Marvel's Runaways, Season 1, Episode 6: Metamorphosis
Again, taken as a standalone episode, 'Metamorphosis' works reasonably well as yet another episode that builds up the titular Runaways as a superhero team, a likable bunch of friends and a bunch of teenagers who discover their superpowers (well, Alex is like the powerless leader of the team, I guess) and is fueled with equal parts awe and dread. However, this is episode 6 out of 10 episodes, and once more the pacing feels frustratingly slow. Neither the parents nor the kids gets any closer to discovering just what the other is up to, and we're 60% done with the first season and the Wilder parents are the only ones who's starting to realize that the six kids aren't as innocently naive as they seem. Oh, sure, the affair subplot is sort of concluded here and the mysterious
And at this point... I'm honestly past caring about pacing. Doubtless I will throw a hissy fit if we get to episode 10 and we don't get the season's storyline wrapped up in a satisfactory manner, but honestly I've just been enjoying spending time with these six children and the five pairs of parents that... I don't honestly care if we wrap things up this season or not. It's a bold statement to make, I'm sure, but I've always felt that plot must always happen in service to character and not the other way around -- a common mistake that fiction in the television medium tends to fuck up.
And a lot of the events that happen in this episode might not be groundbreaking if we're going on the whole 'Runaways versus Pride' plot, but in terms of the involved characters, it's undoubtedly monumental. The episode is titled Metamorphosis and Kafka's novel makes a brief cameo by the guard that Gert distracts, but a large amount of characters go through said metamorphosis. Most obvious is Karolina, who gets drunk and rants about how it is so hard to keep up her super-happy church leader's daughter facade, and how she's just so pissed off at everything. At the cult that her parents are part of, at her emerging superpowers and the fact that she might not even be human, at her recent near-rape and, if her longing glances at Nico is anything to go by, her confusion isn't just the Karolina/Chase/Gert love triangle and she might actually be struggling with realizing that she's lesbian or bisexual (she freaking lights up like a rainbow, I can't believe I didn't notice that her sexuality's hinted all the way from the first episode). Her dialogue to Chase, shouting that "your secret is that you're super-smart, not that you're a light-up glowstick" is very well-done.
The show builds up Karolina's struggles relatively well, and when she gets a little drunk and starts ranting next to a rooftop, I believe that. She ends up ripping off her power-suppressing bracelet and nearly falls off the side of the building. Chase reaches out to catch her... and we get to see the absolutely gorgeous sight of her flying. Superheroes flying isn't anything new, it was revolutionary once when Christopher Reeve first played the Man of Steel on the movies... but it is new for Karolina the character, and seeing the joy that Karolina has for experiencing it the first time is definitely well-executed. She's been spending her life under the control of her parents (well, mostly her mom) and she's now just ready to act out.
And yes, I'm so much more invested in Karolina's character arc, or Tina Minoru's character arc, or the Victor-and-Chase relationship, or Molly's desperation to know something about her family, than I am at really caring if Nico and Alex manages to hack into the Minoru mainframe or not.
At first glance, I was tempted to brush off Nico's sudden moment of bonding with her mother Tina over their shared ability to use the magical staff to easily be compared to Victor and Chase bonding over the Fistigons. It's a bit odd how the two parent/child couple that's shown to be the most antagonistic are the ones that find a way to bond within all this crisis (and vice-versa, with Alex/Geoffrey and Karolina/Leslie), but it's all done in a very real way that makes neither of their bonding shoehorned in -- unlike a lesser show, such as Inhumans and their stupid attempt to make every single main character relate to a human buddy.
Let's talk about Nico and Tina first. Nico is perhaps the biggest rebel of the group, acting out and dressing like a goth (the flashback to when Amy died showed that she was a far more normal girl) and shutting herself out from her parents. It's a very teenager thing to do, especially when your mother is a bit of a control freak like Tina Minoru is. And Nico's rebellion is fueled with a desire to bring her parents to justice... yet when she and Alex are sneaking around Tina's office, and Tina enters the room and starts to sob, without even realizing what's going on Nico's first instinct (which had to be stopped) was to hug her crying mother.
Nico and Tina also have a bonding moment over superpowers which perhaps isn't as well-foreshadowed as the Victor/Chase bonding moment was, since every single interaction between Nico and Tina has been filled with loathing. Accidentally breaking Amy's trophy, caught 'having sex', Tina accusing Nico of shooing them out of the house for sushi dinner not because she cares... all that stuff. Yet when Tina sees that her staff accepts Nico (Tina tries to explain it away with some neural linkage or bullshit like that, but Nico goes something along the lines of 'science is high-tech magic, got it' and brushes it off). Yes, Nico's first spell under her mother's tutelage is to shut her mom up, but it's an honest bonding moment between the two of them, and it's definitely an interesting one.
