The Umbrella Academy's first season proved to be a huge success for Netflix, but the series could run out of source material relatively quickly. Based around the superhero misadventures of the adopted Hargreeves siblings, The Umbrella Academy is a TV adaptation of the comic book series by My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way and artist, Gabriel Ba. With a quirky, gothic sense of humor and an unconventional take on the superhero genre, The Umbrella Academy's first season saw the siblings forced to fight one of their own, as the usually downtrodden Vanya was revealed to be the most powerful of all the Hargreeves children and threatened to end the world with a deadly violin recital.
For the vast majority of comic book to TV adaptations, there is a wealth of source material to work from. Marvel and DC shows obviously have decades of back issues to trawl through, The Walking Dead is currently in its tenth season and still working from Robert Kirkman's now-completed comic series, and comics such as Preacher and The Boys had already long finished by the time they made it onto TV, giving producers and writers a set start, middle and end point, and a clear idea of how much story they had to work with.
Never one to follow the rulebook, the situation is very different with The Umbrella Academy. The main comic series is split into three volumes: "Apocalypse Suite," "Dallas," and "Hotel Oblivion." Broadly speaking, the "Apocalypse Suite" storyline is covered in season 1 of the Netflix series, charting Vanya's transformation into the White Violin and the Academy's attempts to prevent the apocalypse. Season 1 also incorporates several plot points from "Dallas," namely the cat-and-mouse chase between the Commission and Number 5, as well as Klaus' unexpected trip to Vietnam.
As a result, The Umbrella Academy only has one and half volumes' worth of material remaining heading into its second season. There are some fights from "Apocalypse Suite" that could still be translated to TV, but Gerard Way has previously indicated that season 2 would be mostly based around "Dallas" which also features a second apocalypse and the Kennedy assassination. Yet even if The Umbrella Academy season 2 manages to avoid delving into the "Hotel Oblivion" material, only a single volume will be left to adapt in a potential season 3. A collection of Umbrella Academy short stories and one-shots have been published, but these might prove tricky to work into the main story.
The reason for this lack of material is the huge gap between "Dallas" and "Hotel Oblivion." The Umbrella Academy's first and second comic volumes were released steadily between 2007 and 2009, but the first issue of "Hotel Oblivion" released as recently as October 2018, finishing the following summer. There are a number of factors behind this extended delay, Gerard Way's music career perhaps being the most obvious. Fortunately (and despite persistent rumors of a My Chemical Romance reunion), Way has confirmed work on a fourth volume of The Umbrella Academy is underway, and this might arrive in time to offer the Netflix series a little more breathing space.
From a slightly less encouraging point of view, Netflix's interest in The Umbrella Academy perhaps came because of its limited source material, not despite it. The streaming service has a habit of cancelling shows around the 3 season mark, and with 3 volumes of material to draw from, perhaps this was the early intention for The Umbrella Academy.
Now that the adventures of the Hargreeves siblings have proven so successful, however, those designs may change and it's worth noting that the alterations made for the purposes of TV were largely well received. Diego's personal life, Vanya and Leonard's relationship and Ben communicating through Klaus were all mostly original arcs, but played well against the content taken directly from the comics. This is a promising sign should Netflix's The Umbrella Academy ever be forced to delve deeper into completely fresh material due to a lack of comics to adapt.
The Umbrella Academy season 2 is currently without a release date. More news as it arrives.