Editor's Note: The following article contains spoilers for Season 3 of The Umbrella Academy.Besides the Academy itself and the Temps Commission, The Umbrella Academy now has two new mysterious locations for our dysfunctional team of supers to decipher. Season 3 of the Netflix series introduces us to the Hotel Obsidian, an eerie art déco hotel that serves as a safe haven for anyone looking for a place to stay. Full of shady guests and odd, cryptic rooms, the Obsidian doesn’t come alone in the show’s mythos. It is followed closely by its interdimensional twin, Hotel Oblivion. But what exactly is the Oblivion? And what role does it play in this season of The Umbrella Academy?
When the first trailer for The Umbrella Academy Season 3 came out, fans quickly noticed the similarities between the Obsidian and another hotel in the series. In the third volume of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s Umbrella Academy comics, aptly titled Hotel Oblivion, the Oblivion is not a hotel at all. Despite the name, the establishment is actually a prison built by Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) for the most dangerous villains defeated by the Academy. Located in a pocket universe, the Oblivion is deemed inescapable and most of its “guests” are driven to insanity during their stay. To reach the Oblivion, you need to cross an unexplored part of the universe or use a teleportation device called the televator. To leave the hotel, however, you must face its ward, a former inmate called the Scientific Man.
In the comics, the plot of Hotel Oblivion had the Umbrella Academy facing off against two villains that managed to escape the prison. So, with the plot of the show seemingly veering away from its source material, many fans believed the Oblivion to be entirely absent from the new season when they first watched the trailers. The Obsidian was thought to be a reference to Sir Reginald’s prison-hotel, an Easter egg for the more dedicated Umbrella-lovers to find. However, Hotel Oblivion is an integral part of the third season of The Umbrella Academy, though it did undergo some renovations to be featured on the show.
The Umbrella Academy Season 3 starts with Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Five (Aidan Gallagher), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), and Viktor (Elliot Page) arriving at the Hargreeves mansion in 2019 after a long stay in 1963 Dallas. But what was supposed to be a return home turns into something else entirely when they find out that their trip to the past had consequences. Not only is Sir Reginald still alive, he has also replaced them with another group of supers, dubbed the Sparrow Academy. After being kicked out of their childhood home by the new Hargreeves children, the Umbrellas take shelter in the Obsidian, a hotel in which Klaus has spent many a drunken night throughout his life.
Klaus is a regular of the Obsidian - or, at least, he was, in the other timeline. However, there are many things about the hotel that he doesn’t know. The most important of all is the hotel’s history and what hides behind the wall of the mysterious White Buffalo Suite. Sadly, he doesn’t even have the time to put the puzzle together by himself, as his death is instrumental to kicking off the uncovering of the Obsidian’s secrets.
In Episode 4, “Kugelblitz”, Klaus and Stanley (Javon Walton) discover the White Buffalo Suite and are immediately taken by the room's colorful decoration. Stan, in particular, is drawn to a harpoon that hangs beneath the white buffalo head that gives the suite its name. As any troublemaking child would, he picks up the harpoon and shoots it, killing Klaus and hitting a wall with what seems to be a pachinko machine. This eventually leads to Klaus finding out the true extent of his life-and-death powers, but, more importantly, it opens a door to what lies on the other side of the Obsidian - literally. While Stan tries to find a way to get rid of his uncle’s body, we see the wall move, revealing a secret door.
RELATED: 'The Umbrella Academy' Season 3's Best Needle Drops, From "Footloose" to "Ride Wit Me"
Stan’s pseudo-parents are the first of our heroes to make their way through the door. Together, Diego and Lila (Ritu Arya) traverse a glass-lined hallway leading into a different version of the White Buffalo Suite. In this secret room, some paintings on the wall are different, and the white buffalo head is replaced by the animal’s hindquarters. As they soon find out, the room isn’t the only thing that's changed: after leaving the White Buffalo suite, Diego and Lila find themselves in an empty mirror version of the Obsidian. Judging from the signs and the sushi bar, the hotel seems to be located in Japan, but, when Diego tries to take a look outside, the revolving doors throw him right back at the lobby. To make matters worse, when they ring the bell, it’s not a concierge that comes out to greet them, but an enormous armored creature carrying a chain knife that chops two of Diego’s fingers off.
