The Umbrella Academy: How Hotel Oblivion is different in the comics

The Umbrella Academy TV show has always been a very loose adaptation, but the core premises of the first two seasons — stopping Viktor from ending the world and trying to stop the JFK assassination — correlate directly to those of the comics’ first two volumes. But in season 3 of the Netflix drama, showrunner Steve Blackman orchestrates one of the biggest deviations from the the Umbrella Academy comics yet by giving us a completely new spin on the third volume’s titular Hotel Oblivion.

[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for both The Umbrella Academy show and comic books.]

How does Hotel Oblivion look in comics?

Image: Gerard Way, Gabriel Bá/Dark Horse

The comics’ Hotel Oblivion isn’t a hotel at all. It’s a prison for the most infamous villains that the Umbrella Academy has ever defeated. It’s a twisted place where every sentence is a life sentence, a single cockroach serves as dinner, and prisoners are often driven mad. Since Hargreeves built Hotel Oblivion on a distant planet in a pocket dimension, it’s (nearly) impossible for the inmates to escape.

The only ways in and out of Oblivion are to fly through an unexplored portion of the universe called afterspace or to use a televator, a teleportation device Hargreeves invented that’s common throughout the world of the comics. You must not be seen by the Scientific Man in order to safely make your way from the hotel to televator. Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, who watches over the prison from space. The Scientific Man appears to be one of Oblivion’s inmates as well, but has seemingly garnered special privileges in exchange for playing warden. And judging by the bones of massive creatures riddling the planet’s surface, if the Scientific Man catches you outside the hotel, he’ll do a lot more than kindly ask you to return to your room.

Comics quickly reveal that the hotel is more than a prison. It’s a trap for an eldritch tentacled creature. This reveal is not explored beyond what we just summarized, so we genuinely have no more context to share on this topic other than to say it’s rad.

How does the Hotel Oblivion comics?

Image: Gerard Way, Gabriel Bá/Dark Horse

The primary plot of Umbrella Academy volume three kicks off with the escape of two prisoners: the Murder Magician, a clout-chasing hypnotist who once sawed a doppelgänger of Allison in half, and Obscura, a jewel thief who has a photographic memory and cameras embedded into his head.

The Murder Magician is desperate to escape Hotel Oblivion, but not just because he desires his own freedom (although we’re sure that doesn’t hurt). He’s determined to get his infant child far, far away from its literally monstrous mother, Clarissa. Obscura on the other side wants to return to his crime-fighting life. Both Obscura and the Perseus Corporation employee manage to get to the televator but then arrive at the Perseus Corporation secret lab. The Perseus workers capture Obscura, but a wounded Murder Magician escapes along with the baby in the subsequent lab shootout.

Allison finds the Murder Magician, and he takes Clarissa with him. The Murder Magician then reveals to Allison that Clarissa isn’t a true monster, but has only been cursed by a Magic 8 Ball. Rather than attack Clarissa, Allison tells her that she “heard a rumor” that the cursed toy doesn’t define who she is. Clarissa, who is now transformed into her human form allows the dysfunctional family of Clarissa to heal their fracture. Allison is also treated to a sweet moment when the Murder Magician makes an apology for cutting Clarissa in half. The Murder Magician apologizes to Allison and sends him to hospital. That’s what we call emotional You can get physical healing

John Perseus X, the CEO, forces Obscura, the captive Obscura, to reveal the path to Oblivion to him. The eccentric businessman plans to free his father. We are able to see in a flashback that John Perseus X was an evil moralist who attempted to make the city his own. John Perseus X appears to be working towards a solution for his father ever since.

Perseus discovers his father’s suicide when he arrives at Hotel Oblivion. The Medusa head, however, lives on. He longs to get revenge for his father’s imprisonment. Medusa persuades Perseus, on the way to his universe to escape the other evil villains. These men then make a show of their gratitude and wreck havoc all over the city. Perseus, displaying the opportunist attitude that likely aided his rise in the corporate world, grasps this golden opportunity to follow in his father’s footsteps. Harnessing the power of the Medusa head, Perseus launches his own quest to become the city’s self-righteous “savior” (never mind the fact that he caused this problem to begin with).

To add to the excitement, The Umbrella Academy arrives on the scene Actually Save the city. The biggest danger to the city is Dr. Terminal, their archnemesis. Defeated by the Academy when they were only children, Dr. Terminal has a disease that he’s only able to stave off through a machine he created that converts the matter he consumes into life-saving energy. Dr. Terminal, after years in prison, turns his insatiable hunger on all of the city and eats everything in its path.

Medusa is absolutely living for all this chaos and destruction, but finally seeing the magnitude of what he’s unleashed, Perseus realizes he doesn’t want to be aligned with her hatred and frees himself of the head. Luther then snatches it up and — for the first time in his life — comes up with a good plan. Luther realizes the Medusa’s head is equipped with a nuclear reactor, so he gives it to Dr. Terminal. The latter consumes it, and is then presumably defeated. We say presumably because before we can see the aftermath of Dr. Terminal eating a nuclear reactor, the Sparrow Academy make their comics debut when they join in the fight and raise all sorts of questions about who they are and what’s going on.

The show version of Hotel Oblivion is not the same as the comics.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Both yes and no. The show’s Oblivion isn’t a prison, nor is it a trap for some sort of eldritch horror. It is, however, still one of Hargreeves’ pet projects. Hargreeves created Hotel Obsidian, a hotel built around a portal that Hargreeves found in another dimension, in 1918. However, the hotel actually serves only as a façade for Interdimensional Hotel Oblivion. It is in fact not a hotel. Hargreeves points out that Hotel Oblivion acts as an enormous failsafe device, allowing one to reset and rewrite realities. This mirrors the comics’ Hotel Oblivion residing in a pocket dimension where reality is constantly renewing itself — though we don’t see any sort of reality renovation happening in the comics.

In smaller ways, there are also echoes of comics. The show’s Oblivion is still watched over by ruthless guardians — now four samurai rather than The Scientific Man. And instead of the cockroaches being dinner, they’re the brains and bodies powering these samurai, which is somehow even more stomach-churning. This season’s finale, in which Hargreeves becomes a giant of business, reminds us of the corporate ties. Hotel Oblivion’s Perseus storylines. It’s possible this ending could even be setting up Perseus — or Perseus-inspired plots — to be introduced in season 4.

While this is all good and fun, though, the show’s Oblivion isn’t the one thing we hoped it would be: a prison filled with supervillains who then are set free. That’s all we wanted, really. This is a season-ending melee, where Sparrows and Umbrellas face down an entire cast of villains. It’s an action-packed, larger-than-life storyline that begs to be put on screen and set to one of the show’s notorious needle drops. This spectacle was sadly not offered.

However, this does not mean that we are giving up on the supervillain battle. Every season offers new chances for a prison break in the pocket dimension. Or at least that’s what we’re going to tell ourselves.