The Umbrella Academy: What is The Cleanse? Here Is the Explanation?
What is The Cleanse? In The Umbrella Academy Season 4 finally explains how Ben Hargreeves died, but it also explains why Reginald thought it was the only way to save the world and prevent a cataclysm known as The Cleans. Jean and Gene Thibodeau were obsessed with The Cleanse, as they thought it was the key to restoring the original timeline, but they really had no idea what it was, what was going to happen, or what they needed to do to make it happen, and the result is not exactly what they had in mind. The Cleanse is part of a plan that ties into Ben’s death, the Hargreeves, and the timeline, but not in the way the Thibodeaus and The Keepers, the cult they formed around the idea that they were living in an alternate reality, imagined. Reginald’s wife, Abigail, also has something to do with it.
What is The Cleanse in The Umbrella Academy?
Episode 3 of the series begins with a news clip of two fishermen finding a huge squid. A little girl comes out of the squid, and when asked how it got there, she simply says, “The Cleanse”. We know that this little girl is Jennifer, who is the same Jennifer from the Jennifer Incident in which the original Ben dies. The Cleanse is something that Jean and Gene often mention along with The Umbrella Effect, but at first, no one understands what it is or what will happen when it comes, and they only know that they need Jennifer, the squid girl, to get things going. “Some people think it’s the end, some people think it’s a big restoration,” Gene (Nick Offerman) says of The Cleanse in the Season 4 opener.
Later in the season, Diego finds a file in Thibodeau’s trash that talks about The Cleanse. In that file, there is a mention of an incident with The Umbrella Academy in 2006, in another timeline, and a mention of October 14 of that year, which is the day that the Jennifer Incident happened. This incident also connects to the origin of The Cleanse. What the Keepers don’t know is that The Cleanse isn’t going to save them, it may just destroy them. As the “doctors” try to retrieve Jennifer, who ran away after Ben rescues her, Reginald’s wife, Abigail, tells them that she is to blame for the Jennifer Incident and therefore the death of the original Ben and the Cleanse, since, years ago, when Reginald released the Marigold on Earth and gave its powers to the Hargreeves, she synthesized the element that created the substance and created a new one she calls Durango, which, when interacting with the Marigold, have a reaction that can destroy worlds.
The Cleanse is a cataclysmic event, a purge, that destroys timelines and everyone in them. This means that everyone in that world will be destroyed if The Cleanse happens and they fail to stop it. But, The Cleanse isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What happened was that, when Reginald released Marigold and caused the birth of Allison, Klaus, Luther, Diego, Viktor, Ben, and Five, the timeline fragmented, and with the chaos parallel timelines began to emerge that are now “bleeding” into each other, and that’s why Jean and Gene find artifacts from different realities into theirs. This is why the world keeps destroying itself over and over again and why nothing the Hargreeves do can stop this. Abigail, Reginald’s wife, is practically the architect of The Cleanse and she did everything to make it happen and to have one original timeline.
It’s all about “cleansing” these parallel lines to try and restore the original. The Marigold also needs to be removed for The Cleanse to work and that means the Hargreeves must sacrifice themselves, combining the Marigold in their bodies with the Durango, so that the purge can work and everything can go back to the way it should be.
