Is The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Finally Showing Fans The Jennifer Incident That Killed Ben? One Moment In The Trailer Has Me Curious
One of many shows ending in 2024, The Umbrella Academy’s run as one of Netflix’s best TV shows is wrapping soon, and the stakes are as high as ever for their time-altering chicanery. Even though audiences are still largely in the dark on the Hargreeves clan’s situation after the Season 3 finale left them mostly split up and powerless. Thankfully, the first trailer for The Umbrella Academy Season 4 has arrived, and it’s full of fun moments and interesting details.
Take a look at the new trailer below before moving on, so we're all on the same page of this comic adaptation.
For all the new information we now have, there are still plenty of questions to pore over ahead of the suped-up series’ debut in August. Will Genesis Rodriguez return as Sparrow Sloane Hargreeves? Will we get to see The Commission’s origin? What happened to Stan? And will we ever learn what the “Jennifer Incident” is, and how Ben died from it? As far as that last point goes, the Season 4 trailer features one moment that has me curious over whether it's hinting at something deeper or not.
What Is The Jennifer Incident?
Short answer: it seems to be the event during which Umbrella Ben died. In Season 3's episode "Marigold," Sparrow Ben asks Luthor about his timeline's Ben, to which the latter replied:
You were the best of us. And you died too soon. The Jennifer incident… It doesn’t matter. Just know that we were never the same without you.
Luthor was interrupted by Sparrow Ben asking the same question we're asking now, but the big galoot just waved it away. Possibly because he didn't want to relive it, or possibly for other reasons. Regardless, the same episode proved that Sparrow Ben's inquiry was a personal one, as his room featured several drawings that are marked with "Jennifer."
The Moment In Diego's Van
The midpoint of the trailer is something of a comedic moment, as the gang gathers around Diego’s van, with David Casta?eda’s character saying, “We’re back,” and then screaming about it being their “First mission back!” Then, in what appears to be the following moments, Ben screams from the backseat:
Let's go kill this bitch!
At this point, the others all appear to be slightly disturbed or put off by that sentiment, with Allison pointing out that it's a "rescue mission," which Ben responds to with slack-faced agreement. But what seems like a random outburst may actually be anything but, especially with Sparrow Ben looking worse for wear.
In the first place, it brings it immediately reminds viewers how callous and impulsive Sparrow Ben can be, harking back to the Season 3 dojo sequence when he gleefully went too far in using his tentacles to squeeze Jayme. If we're seeing here that his first instinct is to kill, even in what's meant to be a rescue mission, does that offer insight into how he might have acted with his own Jennifer?
Fans have theorized that there was a mission in which Jennifer was meant to be saved from something, and that Umbrella Ben possibly sacrified himself in order to keep her alive. There's also speculation that Ben committed suicide, based on the wording of his plaque, so it's possibly Ben wasn't able to save Jennifer during this hypothetical mission, and then that grief drove him to taking his own life.
On the flip side, it's theorized that Sparrow Ben was possibly in a smiliar kind of mission, only he either chose not to save Jennifer, or plainly felt no consequential feelings about her death. Which doesn't quite explain why he kept drawings of her in his room, but still.
I can even take a gigantic leap here by positing the idea that the Hargreeves siblings went "back" to the year that Umbrella Ben died, so that they could possible reverse or alter the "Jennifer incident" so that Ben never died because of it. It's unclear if the team even has the ability to jaunt across time if desired, but with this show, all theories are viable to a certain extent.
The Tentacle Powers Are Back!
The Season 4 trailer ends with Ben standing in all his tentacles-out glory, and it looks like he'd just finished causing quite a bit of horror wherever he's at. There's not quite enough to make any specific guesses, but the body being dragged across the ground appears to be someone in a military uniform, though it's hard to tell if any of the detached limbs lying around are also within uniform material.
Is breaking into a military base part of the rescue mission? Does it have anything to do with Reginald Hargreeves, whether it's him running things, or him being investigated over his alien origins? Or, to circle back around, is this possibly where the mysterious Jennifer is being held? Probably not, but it would be an interesting wrench to throw into these theory works if Jennifer never died in either timeline, and has been around all this time. Especially if she's revealed to be a character we've already met. I don't know how I'm going to go the next two months without knowing answers.
The Umbrella Academy Season 4 will premiere on Netflix on Thursday, August 8, so get ready for all kinds of explosive, reality-shredding mayhem. And check out all the other upcoming Netflix shows and movies while waiting.
