Marvel's Runaways S02E11 Review: Quinceañera

Marvel's Runaways, Season 2, Episode 11: Last Waltz

A bit of an all right episode, even if it still does feel like we're just building up so many plot threads that don't feel like they're going to be wrapped up in two episodes. It sort of feels like the episodes leading up to the climax of Runaways' first season's finale, which ended with a cliffhanger, and I sort of have a feeling that this second season is going to end similarly. If nothing else, though, at least season two did deliver a pretty satisfying ending to the PRIDE/Jonah storyline in the middle portion of the season. I just kinda wished that, even moreso, the whole Alex/AWOL storyline wasn't so underwhelming and an obvious stopgap between two far more interesting storylines.

"Last Waltz" is an episode that takes some of the more under-developed characters -- a vast majority of the season's earlier episodes are driven by Alex, Karolina and to some extent Nico and Molly, with the other two sort of just being there. Like, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who are super-happy with the Chase/Gert drama stuff, but I honestly didn't find it super interesting. This episode puts them in the limelight, and it's... all right? It's so much more interesting when the two of them have something more interesting to drive a wedge between them, and the wedge in this case is Gert's parents (one of whom is possessed by an alien, lest we forget), and their attempt to basically get all the children back home by try to interrogate Chase with a truth serum, the results of which are far more comedic than tense. 

And this episode's whole climax ends up being the Runaways trying to free Chase and Gert from the Yorkes' house... which is surprisingly tame. Sure, Tina Minoru (or the alien possessing Tina) is there, but she just sort of spends her entire scene sort of reclining on a table and giving cryptic warnings to everyone, and when the rest of the Runaways show up, the Yorkeses are just powerless to stop them from absconding with Chase and Gert... but then they "are forced" to leave Old Lace behind because... uh... Dale gets a tranq dart shot out while the kids somehow forget that they have a pet Deinonychus? I dunno. Like, considering just how much Gert and Old Lace's bond has been emphasized throughout the entire series, I find it very hard to believe that Gert wouldn't put up more of a fight for them to literally make a slight detour for the metahumans among them to pick up Old Lace, or that she'll just willingly mark Old Lace off as a bit of a lost cause and be fine with having Old Lace be held by her parents. I dunno. It feels forced, like a lot of the story decisions here. Wouldn't it be a lot more reasonable and the plot to flow better if Old Lace didn't even break out of its cage? Eh. 

And then, of course, the final cliffhanger is Victor Stein (or the alien within Victor, it's not clear) calling Chase and convincing him to come back home under the possibly-true excuse that Victor's dying, causing a fall-out between Chase and the rest of the Runaways right after that nice, pretty quinceanera scene because these kids aren't allowed to have anything nice. Victor's pretty interesting, because out of the three possessed parents, he's the only one who seems to even be suspecting anything and is alternating between his real personality and his alien one, so I'm not sure which one of them is the one who managed to get Chase home. Either way, though, just like the Runaways leaving Old Lace behind, the fact that Chase didn't even mention that his father is dying (or he thinks his father is dying) is something that definitely felt like it was forcibly written in and made this sequence feel somewhat inorganic. 

Meanwhile, the B-plots in this episode are basically the Runaways throwing a birthday party for Molly, which ends up feeling particularly hollow -- the montage of them buying shit is sort of just there, and the dance felt actually perfunctory than actually a huge emotional moment... and that's not taking into account the fact that the whole Chase leaving the group bit ends up basically throwing a massive sour note on the whole birthday thing, something that Molly herself even lampshades. 

Meanwhile Frank Dean continues to be a shit and forces Leslie to go through this whole reconditioning nonsense which just looks so uncomfortable... but also so detached from everything that's going on. I'm pretty sure that this is going to lead to some Karolina-centric storyline sometime down the arc, but I am just so un-invested in the whole Church of Gibborim storyline that I can't even say that it's entertaining the way the Yorkeses are. Apparently, Leslie's mother, Susan, or S4E2R, is also held prisoner there, but she's far more reconditioned than Leslie? This genuinely was dropped on us almost out of nowhere, and I can't really emphasize just how much I don't really care about this storyline at all. Also Leslie is pregnant and very visibly showing. Okay? I'm genuinely not a huge fan of any of this, it just feels so goddamn detached from everything that's going on, and everything moves at such a breakneck pace that I honestly kinda wished that they integrated the Church of Gibborim stuff better with the previous episodes of this season, y'know? 

Far more interestingly, Karolina is contacted by a strange, seemingly shape-shifting alien, who may or may not be a Skrull (oh, these Marvel properties and the messy, messy "I have rights to these characters" nonsense). Which... yeah, hopefully we're going to get a bit more of Karolina's storyline, which I do welcome. 

Ultimately, though... I really ended up feeling that the whole Chase/Gert within the Yorkes' basement stuff ended up feeling very underwhelming and honestly, a little bit of a waste of time. Like, I appreciate the chance to let these actors sort of do a bunch of fun acting -- the Yorkeses are all fantastic and get great lines, and truth-serum'd Chase talking about his sex life is pretty fun, but ultimately the episode feels a lot more like it's just a bunch of filler between the Alex-centric AWOL storyline and whatever final plot we're going to have to close out this season... which seems to going to be a "get Chase back from PRIDE" deal going on. 

Random Notes:

• There's a scene with Nico burying her staff in the wall, which is her response to her freaking out at the climax of the AWOL storyline. I'm pretty sure she's going to have to break it out before the season's over, though. 
• Xavin is a Skrull in the comics, which is where the shape-shifting stuff draws from. Considering that he's implied to be part of Jonah's crew in this show, I'm not sure if he's also a Skrull here. Is he the same race as Jonah and his cronies, which seem to possess people? I'm not sure!
• That scene as Chase collapses from the drugged orange juice is hilarious as shit, especially Dale's faux-innocent shit-eating grin. Also hilarious is Tina-possessed-by-an-alien just acting like such an ass, and everyone just sort of shrugs it off as "such a Tina Minoru thing to do".
• Then again, since Stacey and Tina are both basically 100% confirmed to be aliens, I'm not sure why Stacey was so antagonistic towards Tina. I guess it's non-possessed Stacey? But honestly, the rules of the Gibborim's possession of people are kind of ambiguous, so I'm not sure. 
• I also completely forgot that the Minorus run the Wizard security system or whatever. 
• In the cult-y reconditioning place, there's a statue of the comic-book version of the Gibborim. There's your Marvel comics easter egg of the day!
• As forced as a lot of the storyline/plot stuff in this episode is, I do applaud and concede that Chase deciding to take the deal to go back to his parents is the most organic out of everyone in the group. Alex, meanwhile, is basically in "rawr we must kill PRIDE rawr" mode throughout this entire episode. 
• What the fuck is the point of the Church of Gibborim basically taking away everyone's names... but gives them codes that start with the same letter as their original names? Susan has a codename that starts with S, and Leslie's codename would've started with L. Silly cult fanatics!