The Umbrella Academy season 4 trailer teases one final world-saving mission and lots more Ben before the hit Netflix show ends

Full spoilers follow for The Umbrella Academy seasons two and three.

Netflix has unveiled the first trailer for The Umbrella Academy season four – and it seems that the Hargreeves family are going to bow out with an almighty bang in the show's final season.

With just two months to go before The Umbrella Academy's final installment launches (it's out on Thursday, August 8), the streaming giant has finally given us some footage to pore over before the hit series ends. Based on what's shown, we can expect more dysfunctional and chaotic family drama, the group powering back up after they lost their superhuman abilities in the season three finale, and one final mission to – yep, you guessed it – save the world from another apocalyptic event.

Curiously, the teaser subverts our expectations about what we'd expected to see in the superhero show's final entry. Season three's final episode indicated that Sir Reginald Hargreeves – the group's adoptive father who, as we know from The Umbrella Academy season two, is also a merciless extraterrestrial – would be the major villain of season four. It seems, though, that he'll be actively helping his foster children to regain their powers to prevent another potentially world-ending event.

The Hargreeves children will need to reacquire said abilities, too, given what Netflix has teased about its plot. "The Hargreeves siblings have scattered after the climactic showdown at the Hotel Oblivion led to a complete reset of their timeline," Netflix's story brief reads. "Stripped of their powers, each is left to fend for themselves and find a new normal – with wildly varying degrees of success. 

"Yet, the trappings of their uncanny new world prove too hard to ignore for very long. Their father Reginald, alive and well, has stepped out of the shadows and into the public eye, overseeing a powerful and nefarious business empire. A mysterious association known as The Keepers holds clandestine meetings believing the reality they’re living in is a lie and a great reckoning is coming. As these strange new forces conspire around them, the Umbrella Academy must come together one last time – and risk upsetting the shaky peace they’ve all endured so much to secure – to finally set things right."

One final ride to save the world – again

The first teaser's debut comes after a new poster, which heralded the trailer's impending arrival, was unveiled two days ago (May 27). It didn't elaborate on the aforementioned plot synopsis ahead of one of the best Netflix show's final outing. However, based on the giant, alien squid-like tentacles that occupy parts of the artwork, it's likely that Ben Hargreeves – whatever version we're up to with him now – will have a big role to play. You know, because Ben has the ability to spawn the monstrous tentacles of an interdimensional Lovecraftian entity, called The Horror, from beneath his skin.

We could also learn more about the origins and constitution of the marigold substance, i.e. the mysterious matter that imbued the Hargreeves children with superpowers. A congealed pool of this liquid-based material can be seen in the poster's bottom right corner, which one of Ben's tentacles – Bentacles, if you will – is reaching out to. There's still plenty we don't know about the marigold, so I suspect season four will give us some more details about where it originated and how it played a role in the Hargreeves children's supernatural births and subsequent abilities.

Almost two years have passed since Netflix confirmed The Umbrella Academy would meet its apocalyptic end. Given the secretive nature of  the show's truncated final entry – it'll only comprise six episodes, rather than the usual 10 – there was very little we knew about it ahead of the first trailer's release, too. Indeed, eight months passed before we learned anything new – Netflix only choosing to lift its head above the parapet to reveal The Umbrella Academy season four's new cast members in February 2023.

Since then, the streaming titan has been a bit more forthcoming with information about The Umbrella Academy season four. Last November, the show's main cast teased that the show would "hit the ground running" in its "bittersweet" final installment. Then, in early February, Netflix unveiled the briefest of clips from The Umbrella Academy season four before the streaming behemoth announced The Umbrella Academy four's official release date two weeks later.

The Umbrella Academy's last installment flattered to deceive – in my review of The Umbrella Academy season three, I opined it was the show's poorest entry – so I'm hoping that its successor, one of 10 shows I'm excited to see in mid-2024, will be far better and give the series the send-off that it deserves.

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