WARNING: Spoilers ahead for The Umbrella Academy season 3
Why have the Hargreeves siblings' powers disappeared in the final moments of The Umbrella Academy season 3? As the famous story goes, 43 women (16 in the Sparrow timeline) spontaneously gave birth on October 1, 1989, and each of the resulting children possessed a superhuman ability such as time travel, super-strength, or the gift of repeatedly getting punched in the face. The Umbrella Academy season 3 confirmed what many viewers already suspected - Sir Reginald Hargreeves' mysterious jar of lights was responsible for creating these super-powered children.
Netflix's latest The Umbrella Academy run concludes with the Umbrella kids accompanied by their surviving Sparrow counterparts, Ben and Sloane into Oblivion. Secretly working in league with Allison, Sir Reginald manipulates his children into activating the universal reset machine hidden inside, and once the process is complete, The Umbrella Academy's world looks completely different. Reginald's wife, Abigail, is now alive, and Hargreeves Enterprises has apparently taken over as a global superpower. Any injuries the Umbrellas and Sparrow Academies suffered are healed, but in another sweeping change, the Hargreeves siblings no longer possess superpowers...
Luther is resurrected (without his primate parts), Number Five's arm is restored, and Diego regrows his missing fingers. On the downside, Five can't teleport, Diego can't control his knives, and Klaus can't "alakazam ghosties." It's safe to assume the others are all equally powerless, but how did this travesty happen?
Why The Umbrella Academy Siblings Lose Their Powers At The End Of Season 3
The Umbrella and Sparrow heroes not only still exist in season 3's reset universe, they also retain their original memories. This proves their lack of powers wasn't caused by a rewrite to history. If this were the case, the Umbrellas would've lost their powers in The Umbrella Academy's Sparrow timeline too.
That leaves two potential reasons the Hargreeves siblings might be powerless in The Umbrella Academy season 3's finale. One possibility is that Reginald deliberately removed his children's gifts while resetting the universe. Since Abigail is alive and Hargreeves Enterprises is a dominant industrial force, we can assume The Umbrella Academy's Oblivion machine gave Sir Reginald full license to recreate the universe. Relieving the Umbrellas and Sparrows of their superpowers would surely fall within this sphere of influence here. Reginald perhaps anticipated his children would try restoring the universe to its factory settings, so rendering them all powerless ensures they can't return to Oblivion and undo his hard work. Resurrecting Luther and healing everyone's injuries was perhaps Sir Reginald encouraging his children to accept this new universe and get on with their lives instead of fighting against him.
Or maybe The Umbrella Academy season 3's Oblivion machine is to blame. According to Sir Reginald, this powerful reset button is fueled by the very same glowing particles that dwell within his children. He tricks them into charging the machine, and The Umbrella Academy visually shows these mysterious particles floating from their bodies. Allison intervenes before anyone dies, but the reset button still functions... Maybe activating the machine burned away the alien fireflies that gave the Hargreeves heroes their superpowers, leaving them all painfully ordinary.
A glimmer of hope remains, however. The Umbrella Academy season 3's post-credits sequence shows a version of Ben Hargreeves riding a subway train in Seoul. Though this quirk of reality remains unexplained, at least some of the 43 children might've still been born in Sir Reginald's new universe - and might still have their powers too. We know from Viktor and Harlan that glowing particles can be transferred between bodies, so as long as someone has powers in The Umbrella Academy season 4, the Umbrellas and Sparrows can regain their missing abilities.
The Umbrella Academy season 3 is currently streaming on Netflix.