The Umbrella Academy is based on the popular comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, but do they offer any clues as to the plot of The Umbrella Academy season 2? Way and Bá released the first Umbrella Academy miniseries back in 2007, to much acclaim. It's since been followed by two further miniseries, Dallas and Hotel Oblivion, which continued the story of the Hargreeves siblings.

The crux of The Umbrella Academy TV show is the same; 43 super-powered babies are born to women who previously weren't even pregnant, and the eccentric billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves takes seven of them under his wing. He trains them to become superheroes, but his harsh upbringing leaves the children emotionally stunted. Years later, the dysfunctional family learns that the end of the world is coming, and struggles to avert it. And yet, for all the basic similarities, The Umbrella Academy takes great liberties with the source material; the characters are toned down a little, and some of the more exaggerated powersets of Umbrella Academy's characters have been toned down a bit.

Related: How The Umbrella Academy is Different To (& Better Than) The Comics

On the whole, all of these changes were significant improvements, and the series has been a hit for Netflix. Given The Umbrella Academy season 1's cliffhanger ending, The Umbrella Academy season 2 seems inevitable. But do The Umbrella Academy comics offer any hints as to just what could happen in season 2?

The Umbrella Academy Has Gone Beyond The Comics

The Umbrella Academy is different to many other comic book adaptations. When Marvel and Netflix created Daredevil, for example, they were drawing on hundreds of issues featuring the character, which have been published since 1964 and are still ongoing. They were able to tap into stories from several comic book industry icons. In contrast, with The Umbrella Academy, there have just been three miniseries, numbering just 17 issues in total. There's nowhere near as rich a history and tradition to draw upon. That gives The Umbrella Academy TV show a tremendous amount of freedom to switch things up, but it also means that season 1 has pretty much exhausted the comics for inspiration. The plot of season 1 is a blend of the first two miniseries, The Apocalypse Suite and Dallas; the former featured the end of the world plot and the latter revealed the time traveling backstory of Five. Hotel Oblivion doesn't really fit in the Netflix world, but there are a few allusions to it nonetheless.

Related: Umbrella Academy Theory: The Hargreeves Family Is In A Time Loop

What's more, The Umbrella Academy season 1 ended with a cliffhanger twist that has no comic book precedent at all. In the comics, the heroes were able to avert the apocalypse, with Klaus demonstrating the scale of his telekinetic abilities by diverting the chunk of Moon-rock and preventing an extinction level event. In Netflix's Umbrella Academy TV show, Klaus isn't even a telekinetic, and the Umbrella Academy students jump back in time in order to try to work out how to rewrite history. The last shots seem to suggest that they've all de-aged back to the point of being teenagers again. There is literally no way to reconcile any of these ideas with the original comics. All this essentially means that The Umbrella Academy season 2 is a blank slate. It will inevitably be a whole new story, one that's never been told in comic book form before - and that will surprise readers as well as viewers.

Page 2 of 2: Umbrella Academy Comics Are Still Relevant & What To Expect From Season 2

There Are Elements In The Comics Not Used In The Umbrella Academy Season 1

The Umbrella Academy comics won't be irrelevant, though. The Umbrella Academy season 1 may have exhausted the plot of the comics, but there are still several themes and ideas that could be tapped into. The most obvious is the existence of extraterrestrial life. In The Umbrella Academy comics, Sir Reginald Hargreeves himself was actually an alien who had disguised himself as a human being, which neatly explained his mysterious depths of knowledge and insight; Hotel Oblivion introduced Hargreeves' vessel, the Minerva, which was capable of interstellar flight. There were other aliens, too. In fact, in The Apocalypse Suite, Luther was staying on the Moon because he really was needed to defend the planet from alien invaders. It's certainly possible that The Umbrella Academy season 2 could involve aliens. Is that any less fantastical than time travel or... Pogo?

Meanwhile, Umbrella Academy season 1 has left an important question unanswered: what happened to the rest of the 43 children who were born on that fateful day years ago? Sir Reginald Hargreeves only managed to acquire seven of them; while several would have died due to complications during the birth, a lot of them will have survived, and will still be out there. Gerard Way used this idea to explain the existence of super-villains in his comics, revealing that several of them had chosen to use their powers for evil. They included villains like the Murder Magician, a teleporter who called himself Obscura, and - most dangerous of all - a super-powered titan known as the Scientific Man. The Umbrella Academy season 1 didn't provide a hint as to the existence of any of these other super-powered individuals, but they could well be introduced in The Umbrella Academy season 2.

Related: The Umbrella Academy's Vanya Twist Was Revealed In The First Episode

What Can We Expect From The Umbrella Academy Season 2?

The Earth explodes in The Umbrella Academy

Netflix is yet to officially renew The Umbrella Academy for a second season, but it's surely only a matter of time. It's currently the most in-demand superhero show in the United States, beating every Marvel and DC TV series. Given the amount of time it takes to make an effects-heavy superhero TV series, it's reasonable to assume The Umbrella Academy season 2 won't release until 2020, at the earliest.

Naturally, the plot will pick up exactly where season 1 left off, with the Umbrella Academy emerging at some point in history and attempting to reorient themselves. There are clearly going to be physical impacts from the time travel; the students appear to have de-aged back to teenage form, and it's even possible Ben will have effectively been resurrected. But it shouldn't be assumed that they'll be stuck in their younger forms with all the knowledge of their older selves. The Umbrella Academy season 1 warned that time travel can affect the mind as well as the body. It seems more likely that the siblings will be rather confused, setting up a dark plot where they're once again attempting to avert an apocalypse they don't truly understand.

There's a solid chance that the Umbrella Academy will have traveled back to a time when their "father," Sir Reginald Hargreeves, was still alive; there are still two many mysterious surrounding that character for the show to simply move on from him, and revealing the truth through his past self would be a nice touch. Meanwhile, the Commission is sure to return, working to ensure the end of the world happens and the Umbrella Academy are unsuccessful in changing the past. All this leaves a lot of room for fresh ideas to be woven into the story - perhaps even including some of the concepts that are present in the comics, but not in The Umbrella Academy season 1.

More: What To Expect From The Umbrella Academy Season 2

The Umbrella Academy season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.