The Umbrella Academy television adaptation has always been a fairly loose take on the comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. The first two seasons drew on some plot points of the first two volumes of the comic, “Apocalypse Suite” and “Dallas,” but showrunner Steve Blackman has thoroughly made the stories his own. Blackman has also stayed true to the series’ surreal tone and focused on the relationships between the members of the highly dysfunctional family of superheroes.

The Umbrella Academy Season 3 is heavily inspired by both the third volume of the comic, “Hotel Oblivion,” and the upcoming fourth arc, “Sparrow Academy.” If you’ve already watched the new season, we’ve put together a breakdown of the Easter eggs, plotlines and timeline-shaking deviations found between the show and the comics. 

Spoilers abound!

‘Umbrella Academy’ Season 3 Clips Debut at Geeked Week

What’s the difference between Hotel Obsidian and Hotel Oblivion? 

The backstory of the Sparrow Academy is pretty wild. By changing history in Dallas, the Umbrella Academy creates a new timeline where Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) adopts a different group of superpowered children and trains them to become the Sparrow Academy. After the siblings are violently evicted from their childhood home, Klaus (Robert Sheehan) leads them to the Hotel Obsidian, a once glamorous hotel that’s turned into a flophouse. It serves as a discreet home for a strange group of guests who are mostly dressed in dated clothing. It turns out that Hargreeves built the hotel a century ago to access a portal that leads to a machine with the power to reset the universe. This will save the universe from being plunged into oblivion by the paradox the Umbrellas created when they indirectly caused the deaths of all of their mothers.

While the details are different, the design of the hotel in the show and its connection to Hargreeves comes from the comics, in which the Hotel Oblivion is built in a pocket dimension to house all the supervillains defeated by the Umbrella Academy. The Hotel Oblivion also serves as a trap for a Cthulhu-like creature that is released when all of the villains manage to escape. Both hotels are infested by cockroaches. In the show, they assemble to form extremely deadly guardians. In the comic, they’re the only things the prisoners get to eat.

Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix

Why does Allison make a deal with Sir Reginald Hargreeves?

In Season 3, Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) makes a deal with Hargreeves to manipulate the rest of his children into helping him rewrite the universe. In exchange, she would get back the husband and daughter she lost due to time traveling. While that plot was invented for the show, it’s similar to one from “Dallas” that was left out of Season 2.

In both the show and comics, Allison is badly injured in the fight to prevent Viktor (Elliot Page) from destroying the world, losing the use of her voice and thus her power. While Allison heals on her own over time in the show, in the comic she only regains the ability to speak after cutting a deal with the Temps Aeternalis — the time-traveling organization known as the Temps Commission in the show. They heal her, and in exchange, Allison must ensure that the JFK assassination goes according to plan. The organization also threatens to kill the mothers of two of her siblings if she doesn’t cooperate. The show’s writers changed the story, but they get to the heart of the comic character — she’s willing to make questionable deals to get what she wants, but she’s also very protective of her family.

Who are the Mothers of Agony?

In Season 3, Five (Aidan Gallagher) encounters a future version of himself who’s been tattooed with the symbol of the Mothers of Agony biker gang. This leads him to a version of the Umbrella Academy’s childhood caretaker, Pogo. The brainy chimp has become a grizzled tattoo artist. The biker gang also appears in “Hotel Oblivion,” where they use Klaus’ powers to make money while providing the psychedelic medium with drugs to keep him happy.

What’s the White Buffalo?

The Hotel Obsidian portal is accessed through the White Buffalo Suite, named for the mounted alabaster buffalo head that appears on one side, with his rear on the other. Its symbolism is explained in the season’s final episode as a nod to the ancient belief that the universe rode on the horns of a white buffalo. The image also refers to the comics, in which Klaus has a vision of a white buffalo during a séance. It leads him and the biker gang to dig up a dead man’s buried fortune in the desert near a billboard for White Buffalo Toothpaste. 

Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix

What happened in the Jennifer Incident?

Perhaps the most cryptic reference in both The Umbrella Academy Season 3 and the “Hotel Oblivion” comic is to a woman named Jennifer. It’s revealed that the original version of Ben (Justin H. Min) died in “the Jennifer Incident.” While this timeline’s Ben survived, the event seems to have left a mark on him — his room is filled with drawings of a woman, and the name Jennifer is written on one of them.

That event is also referenced in the comics. It appears on a wall of news clippings about Luther’s lunar base alongside stories about Ben’s death, Luther leaving Earth and the Umbrella Academy disbanding. What exactly happened in the Jennifer Incident is yet to be explained. But “Hotel Oblivion” devotes a curious amount of time to following a Wisconsin supermarket cashier named Jennifer. There’s no real indication of who she is or what connects her to the Umbrella Academy, but who knows what lies in the timelines to come?