This bizarre version of the Obsidian that Diego and Lila discover is Hotel Oblivion. Unlike in the comics, the place is no prison, but it’s also not exactly a hotel. It’s still in another dimension, but not one created by Reginald, though he does have something to do with its connection to our world. As we find out in Episode 8, “Wedding at the End of the World”, back in 1918, Reginald Hargreeves found a portal to another dimension and built the Obsidian around it. Behind a wall of his own private suite - the White Buffalo Suite - he hid a passageway to this other world. In it, he believes there is a button that can reset the whole of existence, put there by whoever or whatever created our universe. From his quarters, Reginald commanded expeditions into the Oblivion in search of this button. The problem is said button is protected by three creatures known as the Guardians, all dressed in powerful suits of armor, nearly invincible, and with cockroaches on their insides - a reference to the roaches that serve as nourishment to the Oblivion’s inmates in the comics.
Defeating the Guardians and reaching the universe’s reset button is probably one of the reasons old Reggie dedicated decades of his life to training the Umbrella and the Sparrow Academy. However, while in the original timeline, things fell apart before he even had the chance to take the kids to the Oblivion, in the new one, Pogo (Adam Godley) gave the Sparrows pills to control Reginald so that they wouldn’t be force to face this dreadful mission. Unfortunately, Pogo’s effort to protect the Sparrows went down the drain when Klaus showed up and helped Reginald get clean. Now seeing clearly for the first time in years, Reginald sees the Kugelblitz and the imminent end of the world as the perfect opportunity to get the Oblivion project back on track. All he has to do is tell his remaining children - the Umbrellas, plus Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez) and Ben (Justin H. Min) - that there’s a way to save the universe just behind those doors.
The problem is “Wedding at the End of the World” isn’t the first time viewers and the Umbrellas have heard about Oblivion. In "Kugelblitz", Five and Lila take a trip to the Temps Commission only to find it completely destroyed by the grandfather paradox. The sole survivor is the Commission’s founder, a future version of Five that has an important warning for his past self: “Do not save the world”. Before he draws his last breath, he utters one final word as a warning: “Oblivion”. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that Five is reluctant to participate in Reginald’s plan. Throw in Reginald’s abusive past, and you have the perfect recipe for a bunch of supers unwilling to go on a dangerous mission to save the universe.
Of course, Reginald Hargreeves doesn’t care about saving anyone or anything. What he wants is to recreate the universe in his own image and bring his beloved Abigail (Lisa Ripo-Martell) back from the dead. In order to get what he wants, Reginald makes a pact with another person that also lost a lot in the past couple of seasons: Allison. He promises her a world with Claire (Coco Assad) and Ray (Yusuf Gatewood) by her side in exchange for the Umbrellas’ support. Sadly, familial love isn’t enough to get the Hargreeves children on the Oblivion train, and so Reginald murders Luther and pins it on the Guardians to get them to act out of revenge.
Once in the Oblivion, the Umbrellas, Ben, Lila, and Sloane take care of the Guardians, but that’s not all it takes to activate the reset button. They must also find the seven sigils that Reginald has drawn in his notebook - a pattern that we have seen before in the pachinko machine and on future Five’s chest tattoo. Realizing he has already come across these symbols, Five tells his family that they are scattered on the ground of the hotel’s lobby. By standing on them, the reset button is activated.
But, once more, Reginald proves that he is TV’s worst dad ever and reveals that he intends to use his children and Lila as fuel for the universal reset. The only one not standing on a sigil, Allison has a crisis of conscience when she sees her siblings dying and takes out Reginald before he presses the button. Unfortunately, she takes upon herself to press it and, with the template for Reginald’s world already laid out, the world goes back to its pre-Kugelblitz form, but now ruled by the Hargreeves couple. The Umbrellas, Lila, and Ben are powerless, and Sloane and the Obsidian are nowhere to be found. The only silver lining is that Allison has her family back.
But what about the Oblivion? Despite the various things Season 3 has told us about the place, there are still many questions to be answered. Did it always look like a hotel? Or did it build itself as a mirror of the Obsidian? Is it also gone, the reset button only good for one use, or is it still there? As of now, Season 4 of The Umbrella Academy is yet to be confirmed. Still, if the show is indeed renewed, let’s just hope that we’ll get to see Hotel Oblivion again, even if it’s not a hotel anymore.
Season 3 of The Umbrella Academy is streaming on Netflix.
