using jq to assign multiple output variables

You can use separate variables with read :

read var1 var2 var3 < <(echo $(curl -s 'https://api.github.com/repos/torvalds/linux' | 
     jq -r '.id, .name, .full_name'))

echo "id        : $var1"
echo "name      : $var2"
echo "full_name : $var3"

Using array :

read -a arr < <(echo $(curl -s 'https://api.github.com/repos/torvalds/linux' | 
     jq -r '.id, .name, .full_name'))

echo "id        : ${arr[0]}"
echo "name      : ${arr[1]}"
echo "full_name : ${arr[2]}"

Also you can split jq output with some character :

IFS='|' read var1 var2 var3 var4 < <(curl '......' | jq -r '.data | 
    map([.absoluteNumber, .airedEpisodeNumber, .episodeName, .overview] | 
    join("|")) | join("\n")')

Or use an array like :

set -f; IFS='|' data=($(curl '......' | jq -r '.data | 
    map([.absoluteNumber, .airedEpisodeNumber, .episodeName, .overview] | 
    join("|")) | join("\n")')); set +f

absoluteNumber, airedEpisodeNumber, episodeName & overview are respectively ${data[0]}, ${data[1]}, ${data[2]}, ${data[3]}. set -f and set +f are used to respectively disable & enable globbing.

For the jq part, all your required fields are mapped and delimited with a '|' character with join("|")

If your are using jq < 1.5, you’ll have to convert Number to String with tostring for each Number fields eg:

IFS='|' read var1 var2 var3 var4 < <(curl '......' | jq -r '.data | 
    map([.absoluteNumber|tostring, .airedEpisodeNumber|tostring, .episodeName, .overview] | 
    join("|")) | join("\n")')