Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘The Umbrella Academy,’ a group of seven superpowered people is brought together by a rich man who turns out to have many secrets of his own. Over the course of four seasons, these people, the Hargreeves siblings, find themselves in all sorts of situations, some of which are triggered by the mistakes made by the man who adopted them, their father, Reginald Hargreeves. They had enough to resent him, primarily due to the way he treated them when they were young, but with each season, they discover something new that he kept from them or did to them that makes them even more furious at him. In the fourth season, they discover that the death of one of their siblings, Ben, can also be credited to Reginald and his effort to keep the truth hidden their entire lives. SPOILERS AHEAD
The Jennifer Incident Explains What Happened to Ben
In the first season of ‘The Umbrella Academy,’ Ben is introduced as a ghost who is only visible to Klaus due to his superpower to see dead people. The only thing that we know is that he died during one of the missions when they were still teenagers. No one likes to talk about what really happened that day, especially Reginald. The siblings believe that none of them was responsible for Ben’s death, and yet, in a way, all of them were responsible. Losing a key member of their team is seen as a failure on their part, something that Reginald holds over them for as long as he is alive.
In the fourth season, an interesting thing comes to light. It turns out that none of the siblings really knows how Ben died. They all have the same thing about it: no one’s responsibility and everyone’s responsibility is embedded in their brains, but none of them understands what it really means. The incident is referred to as the Jennifer incident, but none of them knows who or what Jennifer is and how it led to Ben’s death. Until the fourth season, when they finally meet Jennifer and the truth comes out.
It turns out that the Reginald Hargreeves from the original timeline had repressed the memory of Ben’s death from all of their minds, and there was a good reason behind it. They remember that they were sent on a mission that day, where they had to secure a weapon in a shipping container. However, they were explicitly instructed not to open the container or come in contact with the weapon under any circumstances. Things worked out rather well in the beginning, but then Ben noticed that there was something inside the container. He thought it was someone who needed help and didn’t realize that it was the very weapon that he had been warned against.
When Ben opens the container, despite his siblings reminding him that they aren’t supposed to do that, he finds Jennifer, the same girl who comes back in the fourth season, in the reset timeline and is held captive in the town of New Grumpson to prevent her from coming in contact with the rest of the world. Ben helps her get out of the container, but the moment Reginald sees them together, he shoots both of them in the head, shocking everyone.
Ben’s Death was Necessary in Season 1
The reason Ben and the others, aka Jennifer, were told not to touch the weapon was because she had Durango. It is an anti-Marigold particle; when it comes in touch with Marigold, it starts a chain reaction that leads to an end-of-the-world event called the Cleanse, which cannot be stopped once it has started. Ben and the other Umbrella Academy members had Marigold, which was the source of their power. This meant that if any of them came in contact with Jennifer, they would trigger the Cleanse, and there would be no way to stop what was coming other than killing them while things were yet to get worse. This is why, the moment Reginald sees that Ben and Jennifer have come in contact with each other, he has no choice but to terminate both of them.
Perhaps he was going to kill Jennifer anyway, hoping that it would permanently put Durango and the Cleanse out of the question without the kids ever finding out about it. Or maybe he would have sent her off to a made-up town where she would be held captive for the rest of her life. He didn’t foresee that one of them might try to help the girl, leading him to kill them as well. What makes it worse is that in a typical Reginald Hargreeves-style, he didn’t talk it through with the children. He didn’t sit down and explain why he had to kill Ben. In fact, if he had had this conversation with them before, if he had warned them what would happen if they came in contact with Jennifer, Ben’s death could have been averted. Instead, he repressed their memories and turned their grief into guilt so he could use it to manipulate them into doing his bidding.
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