Runaways in back for season 3! It’s bigger! It’s bolder! It’s…ending. But that won’t hold us back from having a great time watching. This show has been one of Marvel’s strongest for two years now and this season seems like it’ll be bonkers in all the best ways. So watch with us! We’ve got liminal worlds, parental drama, and racist magicians to spare.
1. Quentin Need to Get Woke
After last week’s big magic confrontation with the Magistrate family, the Runaways (minus Alex) wake up at the hostel. There’s just one problem- they don’t remember how they got there and there seems to be a party happening there. Old music is playing and they walk out to find a house bustling with people dressing in Gatsby-esque garb, celebrating with Quentin the Magician, the building’s original owner. This kicks off the weirdest episode that Runaways has ever seen. Quentin (who says horribly offensive things, starting with addressing Nico as ma petite japonaise) tells them that they’re in “the thin place between the real world and all other ones” and that he’s seen their parents there. So begins the Runways’ mission, bringing their parents’ minds back to the real world. When they resolve to stick together though, the team is suddenly transported away from one another. It’s a promising opening for an episode of this show; a willingness to play with formula is wonderful for any tv series, but its particularly necessary when we’re talking about a comic book show. The results are mixed but hey, it’s better to see a show strive for something without totally landing than it is to get stuck doing one type of thing over and over again.
2. The Hayes Parents Kinda Suck
The most straightforward (and boring) plot of the episode revolves around Molly. She finds herself at home, where she’s reunited with her dead parents. She’s happy but they can only see her as a 4 year old who’s about to start preschool. The family heads out to a Gibborim charity event where Molly’s parents choose a sacrifice for Jonah. It’s a pretty shallow story to be completely frank. We already knew her parents were part of Pride so it’s not like she gains new knowledge about them. It’s also not like we get to see them repent so there’s no deepened understanding of anything that’s happened in the background of the show’s greater story. This is definitely a disservice to Molly, who’s in many ways the heart of this series. The whole segment just flounders a bit- it occupies Molly’s time instead of developing her character or moving the story forward.
3. Troubles for Nico and Karolina
Nico’s story is easily the best of the episode. She’s reunited with her sister, Amy, in this weird Purgatory version of Los Angeles but Amy doesn’t remember anything from her time as a living being. Still, though, she helps Nico, bringing her to their house, where Tina is living through the moment she tried to bring Amy back to life. Nico, in a nice heart to heart, helps her mom realize that she needs to move forward- that the past was hard, but that it shouldn’t stop her from connecting to people. Karolina’s story is far less effective but gets a credit for ambition. Confronted by Destiny and the other 16 teenagers that Pride sacrificed, Karolina is tied to a gate, offered up as a new sacrifice to some unnamed creature. When night falls, some kind of monster version of Nico shows up, explaining how much she needs Karolina to help her handle all of the pain she feels. Karolina says she’ll help Nico if she’s freed but runs once she’s untied. Reader, it does not land. The whole thing is so bizarre and tonally jarring that it feels impossible to connect with. Also, the whole thing seems to communicate that Karolina actually feels afraid of helping Nico with her needs back in their real lives and I just don’t buy it. Nico’s magic problems have been troubling but Karolina’s been deeply supportive and it’s hard to just accept the idea that this purgatory monster Nico could cause real doubt. When Karolina runs, she finds a portal that takes her to Nico. The two hug, but Karolina clearly looks unsure. Ugh.
Continued below4. Parents are Hard, Dude
Chase and Gert double down on the episode’s trend of separated couples (yes I know they aren’t together right now) with uneven stories. Gert’s brings her to a shared memory of hers and her mother’s. Before Gert found Old Lace, she’d stumbled across her parents’ lab once before, finding a beta test velociraptor. When Stacy found her, she wiped Gert’s memory. Their sequence speakers to Stacy’s character a bit more but this one also seems to be a little bit more about killing time and bringing the characters together than it is plot or character. Chase’s experience in Purgatory is very affecting, even if it could go deeper. He finds Victor, who’s being beaten by Chase’s grandfather. Chase figured out how to get his grandfather away but it doesn’t last. When Grandpa shows up again, Chase beats him with a bat that had been used to beat Victor. This leads to a pretty beautiful intervention on Chase’s part- he explains to Chase that the cycle of abuse rests on people making decisions to continue it. It’s a pretty beautiful moment but one that definitely had more layers than we actually got to see. It would’ve been nice to see some more exploration of that idea but sometimes the medium just demands brevity and Victor and Chase’s storyline is far from over.
5. Back to Life, Back to Reality
After their moment, Chase and Victor drive around Purgatory LA, picking up Nico, Karolina, and Tina. Once they find Molly crying in a park because her subplot was so dull, they decide to go back without finding Alex. A couple of them lose their memories of specific people but it feels clear that they’re headed back to the real world so the stakes honestly feel very low in that moment. When they go back to the hostel to open a portal to the real world, Amy shows up, revealing that she’s a disciple of Morgan le Fey; she was supposed to turn Nico in but now she won’t because of reasoning that might as well be a hand wave. Nico and Tina open a portal (with an assist from the Staff of Destiny) and they all head back. But first, Tina whispers something in Amy’s ear in a glaringly mysterious move. After they all leave, Amy becomes Quentin in the most bizarre twist that could’ve happened. Back in the real world, the group notices that the hostel is a bit more run down- cobwebs are back in full force and dust is everywhere but hey, they’re back. When Chase checks a computer, they find out that they’ve been gone for six months. Also, Alex is in the weird other world with magic AWOL from Nico’s episode 1 vision. It’s a fitting end sequence for the episode. The time jump brings promise- it’s an incredibly fun tool in storytelling and the next episodes should use them well. It’s also a bit bizarre (what in the world is up with that Quentin thing?). This whole episode is hard to parse out. It’s ambitious and messy and promising and disappointing and fun all at once. Hopefully the rest of the season will have a bit more focus.