Victor and Chase... continue to bond a little, although Victor's storyline here revolves more around the interactions with Pride. Victor has apparently been spying on the affair that Robert and Janet have, and during a public announcement of their public persona's accomplishments, Victor decides to spill the beans out, pointing out that his wife's been fucking his friend behind his back... before collapsing because, y'know, the man's dying of a brain cancer. He gets revived with some combination of science and magic by Jonah the Mystery Alien-God Man, and suddenly is all cheery and a loving father-slash-husband. It's a bit weird.
Honestly, though, Victor's storyline gave me perhaps one of the most powerful scenes, where the mighty and cold Tina Minoru is humbled. She's been one of the most powerful adult figures in the show, the most cocksure and professional of them all. Her only moment of vulnerability was during her daughter's death, and that was more distress and fight-or-flight than the absolute sight of grief that she has at this point. She just retreats from all her friends into her office, so blindsided that she doesn't notice Alex and Nico hiding in her office or Gert distracting her minions by playing on her precious wedding-gift arcade game. She just wants to cry -- and who can blame her? Passing panties in a sushi restaurant might be wholly unsanitary, and driving Robert away might be partially her fault, but she's been trying to repair her relationship and her wedding for the past couple of episodes, and to have it all thrown back because Robert's sleeping with another woman? Yeah, Robert's an asshole.
Perhaps the funniest bit of dialogue is when the Runaways kind of return to catch each other up, and Chase tries to tell Nico that their parents are sleeping together, and Nico goes... "my mom and your dad?", understandably going for the more powerful and independent ones of both husband-wife pairs, then goes "your mom and... my mom?" Nico just cannot fathom that her father has any sort of spine that she'd believe that her mom is a closet lesbian than to think that her dad would even dare to cheat on her mom.
Again, all the affair subplot doesn't really have much to do in the Pride-vs-Runaways stuff, or the conspiracy surrounding whatever the fuck the Church of Gibborim's "going ultra" means, or what Jonah really is, but it does help to develop our characters and our villains. It is, admittedly, going to be a point that I will critique if we reach episode 10 and the pacing and storytelling turns out to go nowhere, but as far as I am at this point in the season, I am pretty engrossed with the story they're telling.
Meanwhile, Molly keeps kind of demanding that Catherine Wilder tell her about what happened to her parents. She's a bit antsy, and her ill-phrased "time is running out!!" text ends up raising some bells, and her talk about "you need to tell me before..." ends up tipping off Catherine Wilder that at least Molly has witnessed the Pride sacrifice, and things... might need to be done in perhaps a more permanent fashion.
Gert... doesn't actually get a lot to do in this episode. She's fun, and she plays off both Karolina and Chase really well, but in this episode beyond just hanging out with her buddies she doesn't actually have that much in lieu of development. Neither did her parents -- and it's fine. We can't have everyone get a lot of screentime in every episode.
It's not all sunshines in the world of Runaways, of course. There are certain duds, and certain subplots that end up just feeling unforgettable in everything that's been going on. Frank Dean is perhaps the biggest offender, and his attempt to 'go Ultra' and be jealous at his wife's new paramour (who's her real love), and seemingly remembering things that Pride had made him forgotten, is a bit of an anomaly because Frank's just so detached from everything that I simply don't care about it. Jonah himself, after all the effort that Pride did to bring him back to life, also ends up being terribly bland. He throws his weight around as leader, swaggers around with an obvious "Leslie loves me, mere mortal Frank, fuck off" vibe, and he really wants to get to know his daughter Karolina but their interaction is one that fit the tone of a stranger, and the nebbish Frank ends up feeling more like a supporting parent to Karolina than Jonah will probably ever be.
Out of the main Runaways, Alex also feels a bit dry. His anger at his father's association with criminals and his possible murder of Andre are certainly very valid reasons to fight, but Geoffrey and Alex's confrontations are kind of just so... passive that I'm not as invested as the other parent-child pairs. It doesn't help that Alex's whole shtick is that he's just the glue that holds the team together and he's in love with Nico, whereas even little confused Molly seems more fleshed-out than Alex is. Still, it's not that large of a complaint because the leader figure never tend to be as well-developed as the interesting side characters anyway.
Overall, it's not the perfect episode, and I still find myself not caring as much about Jonah or the Pride as a whole... but the actual characters that comprise the Pride and the Runaways are all developed reasonably well, and I find myself really wanting to watch the next episode. Not just because I have to know what happens next, but simply because I enjoy these characters.
And if that's not enough, hey, have a Stan Lee cameo! Stan Lee is the best.
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