Warning! SPOILERS for The Umbrella Academy season 3.
Netflix's The Umbrella Academy season 3 saw the team face their toughest enemy yet in the guardians of Hotel Oblivion, but it is initially unclear why Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) summons the cockroach-manned killing machines. The superhero series has many lingering questions to answer in season 4 as Reginald's master plan finally comes to fruition in the season 3 finale. While Reginald might be the official big bad for season 4, Emmy Raver-Lampman's Allison may also be an Umbrella Academy villain if the rest of the Hargreeves threaten her idyllic existence in the new universe.
With the Kugelblitz threatening to consume all of reality, the Hargreeves are forced to escape into the Hotel Oblivion which is located in another dimension and houses the instrumental universe resetting machine. Hotel Oblivion's guardians are previously encountered by Diego (David Castañeda) and Lila (Ritu Arya) via the passageway in the White Buffalo Suite as they go in search of Stan (Javon Walton). Diego rings the bell in frustration, summoning the hotel guardians and costing him two of his fingers. Reginald Hargreeves then rings the bell in the final episode of The Umbrella Academy season 3.
The Hargreeves patriarch summons the hotel guardians at the end of The Umbrella Academy sesason 3 because their destruction is integral to achieving Reginald's master plan. The guardians are made to defend the dimensional machine, and the remaining guardian attacks the Hargreeves as they are figuring it out. Having the Umbrellas and Sparrows fight the guardians is just another tactic to get them under Reginald's control, as until this point, Reginald had been unable to get them to carry out his bidding - and ringing the bell both forced them into action, and prevented them from having a choice in playing a part in his schemes.
Hotel Oblivion's Guardians Needed To Be Killed To Fulfill Reginald's Plan
Reginald needed the Hotel Oblivion guardians to be killed at the end of The Umbrella Academy season 3 in order to fulfill his plan because he didn't want to be defenseless against them if he used the Umbrellas and Sparrows to power up the machine. While the guardians are tasked with preventing access to the universe resetting machine, they are destroyed once the Hargreeves stand on Hotel Oblivion's 7 stars. However, Reginald also uses the keepers of Hotel Oblivion to ensure his children do his bidding because he knows how the machine works and what happens to those that power it. Not only does Reginald know how the machine works as he effortlessly reprogrammed his desired future and stopped Allison from herself to power the machine, but he also claimed starting the machine was the only way to stop the last guardian. So besides conning everyone into fleeing into Hotel Oblivion, he even manufactured the conflict with the guardians so that his children would have no choice but to listen to him and activate the machine.
As Reginald grows closer to his comic book origins, the Umbrellas face a big challenge ahead of them as they are without powers against Reginald's newly manufactured empire. A season without an impending apocalypse is certainly a nice change of pace for the Netflix series. And hopefully the show's continued success spells good news for the yet-to-be-announced season 4 - as The Umbrella Academy season 3 sets up for an intense follow-up season that may even best the premise of a world resetting machine protected by malevolent hotel guardians.