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 family drama, evil witches, and prison troubles to spare.
1. The Gang is Back on Less Functional than Ever
After a few episodes of forced separation, the Runaways are finally reunited and we should all be thankful for it. As interesting as it was to see them split up, seeing the group back together is incredibly fun. Seeing the group interact as they try to figure out which one is the host for the Magistrate’s Son is equal parts thrilling and heartbreaking. Nobody wants anyone else to be the host- they’ve been through too much together and not being able to trust anyone in yet another family unit would be awful. At the same time, the Son’s emergence is a very real and imminent threat. Smaller, sweeter moments pierce the tense, paranoid group meals and discussions. Gert and Chase start to bond again, though Gert is still deeply angry with him. Gregg Sulkin and Ariela Barer have great chemistry with one another and they play the characters’ relationship beautifully. You can feel each of them barely holding their feelings back- out of regret and respect on Chase’s part and anger and pain on Gert’s- and it’s great teen drama. Xavin and Molly, too see their relationship deepen. Xavin wants to stand on guard 24/7 to keep Karolina safe but Molly gives her a lesson in being human, teaching her how to snuggle with stuffed animals under a blanket. It’s a sweet scene, especially in an episode where most of the nicest moments still have the specter of betrayal or fear hang over them. Throughout the gang’s attempts to find out who the Son’s host is, the cast’s stellar dynamics really shine through; this show is often good, but its great moments are only great because of the main ensemble.
2. I Got 99 Problems and a Witch is One
This week, Nico’s Morgan le Fey issue intensifies quite a bit. After going into weird magic trance mode while in bed with Karolina, Nico throws the Staff of Destiny into a fire, even after another Morgan le Fey interlude where she offers to train Nico in controlling her magic. Later, when Nico breaks into her family’s house to find a device that can identify the Son’s host, she finds a picture of her mother with le Fey. When her father appears suddenly, he explains that the two studied together but after Nico leaves, it’s revealed that Robert was an illusion conjured by le Fey, as was the picture. It’s honestly still not the most engaging material that the show is putting out. Elizabeth Hurley is doing fun work as le Fey and Lyrica Okano is as good as she’s ever been as Nico but the story still feels like it’s working its way into the plot, not growing organically out of it. It’s definitely interesting to think about where this is heading, but it would be nice to see some more direction here.
3. Keeping Up with the Kardaliens
If there’s one thing we know about the Magistrate’s family, it’s that they’re dysfunctional. If there’s one thing this episode tells us about them, it’s that their dysfunction is a ton of fun to watch. In the previous two episodes, scenes focusing on the Magistrate’s family unit were a mixed bag. Brittany Ishibashi has consistently been the strongest in a massive cast of wonderful actors and Brigid Brannagh has done solid work as the Bride but James Marsters has been more or less average as the Magistrate. Seeing the Magistrate and Bride together this episode, more or less openly scheming against one another, though, has injected this plot line with a liveliness that it didn’t have before. Here’s hoping this chemistry and smart writing hold up in the future.
4. Trouble for the Wilders
Last episode, the Wilder parents were nowhere to be seen but now they’re back and Geoffrey wants to fight Catherine’s conviction. She refuses- she’s trying to give the family a fresh start and she just wants to have a chance to talk to Alex. When they do meet (pulling him away from the team’s mission to find the Son-identifying device), she explains why she chose to go to prison. After Alex set his parents up to go to jail (a detail that I certainly forgot) last season, she realized that he was becoming just like her- cunning and cutthroat- which meant that she needed to end the cycle. This is one of those scenes that makes it clear that the parents being included in the main narrative of this show was a great creative choice. Catherine isn’t redeemed because of this, but she is a whole lot more interesting because of it. After their talk, Catherine goes back to her cell where she’s confronted by a gang of women who taunted her earlier in the episode. After explaining that her career as a District Attorney hurt Black families, they tell her that Tamar (Darius’s wife) says hi. We cut away for a moment and when we see Catherine next, it’s sitting in a pool of her own blood- dead. It’s a genuinely chilling, shocking scene, made all the more upsetting by Geoffrey’s call to tell Alex. Ryan Sands plays Geoffrey beautifully and subtly here; he holds back his emotions but only barely. The weight of this loss is clearly enormous for him and it’s hard to watch as Alex drops his cell phone in shock.
5. The Son Also Rises
That pivotal death also triggers the absolute worst case scenario for the Runaways. The Son awakens and Alex is his host. Worse yet, he’s alone in the hostel with Leslie who he wakes up and tricks into leaving with him, saying that the Magistrate is there to get her. He gives his dad a call, saying that he doesn’t want to meet the rest of the family, but uses Leslie as a bargaining chip so they won’t track him down. It’s an interesting plot development and one that should be especially exciting for comics fans. In the original Runaways run, Alex is revealed as a villain who orchestrated many of the book’s events. In the show, it’s been nice to see Alex as a character with complex morals while still staying firmly in the camp of his chosen family. Still, though, seeing him become a host to a violent, unpredictable villain should be tons of fun. Stick around and we’ll find out together.
