Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy TV series, based on the hit comic book, ended in 2024. Since its finale hit the streaming service, fans and critics have been calling it one of the worst series finales in TV history. It’s even being compared to the finale of Game of Thrones.

It is pretty hard to deny how bad it is, with the ending contradicting the themes of the show and the story being incredibly unsatisfying. It’s caused fans to come up with their own ideas of how it should have ended. Here are just some possibilities of how The Umbrella Academy could have had a better ending.

No Powers, No Problem

At the end of the third season, the Hargreeves siblings find themselves in a new timeline in which they don’t have their superpowers. They still don’t have them at the start of the fourth season, but quickly get them back within an episode or two. Instead of having the final season play out the way it did, the possibility of them being forever powerless may have led to something more interesting.

We see how some of them aren’t the happiest without their powers, but it would have been fantastic development and a great ending to see them learn to finally live happy lives without the burden of their abilities. Plus, it would make sense. If they no longer have their powers, that means no more moons being destroyed, no more giant monsters forming from the substance that gives them their powers, no more espionage leading to accidental nuclear warfare, and no more problems caused by their powers.

Time Travel

A lot of the show revolves around time travel thanks to Five’s powers. It’s understandable that they don’t use his time travel abilities to fix everything at first since he didn’t have them fully mastered. It’s even the reason why they end up in the 1960s in the first place. However, he does have his powers mastered by the end of the show, so why not use them to fix everything?

The Hargreeves could have easily gone back in time to a point before they caused the first apocalypse and stopped it from ever happening. Maybe then they’d be the only ones who remember anything, but that would mean that their development would stay intact. They could all live happily ever after.

Superheroes vs. Villain

One of the biggest reveals of the series was that Reginald Hargreeves, the adoptive father of the protagonists, was a space alien all along. He’s also the source of a lot of their problems and trauma. A cool ending that would have been incredibly satisfying would have been to have the Umbrella Academy kids taking on alien Reginald Hargeeves.

Give the show a proper superhero vs. supervillain fight to end on. It would have been so much fun to watch, plus it would represent them overcoming the source of their trauma. It would be both exciting and satisfying while also staying in line with the show’s themes.

Train Ride to Happiness

This option requires much of the rough fourth season to still play out how it did, so it’s a weaker option, but still a better one than what we got. The fourth season introduces a subway station of trains that travel to different timelines. When the world was ending (again), why not just have the characters all hitch a ride to the perfect, happiest timeline? They could have just gone somewhere where they lived happily ever after after they overcame their trauma. That would have been a better reason to introduce those trains rather than them being used to save side characters. You may be asking “what if they end that world too?” The writers could have just had that one not end.

There are so many ways Netflix could have ended their otherwise incredible TV series, The Umbrella Academy. It’s a bummer they decided to do it on such a bad note. Thankfully, the comics are still an absolute blast.

Read Next: 10 Superheroes Who Need Their Own Modern Video Games