline, after Allison impulsively pressed the mysterious button that the others warned her about. Not knowing all the repercussions of her actions for resetting the timeline once again -- with some not-so-small alterations -- Allison achieved her one goal: to reunite with her 1960s husband, Ray, and her daughter from the original timeline, Claire. But at what cost?
Another glaring change from the gang returning to their correct time and place(-ish) was the fact that once armed with superpowers, they are now without them and with various urgent matters that were top of mind as they all split off on their separate ways. For the resurrected Luther, who fell in love with the enemy (literally) in Sparrow member Sloane and got married, is now alone and wifeless -- Sloane completely gone, in purgatory or somewhere in the world. For Viktor, he's grappling with the terms of his identity and his place in the world. For Diego and Lila, it's impending parenthood that's got them refocusing their priorities. And Ben, well, he still hates them all and somehow made his way onto a subway train in Korea.
"Your guess is as good as ours I think there," Hopper told ET's Will Marfuggi when asked about the ending, before he and castmate Robert Sheehan threw out some of their own theories of what Luther and Klaus may be up to as full-fledged mortals.
"I think Klaus is going to end up working in a nursing home -- hospice, palliative care, just helping people pass the border from life to death. Like, don't worry about it. I've been there. It's nice," Sheehan theorized.
"I think Luther will be working Abercrombie and Fitch as a greeter," Hopper offered, adding that with Luther powerless, that meant he was without the burly muscles that has come to be his signature, which felt "odd, very light." "It did [feel like something's wrong]. What's weird as well is that suit has become a part of Luther in terms of his personality. And when I put that suit on, I feel more Luther. So playing Luther without that felt like, 'Huh, this is weird.' So season 4, if we're in this same place and I don't have my body next season, that'll be different for me to play for sure."
And Luther was desperate to find Sloane, going on a warpath to find out where she is or if she still exists. Asked his thoughts about whether Luther's next mission is to reunite with his love, Hopper was torn. "Good question. I don't want to go back to playing grumpy Luther, deeply sad Luther. I think we can do something more interesting than that. But I do think if he hasn't found Sloane, it makes it slightly more interesting," he said. "But I don't know whether the creators see Sloane in this next season. I don't really know which one is better, really. We've kind of done the love story. So it's whether he finds her and they are just together in this next season."
This season, Klaus learned the full extent of his powers -- the ability to regenerate and come back alive in a near-instant. But after returning to the reset timeline, that meant his useful power was gone in a flash. Sheehan called the twist a mind-bender.
"It's very Buddhist, isn't it? You create the sand artwork and as soon as it's finished, it's blown all away. I suppose then normalcy becomes utterly foreign and exotic for us all. Our own sense of being becomes abnormal and exotic. So there's loads and loads of fun you can have with that," the actor said. "Talking to [showrunner] Steve Blackman, one of the keywords in the writers' room is subversion. What can we take that is a rule in the show that's presumed to be there as always and just completely flip it on its head?"
"And so I was hoping at some point in the show that we would be powerless," Sheehan confessed. "There was lots of power stuff in this series and it was very big visually in that sense. Lots of characters all doing their powers together in groups, cooperating through doing their powers and stuff. So now if we go into season 4 and there are no powers, it's a whole new challenge for the writing of the show, I think. And I try to think about it not at all so I can be completely pleasantly surprised when the scripts and the story arrives and they tell me and I go, 'Oh yeah, nice. That's clever.'"
David Casteneda and Justin H. Min both had their own ideas on how they think their characters would fare as regular human beings.
"I kind of wish that... [Diego] ends up being some sort of vaquero (a cowboy), like trying to work at a taco place in Mexico," Castaneda said. "He's angry and he's trying to chop up the meat in Mexico City. Just something like that, where he's just trying to relive his best moments like an Al Bundy. Just be like, 'Back in my day, I used to be able to f**king bend this knife.'"
"And Ben works at a sushi restaurant and every time he sees an octopus, he starts sobbing," Min chimed in, referring to Sparrow Ben's now-nonexistent powers of octopus legs.
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For Raver-Lampman, Allison's entire mission for much of the season was to return to her family -- no matter what it took.
"Making the decision that she made in the moment, in the immediate, it's this unbelievable relief that not only did she get Claire back, but she also got Ray back. I do think, even though Allison had quite the season and was extremely reckless and threw everybody else's feelings and wants and needs to the wayside so that she could very single-mindedly get what she needed and what she thought she deserved and what she wanted, she's still Allison," the actress explained.
"I think her loyalty is one of her biggest character traits and the effects of not knowing what this has potentially done to her [Umbrella Academy] family is going to eat her up inside," she continued. "I think that would be really fun to play with."
Though things didn't end off on a promising note with Allison and her Hargreeves siblings, Raver-Lampman believes "it's undeniable" that she still wants to be part of that family. "I think as much as these people try to pretend like they hate each other and they wish that their lives would be so much easier if they didn't all know each other, there's this magic in that they are the only ones that truly ever understands each other. No one will ever understand what it's like to have grown up the way that they did and have the abilities that they have and to live the lives that they lead. There will probably come a time that she's going to realize that she does need them. I'm pitching you season [4] here at this point!"
As far as that mysterious tag at the end of the finale episode, which featured Ben on a train in Korea, Min admitted he knows nothing about the meaning behind it.
"Unfortunately, I don't know much," he revealed. "That scene was completely shot in secrecy and mystery, so I don't really know where that version of Ben is and what he's doing. I do know that he's in Korea and that's about it!"
Start putting those theories together!
The Umbrella Academy is streaming now on Netflix.
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