Marvel's Runaways, Season 2, Episode 1: Gimmie Shelter; Episode 2: Radio On
We're back with Runaways! Sort of. I do love the series, and enjoyed my time reviewing and watching the first season immensely... but I just don't know, again, how regularly or how often I'll be able to watch and review episodes of Runaways' second season. To its credit, though, it does kickstart its second season with a very solid episode. After a much-needed recap segment (there are a lot of characters in this show), the second season starts off with a fun bait-and-switch as the Pride parents show up at the police station with the allegation that the police have found their runaway kids... but turns out they arrested a completely different batch of children.
And for the most part, the six Runaways and their pet CGI dinosaur sort of spend this first episode sort of just... trying to deal with the fact that they are, well, runaways. It's more set-up and a reintroduction to the characters, including a little shake-up of Pride itself, with the parents basically deciding to take matters into their own hands and focus more on finding their children and maybe stopping Dr. Doom Jonah and whatever the fuck he's doing.
And, for the most part, the first episode is pretty solid. There are some bits of conflict that are relatively self-contained in this episode, like that random kid who stole Chase's Fistigons, or Alex going off on his own side-quest to get funds... which he takes from Darius. I do like the little bait-and-switch prank by Darius who builds up to this scene where he makes it look like he's going to get Alex to either kill a dude or clean up a body... only to actually have him paint a baby room. Aww. Of course, it's not just going to soup kitchens or hiding their CGI velociraptor that becomes the Runaways' problem, but the troubling fact that naive old Molly gave a tape of Pride's operations to Graciela... who ends up blabbing about it on television.
Which ends up being where Pride and the Runaways' storylines intersect. The Yorkes, bless their geeky, confused attitude, end up with a plan to try and brush things under the rug with a mind-wipe serum, but Graciela shows up with a fucking shotgun and very nearly kills the Yorkes... and then Tina Minoru shows up with her magic staff and straight-up chokes the poor old lady to death... and all the Runaways could do when they arrived later is mourn her. This leads to a touching, if perhaps somewhat too-long funeral scene in the shelter. Basically, it's a little bit of dark serious plot in an otherwise relatively chill episode.
And the rest of the episode is just both teams meeting up in their bases. Pride's base is a pretty simple supervillain lair with lots and lots of monitors, hidden in an office. But after hunting down "Mike on a Bike" who stole Chase's Fistigons, they end up finding an abandoned mansion which they quickly use as their new home and base. Got to put that CGI dinosaur somewhere, right?
The stakes are there, and the Runaways end up getting thrust into their family's crazy Illuminati conspiracy once more. Except this time around, Pride ends up consolidating their forces to basically go against Jonah and... whatever he is planning with the massive hole he's drilled deep underground. There's apparently something alive down in that hole, and whether it's more of Jonah's kind (aliens?) or something else, we aren't quite sure yet. What we do know, though, is that Jonah himself is putting things into motion. He meets up with Victor Stein within his recovery tank to enlist his help, and later on we see him meeting up with Karolina... who claims to just want to know what she is.
There are some hints that there may or may not be a mole among the Runaways early on, and some argument about who's the leader, and I actually read through the original run of the Runaways to know that, yes, a huge plot point in the series is the fact that one of the six is a mole... but I'm not sure if the TV show will be following that route or if they will swap out who the traitor is. What we do know is that Karolina is at least curious enough about her origin to meet her father on the top of the Hollywood sign... right as an earthquake rocks the city.
Again, the acting's pretty well done, the vibe of everything that's going on is pretty neat, too. The episode is overall pretty solid, even if it does spend a good chunk of its screentime just reintroducing these characters to us. It's mostly a setup of what I assume will be the status quo of the second season, where our kid heroes are actually operating as runaways hiding out in a mansion instead of perhaps the biggest flaw of the first season, where the Runaways aren't actually runaways yet.
Episode two is also relatively slow, and after the brief bit with the earthquake that was dealt with quickly, and Jonah's meeting with Karolina seemingly being an innocuous bit of Karolina learning how to control her sparkly alien powers without the aid of the bracelet, we return to more... mundane problems. Karolina brushes off her time out as going off to the woods, and, ironically, is the only little problem that the other Runaways don't see a problem with. Alex keeping secrets and going on a job gets called into question, as is the fact that he's working with Darius. Some of the Runaways want to go off and do something proactive to stop Pride, like Nico, who wants to steal her mom's staff, and Molly, who just wants to punch things.
