Full spoilers follow for The Umbrella Academy season 4.
Two of The Umbrella Academy‘s primary stars have revealed their disappointment over a key season 4 storyline that was significantly cut down due to time constraints.
Speaking to TechRadar ahead of the Netflix show’s final season, Ritu Arya and Aidan Gallagher, who play Lila and Five, admitted they wanted to explore the duo’s timeline-hopping subplot, which occurs in episode 5, in more detail.
This season’s fifth episode, titled ‘Six Years, Five Months, and Two Days’, sees the pair continue their multiversal adventure to not only try and prevent another apocalypse, but also fix the official timeline. You know, the one that the Hargreeves siblings’ unexpected births – which happened back in October 1989 – broke.
Despite initially being able to ride the time-traveling subway network, which Five discovers in episode 2, without a problem, they soon become trapped on the train-based labyrinth.
Five and Lila become lost in time and space, and jump between different universes in their quest for a multidimensional exit – one that sees them get into all sorts of scrapes and capers. The pair tirelessly search for a way out of trouble until, one day, they eventually admit defeat and agree to settle down on a completely different timeline. They only manage to make their way back home nearly seven years later, when Five discovers a notepad that one of his alternate universe selves had written in, containing instructions on how to navigate their way out of the tunnel system.
The writing team for one of the best Netflix shows came up with so many ideas that Lila and Five’s time-traveling adventures could have been an entire episode in its own right. Unfortunately, due to the truncated nature of season 4 (it only comprises six episodes, rather than 10 like its predecessors), many of the pair’s escapades were left on the cutting room floor.
“I’m quite pleased with how it turned out,” Gallagher said when I asked how the cast felt about this season’s shorter episode count. “I do wish that the storyline, which we see in episode 5, was given a bit more time. We were told about a lot of different elements of their journey that happened that they [the writers] had to leave out.”
“Yeah, there was really cool stuff in there,” Arya interjected. “Apparently, Five and Lila go to Tokyo, and have all of these really crazy adventures where they fight their way through different worlds for a way out, that we didn’t have time to explore. I wish they hadn’t told us any of that because it sounds like it would’ve been pretty epic to act out and then watch.”
It’s unclear if any or all of those ideas made it far enough along in the production process to be filmed before they were eventually cut. What is clear, though, is that The Umbrella Academy‘s fourth and final season doesn’t benefit from its six-episode run. Indeed, it was one of my biggest bug bears with this installment, which you can read more about in my spoiler-light review of The Umbrella Academy season 4. You’ll also want to check out my article explaining The Umbrella Academy season 4’s ending to get answers to your biggest questions about how the show’s numerous storylines are wrapped up.
