‘Those Emotions Are Real’: The Umbrella Academy Cast Didn’t Know How the Netflix Show Would End Until Their Final Two Days on Set
Full spoilers follow for The Umbrella Academy season 4‘s last episode.
The Umbrella AcademyThe series’ lead actors were kept in the dark about the series’ emotional final scene until two days before filming.
Speaking to Ny Breaking ahead of the release of the Netflix series’ fourth and final season, some of the stars revealed that they didn’t find out how it would end until they received the final few pages of the finale’s script. Those pages were deliberately held back by showrunner Steve Blackman, who wanted the group’s full emotions to play out in real time as they shot that sequence, which was also the very last scene they filmed as a team.
“That was the last scene we shot as a group,” Tom Hopper, who played Luther Hargreeves, told me when I asked if they filmed that sequence at the beginning or the end of the Season 4 shooting schedule. “We had a few pickup shots or little filler things to do for a few days afterward, but that was the last thing we shot together. Steve did that on purpose because he wanted those emotions to be real. He didn’t give us the pages for that scene until a few days before we shot it, so it was all still pretty fresh, emotionally for us.”
The scene in question, which you can read more about in my article where I explain it The Umbrella Academy The end of Season 4 sees the titular, dysfunctional superteam make the ultimate sacrifice to save the universe one last time. Indeed, the Hargreeves siblings die not only to stop the monstrous, blob-like entity known as The Cleanse from destroying yet another alternate universe they time-travel to, but also to restore the original timeline. That is, the one that existed before they were born, which was thrown into disarray upon their supernatural birth on October 1, 1989.
Understandably, filming the final scene was an incredibly poignant moment, with the show’s main cast saying goodbye to each other, their characters, and the “Brellies,” aka the collective name for fans of the series. With little time to process how one of Netflix’s best shows would end, The Umbrella AcademyThe stars all had different reactions when they found out how it would go. In fact, David Castañeda, who plays Diego Hargreeves, even thought Blackman was playing a prank on them until the actor walked onto the set for the last time.
“We all figured it out when we got those last few pages,” Castañeda revealed. “And then, you know, you call Steve or text Steve and you’re like, ‘…But why?’ So you have to be really good at remembering your lines, because you only have 48 hours to do that. Secretly, you’re hoping to get on set and see that they’ve changed that scene. And they haven’t – it was the same scene! So yeah, we all die.”
“It was all a big surprise,” added Ritu Arya, who plays Lila Pitts. “Steve is very good at keeping things under wraps, and he excited us by keeping us in a constant state of suspense leading up to the last few days of filming. He left it really late to tell us how the series was going to end, which was nice, but also really frustrating because we didn’t have a lot of time to process the bitter nature of it. But I think it was ultimately the right thing to do because it raises the emotional stakes of that scene.”
As emotionally impactful as that sequence is, it’s not the superpowered ending I was hoping for. You can read more about why that is in my spoiler-light review of The Umbrella Academy season 4, or find out why Castañeda thought the fan-favorite series would “flop” ahead of its first season premiere in February 2019 on the world’s top streaming service.