Marvel's Runaways S02E03 Review: Princess Powerful

Marvel's Runaways, Season 2, Episode 3: Double Zeroes 

Kinda figuring out how I want to do Runaways. I guess it's just really going to follow if I'm feeling like talking about a single episode I watched, or if I want to watch two at once and talk about both. Or something like that. I dunno. It's going to really depend on my mood, I guess.

This one is... a pretty interesting episode! Obviously the huge, huge plot development is on the Alex front, which is kind of a huge thing, but everything involving Alex has been kind of separated from the rest of the Runaways squad. It's part of Alex's unique background and him being intentionally distant from the rest of the Runaways after the first episode, but I kinda feel like his story is sort of like a B-plot sidequest more than something seamlessly integrated into the main plot of Runaways. After a couple of domino games and whatnot, Darius ends up selling Alex out to Geoffrey for the deed of the construction site. And... well, Alex's probably going to have some really severe trust issues in the future with anyone that's not part of the Runaways squad. Geoffrey is straight-up ready to abandon Pride and escape with his son out of the country, which is actually the smart thing to do. Or maybe not, depending on how far Pride's arm reaches. 

This ends up not being the case, of course, because Alex manages to send out an SOS to Nico and the rest of the Runaways, allowing them to show up and rescue them with the combined powers of the car that Chase restored, as well as, well, Nico using her magic staff to summon a big-ass wall of concrete to stop Geoffrey's car. That was badass. 

Meanwhile, as Darius looks on at the fancy hotel that Geoffrey left for him and his family... he's confronted by Catherine Wilder, who (according to her) came on her own accord, noting how they can 'never be free' of Geoffrey's past and attachment to his old gangster roots. And judging by that excellent scene of Geoffrey and Darius talking to each other about dominoes and whatnot, Geoffrey clearly has a large sense of loyalty to Darius. Catherine... then proceeds to shoot Darius dead in cold blood, just to tie up a loose end as well as to frame him for the fake crime they charged the kids with. The show then proceeds to hammer home this gut-punch by showing Darius's pregnant wife Tamar breaking down over these news. I do like that it's left ambiguous, at least at this point, on just how much Catherine let Geoffrey in on whether she planned to murder Darius. We'll see. 

Also, Runaways is just going to have "fun teenage hijinks" crisscrossed with the mood whiplash of one of the Pride parents killing some other likable character in cold blood, huh? 

Meanwhile, the rest of the Runaways are... well, they're bonding, in a way, by beating each other up. Nico has basically taken over as de facto leader of the group, but her attempt at training basically goes from "okay, shoot dummies with Fistigons and magic staves" to "hey Chase shoot me I can totally block this" before getting knocked down on her ass. We also basically get some more Chase/Gert drama stuff, which is more of a follow-up on last week with Gertrude suffering more and more adverse effects from losing her anti-depressants. Also, while all of this is going on, Molly has her own subplot where she tries to be a superhero and recklessly attacks a pimp, beating him up during their first encounter, and then smashing up the pimp's car, while dropping hilarious one-liners. "Pimped yo' ride!" Both times, Molly gets confronted by a different older kid -- first Nico, and then Gert. It's neat. We do get an adorable bit where Molly basically acts as a supportive little sister when talking to Chase, and, of course the whole "fix a car" subplot ends up being important when they, well, use said car to save Alex. We get an adorable scene where we pan around the Runaways in a circle as they all basically shit-talk Alex, that stupid dork, but they also kind of need and like the dork. 

The final scene in this development is basically Alex and Nico sharing a nice, quiet, platonic scene. It kind of neatly builds up on Alex's puppy crush from the first episode, as well as the fact that the two of them seem to be the one with the closest dynamic prior to the death of Nico's sister. Nico actually trying to comfort Alex after learning of Darius's death, and them bonding over Street Fighter II is pretty neat

Oh, and Nico quickly figures out the limitations of the Staff of One, meaning that she can't deus ex magica her way out of every situation the Runaways find themselves in... or at least, not without effort. Apparently, the Staff of One will only react to the 'base elements', and also you can't use two commands in a row, which was why that block spell failed when she was goofing around with Chase earlier. 

Overall, a pretty solid episode. I'm still not particularly impressed with how they handled Darius and Alex's storyline, and felt like it could've been integrated to the main story a bit better, but at least the potential fallout from Darius's death could really be interesting. We also have a bunch of B-plots starring other members of the PRIDE, but none are super-interesting, so I'll talk about it in my 'random notes'. Honestly, I really do like this format with the random notes! I've only really been using it for Hunter x Hunter reviews, but it really honestly helps a lot and I can see why a lot of text based TV reviews do the same thing. 

Random Notes:

• Molly's pimp-beating ends up attracting a stray -- Topher, who follows Molly to their mansion hideout. Other random people in that alley did imply that Topher has the same glowing eyes as Molly. Topher's actually a character I remember in the first run of the Runaways series, and I'm actually curious how they're going to retool Nicohis origins here. 
• Janet is finally allowed to visit Victor in his weird Inception mind, and apparently Victor's randomly nice now. I can buy mutual loathing of an alien asshole to cause them to put their differences aside, though. 
• With Victor's help, Janet decodes a holographic map of space, and what I assume is Jonah's home planet... so I guess we're just going to chalk up most of the weirdness that isn't the Minorus' magic to just "alien". Which, honestly, I kind of wish isn't the case -- that's going to cheapen the whole concept of the Runaways where each family represents a weird aspect of the Marvel comics universe. 
• Their plot is honestly dry, but I absolutely love the sheer sarcastic sass that Janet throws towards both Jonah and Victor. 
• Frank's apparently thrown himself wholeheartedly into the Church-Cult of Gibborim, ostensibly to win back Leslie's love and approval. But mostly because he's lost. Poor Frank.
• I really did like Nico and Alex's quiet scene at the end a lot. 
• Molly randomly charging in and just picking Alex and carrying him to the car even though Alex can walk is probably the most understated hilarious moment of the episode. 
• In the comics, Nico's staff straight-up can't cast the same spell twice, but is way more powerful than how it is shown here. (In the comics, it also had the drawback of Nico having to bleed to summon the staff, which, of course, ends up with some unfortunate self-harm implications).
• At this point, the Staff's just treated as straight-up magic, yeah? No more of those "this is built by the finest technology" hullabaloo from season one?