Runaways is wild. I mean, really wild. This show has very quickly become one of my absolute favorites. It’s unpredictable, exciting and full of the kind of melodrama that I eat up. This week’s episode dives into the fallout of last week’s disaster of a fundraiser and finds a sense of humor that doesn’t feel like the humor in other Marvel adaptation. Let’s jump into this but be warned, there are spoilers throughout.
1. Fallout
“Refraction” doesn’t waste much time getting down to things as this episode is all about fallout. Lots of things have been brought to the surface especially the affair between Robert Minoru and Janet Stein. Up to now, Runaways has thrown everything at its teen leads and in this episode, we finally get a parental separation. Robert and Nico share a moment in her room together where they talk about this and Nico wants them to reconcile but Robert tells her that he doesn’t want that. He loves Janet Stein and is determined to get back with her. This devastates Nico because it’s another thing for her to deal with but like she tells her friends, none of it matters anyway because everyone is going to jail after the information they stole from Tina’s computer decrypts.
Fallout continues to be a theme here as all the parents are splintered in some way for some reason and now Leslie Dean is at the center of that. Jonah tells her that she’s the one that keeps this group together, he tells her that Pride is the most important thing right now and it’s time for her to do some work. Leslie spends most of this episode manipulating everyone into acting the way she wants and brings everyone together. As all this is happening, the kids face a smaller kind of fallout. Tonight is open house at school and well, when you’re running around with superpowers and bringing your parents down, there isn’t much time for schoolwork. Everyone is dealing with some kind of aftermath and that’s very exciting. This show has gone down a road the comic never traveled and honestly that’s been for the best.
2. Victor Stein, Reformed?
A big chunk of this episode is focused on Victor Stein. We see how he and Janet meet, we see how he was when Chase was born and we see him later on become the horrible person he is now. Victor Stein, as we saw last week, was injected with something by Jonah. Whatever that was has made Victor totally shift. He’s kind, he’s funny, he’s an attentive father. It’s a complete personality change and Chase realizes something is up but allows himself to just embrace it because this is the guy he’s always wanted as a father. The scenes with Victor as this nice version of himself are hilarious. Marsters plays it so well and I honestly chuckled a bit. All that changes when the serum seems to wear off. He goes back to the guy he truly is and that shift is worse than ever before.
If you remember, the Yorkes took the serum with them after Jonah passed it off to Dale. Dale began messing around with it an accidentally took some. It made him a kind of high that he had never experienced but when it wore off, he wanted more. It looks like this withdrawal is what happens Victor and it made him worse than ever before. We’ll return to this because the episode ends with a huge moment that needs its own examination. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about this show is how it has made an attempt to examine complicated family relationships. Chase and Janet exist in an abusive household. Victor is horrible to them and because they’ve longed so much for him to not be the way that he is, they are taken into this new personality so easily and it’s heartbreaking to see it come crashing down again. This is a real thing that happens in abusive relationships. This little bit of kindness is easy to welcome because it is the thing you wanted. It’s the dream.
It’s the hope become real life and when it is ruined again, I felt something so real for Chase. It’s this kind of thing that makes Runaways special because it’s a drama rather than a superhero show, which is very different than the other Marvel series. Even the Netflix ones revolve around the show being about a superhero of some kind. Runaways however, is a teen drama that tosses in things from the superhero genre.
Continued below3. Wake Me Up Inside
Something has woken up inside of Frank Dean and Leslie better watch out. We last saw Frank talking to Jonah and we saw Frank have a flashback to Jonah and his wife getting it on. Leslie is delivering a sort of last rights to a dying member of her church and Frank walks in very unexpectedly and asks everyone but Leslie to leave. He then goes to the patient and heals him without barely a touch. Jonah, it turns out, gave him very special technology that allowed this guy to wake up and get more time in this world. Leslie is flabbergasted by this because a rumor about him being a healer could gain a lot of attention that she doesn’t want him to have. Frank is banking on this as he’s decided to become a major player in the church with the help of Jonah.
Frank, not in the Pride, is now doing things that put him at odds with Leslie and this is escalated further when he finds a photo of a barely teenage Leslie with Jonah, who looks like he hasn’t aged a day. When confronted, Leslie tells him that Jonah is the thing that confirmed her father’s religion. There are still so many questions with this! Have they decided to change the alien race that Karolina belongs to? If not then what exactly are the Giborrim in this show? Frank still doesn’t know what the Pride actually does and so he’s still the only parent not going down but does that make him an ally to these kids? I can’t wait to find out.
4. Leave Molly Alone
Molly is having a really bad day. First, she feels like this group of friends don’t value her so she leaves them. Then she ends up being the towel girl on the dance team. Then her parents decide to send her away. Yup, Molly is leaving. At least it looks that way. The Wilders cannot kill Molly. They can’t kill one of the kids. The Yorkes would never allow that to happen. Instead, Molly is being sent to a distant cousin because according to the Yorkes, she’s so curious to learn more about her roots. In reality, this is the solution the Wilders came to. There was something in her parent’s will that would make this happen and their thinking is that they can contain her and contain the situation. Molly and Gert share an amazing moment where Gert really steps up as a sister and tells her that they will get her back. I think this is where the actual running away may finally happen and come into play.
5. The Oh S&%T Moment
So remember how Victor is all doped up on some kind of serum and then he suddenly shifts back to a horrible person? This ends horribly for him. But first, let’s talk about what he’s been working on. Victor is obsessed with time travel and in the flashback, we see that he doesn’t see it as us going somewhere and fixing things. He sees it as message sending and watching things. He realizes that he’s made it work and on the screen he hears older Chase telling him not to pick up the fistigons. Jump to the end of this episode and we find out exactly why. Victor is withdrawing from the serum. Remember Dale was too.
It has made him even worse than he was before and he attacks Chase in his lab because he’s mad at him for being in there without him. They get into a huge fight and when Chase punches him, Victor picks up the fistigons and throws Chase into a car. Victor approaches a badly hurt Chase and points the fistigon right at him and it looks like he’s about to kill him until BANG, Janet Stein shoots him. We don’t know for sure if he’s dead but it doesn’t look very good. It’s an amazing moment to close the episode on and yet another twist that doesn’t exist in the comic. I haven’t been this edge of my seat for a comic book adaptation ever and I’m really grateful for this show doing that. However, THEY NEED TO RUN AWAY
