Elliot Page, for one, "wasn’t shocked" by The Umbrella Academy’s big twist ending

This post contains spoilers for the series finale of The Umbrella Academy.

Given The Umbrella Academy’s entire deal, it’s not entirely a surprise that the show would go out weird. Star Elliot Page certainly wasn’t surprised: “When I first read it, of course, I was—I mean, I guess I wasn’t shocked,” he told Decider in a recent interview.
“The ending actually made sense to me.”

For those who haven’t seen the fourth and final season, the series ends with the Hargreeves siblings (Page, Aidan Gallagher, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan, and bonus sibling Ritu Arya) facing the end of the world one last time. In the last episode, the siblings realize that all the many apocalypses were all their fault, and the only way to truly save the world is to sacrifice themselves to the giant universe-destroying monster that their brother Ben (Justin H. Min) has become. Doing so resets the entire universe, but it also erases the siblings for good. The end!

It’s not necessarily a satisfying ending for fans who stuck it out with this ragtag group of dysfunctional antiheroes. It could’ve made a certain sense, but in an uneven final season, “Some arcs are abandoned entirely in favor of running toward an ending the show hasn’t earned,” as The A.V. Club’s Jen Lennon wrote in her C- review. Even the highly anticipated season dance number “sidelines the Hargreeves siblings in what should ultimately be their story,” she wrote. “The Umbrella Academy’s finale manages to pull together most of the plot threads that have been left hanging over the seasons, but not all of the characters get the attention they deserve. And for a show that thrives on mess, the ending feels disappointingly neat.”

Lots of Internet ink has additionally been spilled about the ending being particularly bleak for the siblings as survivors of childhood abuse. However, regardless of what your criticisms are, Elliot Page won’t see them. “I’m not really an online person. That’s been something I’ve removed a bit of from my life these last couple of years, to be honest,” he told Decider. “So I don’t necessarily always engage with those things, for reasons you probably can imagine.” That’s a healthy boundary for an actor to set, and it gave Page time to simply appreciate closing out a major chapter of his life. “I think it’s more the overall feeling of just the show ending. I’ve never been on a series this long, or done a job this long,” he said. “Just being in LA, for all the press was with everybody, and reflecting on the whole show. It was definitely sad to say, goodbye, of course.”