Spoilers ahead. With an epic and poignant last season, The Umbrella Academy answered the questions that have been looming on everyone’s minds for the past 3 seasons: what exactly is the Jennifer Incident and who is Jennifer?
In episode 2 of the last season of the Netflix series, Ben (Justin H. Min) meets a waitress named Rosie (Victoria Sawal). They immediately hit it off, and things seem like they’re more connected than usual. After much flirting and tension, Rosie revealed that her name is actually Jennifer.
Related: We Ranked ‘The Umbrella Academy’ Cast’s Powers From Least to Most Powerful
When they were taken by Jean and Gene, the two experience burning on their faces when they’re close together. They also became way too passionate and hot for each other even when they were separated by a wall, and nothing will get in the way of Ben reaching Jennifer.
What are Jennifer’s powers in The Umbrella Academy?
Netflix
Jennifer has the power of electrokinesis in both the TV series and the comic books. As the finale comes to a close, we see the consequences of Ben and Jennifer being together which is a monster known as The Cleanse. The two seem inseparable from each other from the get-go, but that’s because of Jennifer’s durango and Ben’s marigold.
Jennifer is one of the 43 children who were born on the same day as the Hargreeves, though her backstory is much more complicated. Reginald tasked the siblings to recover a weapon from a Moldovan arms dealer. In one timeline, Ben investigates what was inside the weapon when he heard knocking from the inside.
Who was inside? It was none other than Jennifer. When Reginald finds the two in proximity of each other, he shoots both of them in the head. This is dubbed the Jennifer Incident that’s been swirling for the past couple of seasons. The Hargreeves siblings never found out the real reason why Ben died, and this finally explained why and how. Reginald erased their memories, only leaving the memory of their brother when he was alive.
Reginald explained that The Cleanse could exterminate humans from the world from all timelines or in his terms, “would have set off a cataclysmic chain of events.” It’s seen that Ben from the Sparrow timeline was the only person able to save Jennifer, as the other Bens in the other timelines didn’t care. The Hargreeves have to sacrifice themselves because their existence threatens every timeline. They hold hands before the Cleanse consumes them and everything goes back to normal.
“I think it’s a satisfying ending,” Justin H. Min told People. “It is obviously a darker ending, but I think it falls in line with what our show is. I think it would be a little strange if it was just all rainbows and butterflies for the Umbrella Academy.”
Creator Steve Blackman recounted that the meeting between Jennifer and Ben was planned from the start. He told Tudum, “The idea is that in all the timelines, he’s destined to be pulled towards Jennifer. So if you go back, you’ll see that Jennifer — her face, her name — exists in all of the seasons in different places throughout the academy.”