The Runaways are split up. Alex goes off on his job and befriends and gets into a fling with Darius's sister-in-law Livvie while bonding with Darius' family, and also gets a new hairdo. His storyline is perhaps the least eventful out of the three different Runaway groups, but it's a nice little follow-up from the previous episode and end up being a wee bit more heartbreaking when it seems that Darius is selling Alex out to the Wilder parents. Meanwhile, Gert and Chase spend most of the episode sort of bonding and deciding to take things slow, while also fixing the power for the mansion. Where a lot of the other romances are moving a bit quickly, I do like the fact that Gert and Chase take the time to slow down and talk about the boundaries of their developing relationship, and Gert being relatively a ball of anxiety -- particularly due to her lack of meds -- is pretty well done. Also, Gert gets to utilize Old Lace in a pretty neat way, using her to scare off some city workers that came to investigate the blackout.
The big action sequence is Karolina, Nico and Molly going off to steal the Staff of One. Nico's easily the highlight of the episode, particularly because the Minorus actually show up and catch the kids in the act. I love just how disappointed and done Nico is with the "emotional good cop" that is Robert Minoru, who the kids are clearly not at all threatened by... which leads to the actual fight with the far more experienced Tina Minoru. Molly and Karolina's powers are pretty neat, but magical blasts and a frozen pool later, and Tina quickly dominates the fight and would've straight-up drowned Molly in a frozen pool if not for Nico's words. Eventually, after some choice words regarding Amy, Tina just... hands Nico the staff, with an ultimatum: stay and work things out, or leave with the staff while severing their relationship. And of course Nico does, and I do really love just how Tina, shown throughout the series to be a pretty cold villain, ends up being genuinely surprised with her just muttering to her husband that she "didn't think she would have taken it". Not sure what this means for Tina -- does she have other means to utilize magic? Or is she just very prepared to make sure her daughter at least has a way to protect herself?
This poor showing on the part of the kids, and Karolina showing off her newfound control of her powers, ends up with Nico snapping at Karolina, and later on at the rest of the group, that they are unprepared and certainly are shit at fighting as a team. Nico does apologize to Karolina later on, which is sweet and all. But it seems that with Alex going off on his own on both episodes, Nico's probably stepping up as the leader of the team and is about to try and mold the Runaways into a proper superhero team. Or at least to actually, well, able to defend themselves against actual threats. Meanwhile, Molly uses her cute little hat-mask as a superhero mask and goes off to presumably do her own Princess Powerful superheroing. Hopefully she doesn't run into the Punisher.
On the Pride side of things, it's Janet Stein who gets the most significant screentime other than the Minorus, and Janet basically shows up and integrates herself into Jonah's little scheme, trying to worm her way as Jonah's co-conspirator only to be somewhat rebuffed after she gave him 'the plans', because Jonah already has a partner in the comatose Victor. This does lead to an interesting bit where Janet and the Wilders sort of work to decipher "The Abstract", which is... an ancient book or something? Lots of moving pieces in this series. I like it.
Overall, these episodes are pretty slow, but very solid setup stuff. Pretty neat setup to the second season of Marvel's Runaways for sure. The confrontation between Nico and her parents is a pretty neat one, even if it's perhaps the 'easiest'. Considering that Nico and Tina's relationship was easily the most strained among the various Runaways, it's going to be interesting to see when it's Alex, Chase or Gert that'll be forced to face their own respective parents, or when Karolina ends up meeting Jonah again. Good stuff.
Random Notes:
- Again, while Runaways adapts the original twelve-issue 2003 run, it does so very loosely. The Abstract, the mansion base, PRIDE's main goal involving something underground, as well as Molly's cute hat being her superhero mask are all taken from that title, though.
- Nico does both title drops for the series, noting that "we suck at being runaways."
- Kind of interesting to make a couple of the Runaways effectively neutred, with Alex having no access to computers, Chase's Fistigons being stolen and later out of power, and Nico missing her staff until the second episode.
- There really could've been a more practical way for Gert and Chase to chase off those poor workers. Hell, if nothing else, reports of a mountain lion might actually bring even more officers into the mansion.
- I really love just how utterly literal the names of the Minoru staff spells are. Sure, 'freeze' is pretty standard, but 'radio on' and 'tune'?
- I kinda felt that Janet was very much underused among the parents in the first season, just being there to add to the affair storyline, so having her seemingly trying to worm her way to rescue Victor from Jonah, in order to rescue Chase, is pretty interesting.
- Random Skyrim reference!
- It's implied that the Wilders wanted to frame someone to call off the APB for the Runaways, which seems to be Darius. Actually, between him being such a charismatic character throughout the two episodes, having a pregnant wife... but also seemingly willing to sell Alex out, it's actually a neat conflict on how the audience will feel.
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