The Umbrella Academy – Season 4 Episode 3 Recap & Review

The Squid and the Girl

Episode 3 of Umbrella Academy season 4 starts with an old news broadcast. There are reports of a giant squid captured down at the docks. However, something is moving inside the creature. And out pops… Jennifer. She utters “The Cleanse” but as the camera pans over, we see Hargreeves is in the audience watching.

Back in the present, Five and Lila discuss the Umbrella effect and how they’ve been working together all this time to investigate it. Klaus is unhappy and eventually snaps, lashing out at everyone as he never wanted his powers back. Allison holds her own with her brother as the pair go back and forth, it eventually leads to them both going their separate ways. 

The rest of the group decide to split up, with half of them following the Keepers and the others heading in to question Hargreeves. Ben also leaves as well but mostly because his arm is glowing and seems to be inflicted with whatever disease Jennifer has.

The six remaining head back to town and on the way, we have a heart to heart between Diego and Lila. They discuss their marriage and the difficulties they’re both having adjusting to the hardships of a normal, mundane life. It’s not easy of course for either of them, especially as that blasted Baby Shark song starts playing when Diego slams the dashboard in frustration.

Jean and Gene question Jennifer, spinning the story to make them seem like the good guys. They also question what ‘The Cleanse’ may be and what it all means. As they struggle to get information, all our family do some digging in their own ways. Diego roots through the trash at Jean and Gene’s place and finds an incident report for Jennifer that also references the Cleanse, while Five shows Lila the train station and the alternate timeline.

Interestingly, instead of jumping between versions of Gene and Jean’s apartment, Five steps out with Lila and finds the place crumbled and completely ripped apart. The fiery landscape is actually from the original timeline, the one Five was stuck in for 40 years. This is also where Viktor (who was Vanya at the time) blew up the moon and they didn’t stop it.

However, the pair are shot at by a sniper and forced to jump back to the apartment. When they do, Diego hands over the report he’s obtained. Here, it shows off an important date of October 14th 2006. This is the day their Ben died. Now, it appears Jennifer and Ben are linked together, explaining their infliction and similar sort of powers.

Sy shows up to see Ben, telling him he needs to get Jennifer back. The pair are linked together in a special bond and Sy tells him to “listen to his body” and use his instincts to find her. However, in doing so, his face changes with these strange glowing red spots.

Jennifer is brought out to the garage by Jean and Gene. They show off the proof that their world is not right, and reveal that Jennifer is the girl who’s the key to everything after all. They want her to bring about the Cleanse, but when she refuses, they lock her in the shed and show off the remnants of this squid she was stuck in as a child.

Luther, Viktor and Allison show up at Hargreeve’s mansion where Abigail is playing The Umbrella Academy theme on her violin. She greets the trio and the group get acquainted before Reggie shows. Reggie points out that New Grumpson was set up to keep Jennifer safe, not as a prison, and she apparently has more power than all of them combined.

In the middle of this, Diego, Allison and Five head in with the file on Ben and Jennifer, wanting answers. Ben and Jennifer are linked together, as we know, but Ben’s death is directly linked to this “Jennifer incident”. None of them actually remember how Ben died, as it appears Hargreeves has messed about with their memory.

Given psychological warfare was all the rage in the 60’s, after Ben’s death, it appears the family have basically been brainwashed into forgetting how he died. If these memories can be erased then it would appear that they can be returned too, using Reggie’s memory-returner-McGuffin-machine. While they begin their flashbacks, Ben shows up at the compound that Jennifer is being kept at, using his psychic powers to find the exact spot. Jean and Gene lose the pair but do shoot at the guards inside the shed, which is where the episode ends.

The Episode Review

Alas the plot thickens and predictably we’ve got some age old tropes showing up here, like the “girl who’s the key to everything” now being Jennifer rather than how Vanya was in the first season. It’s a bit of rehashing of old ideas, which is a shame, but it’s intercut with some nice moments.

Klaus is clearly now going to suffer away from the group, forced to be killed repeatedly to pay off his debt but he could be a crucial part of the mission going forward. Meanwhile, we see the group trying to come to terms with their powers while also investigating more of the past in their own ways,

Quite whether we needed a big dance number with Jean and Gene is debatable but with Ben and Jennifer now together, hopefully we’ll start to get some answers over why they’re connected, and what’s going on with this Cleanse.