Marvel's Runaways S02E13 Review: Alien Arranged Marriages

Marvel's Runaways, Season 2, Episode 13: Split Up

This is... certainly a way to end a season. We start off this episode quickly going through the whole Xavin information dump, and as much as I do like my sci-fi, I kinda wish it was the Church of Gibborim stuff that was info-dumped on us over a montage and we had allowed Xavin to actually interact with the Runaways, y'know? It's something that I'm not a particularly huge fan of, but hey, at least it's quick and painless, and most of Xavin's purpose in this episode, in addition to delivering some comedic and robotic "I do not understand why my betrothed does not respond to my courting" bits and basically delivering a lot of exposition about Jonah's race. Or, well, the Magistrate, as we have to call him now. And... on one hand, I do like the clarity of finally getting a bunch of revelations about the things we've been seeing on the alien storyline in this season. On the other hand... it's kind of cheating, isn't it? The random huge revelation of royal alien bloodlines and whatnot? It's just a huge random info-dump, and I kinda wished that the second half of the season had the kids figure or stumble into all of these themselves. 

Actress Clarissa Thibeaux does a pretty great job as the almost-robotic alien paramour Xavin, but ultimately, while she's handled a lot better than someone like Susan or AWOL, Xavin is still kind of just there to be convenient when the plot demands it, and even more than before I really wished that the show-writers had arranged out the post-Last-Rites episodes and the stories a bit better. I'd have loved for the AWOL stuff and the Gibborim stuff to each be contained to one episode each, and maybe have the PRIDE and alien hoo-ha be more built up upon over the half-season. 

And, honestly, we probably should've given Xavin's debut to a prior episode, because she's sort of a non-entity here. She's an exposition machine in the first scene, shows up and fights the Magistrate for a bit before being chased off, and sort of just hangs out the Hostel at the end. The rest of the episode thankfully focuses on the far, far more emotionally-driven fight between the Runaways and the remains of PRIDE. 

And the huge conflict here, of course, is that Chase, representing PRIDE and given the paper-thin ultimatum of "talk your friends down, or we'll use potentially-lethal weapons and memory wipe drugs", and... so much for a seat at the table. I definitely believe that none of the other Runaways want anything to do with Chase's deal with the devil, and likewise, I definitely believe the cocksure ability they have that their superpowers can deal with anything that PRIDE can throw at them. 

And... of course, the Magistrate and his two buddies (his 'wife' and his 'daughter'?) have manipulated the produced weapons to be far deadlier than it was originally meant to, because all they want to do is to capture Karolina, and damn the rest of the kids. James Marsters gets some neat acting opportunities when Victor wakes up and is absolutely baffled that someone else has altered the designs of his weapons, and does a lot of amazing moments when he finally drops all pretense of masquerading as Victor and re-introduces himself as Jonah before Karolina and Xavin in that warehouse. 

The fight against PRIDE's army of drones and the individual parent teams is chaotic as the Runaways find that the parents have countermeasures for their powers. The Fistigons and Karolina's beams don't work, Nico's poor brain is scrambled, Molly can't hit flying drones and Gert's kind of just a regular girl without her dinosaur. They're forced to split up, and basically go through a bunch of individual character arcs as they each confront their parents. 

Alex's sheer, boiling hatred and desire to bring his parents to justice has been, for better or for worse, the driving force of his character throughout the season. With the aid of a borrowed sports-car and after managing to force one of the PRIDE drones to run out of bullets, he leads Geoffrey and Catherine into a bunch of alleyways, and I do like that Alex seems to have learned his lesson from a whole lot of stupid plans over the season. It looks for a moment like he's going to take Tamar's advice from last episode to heart and shoot his parents in cold blood, but he ends up shooting into the air with the incriminating weapon while leaving a cold tip, causing his parents to be arrested by the policemen. 

Karolina, meanwhile, gets into a brief stand-off with Victor-revealing-himself-as-Jonah, and we get to see the weird anti-alien devices that the Magistrate has developed to subdue Karolina's powers. There's really not a lot to go on here, though -- Karolina's taken out by the Magistrate and is one of the 'casualties' of the episode. I'm very much sad that we've seemingly dropped any attempt at trying to make Jonah/Magistrate as a conflicted parental figure to Karolina. Between him and Frank Dean, Karolina's dads just devolve from interesting parents to just sadists, yeah?

The Magistrate basically returns to the Steins only to be confronted by Chase and Janet. They have their own theory about how "Victor is turning into Jonah", which is adorably wrong (they blame the blood transfusion machine) in the reasons why, but this does end up with the Magistrate showing that he's prepared himself against his own anti-alien weaponry, and takes out both Chase and Janet. 

Dale and Alien!Stacey chase Molly and Gert through a mall, and it's perhaps the most bizarrely fun action sequence. Between Molly getting a bunch of people to help get in Dale's way because of PEDOFILO, or the way that Stacey gets the shopkeeper out of the way so she and Gert can get some one-on-one time, the scene's pretty neat. Stacey ends up knocking Gert out with a blow onto the head, something that Dale witnesses... and I do like that ever since Stacey's possession, Dale's continually whining about it but never really having the balls to stand up to Stacey. This ends up becoming the straw that breaks the camel's back, though, because, as one of the final scenes of the episodes show, Dale ends up taking matters into his own hands, kidnaps Gert and Old Lace and heads off on some bizarre road trip away from what to him is an increasingly unstable Stacey. Pretty interesting. 

Nico and Karolina, meanwhile, decide to split up, with that one speech about how they'll "always find each other" making it obvious that they'll be separated and we're going to spend at least half a season with them apart. Karolina, of course, goes off as the distraction and while she loses the drone, she gets taken out by the Magistrate... while Nico, poor, poor fighting-the-brain-scramblers Nico, ends up going straight into PRIDE's headquarters, facing off against Tina (who seems to also be completely taken over by her alien) and... and Robert! Who knows kung fu! Nico's basically dressed in a superhero goth outfit anyway throughout this scene, and I do love that we do get a bit of neat fighty-fight sequence. The slow-motion is a bit much, but eventually, one face-slap too much causes Nico to snap and unleash her inner demons. Her eyes grow scaly-demonic again and she unleashes a "SMAAAASH" spell all My Hero Academia style, knocking out Tina and Robert, before walking away. And it's... uncharacteristically cold for Nico, and she's also apparently losing time, so something about the Staff of One seems to have a grab on Nico?

Ultimately, the Runaways return to the base battered and defeated. Alex and Nico both have had hollow victories over their respective parents, sure, but the two of them plus Molly meant that only half of the Runaways team return to their base to meet Leslie and Xavin... and we get a bunch of additional complications. The Gibborim will definitely be gunning for Leslie and her unborn royal-alien child. Dale has Gert and Old Lace; while the Magistrate and his two cohorts have Chase, Karolina and Janet in alien tubes to 'feed' from. Plus, apparently, there's a fourth Gibborim member, the "Son", which have possessed someone, either from PRIDE or the Runaways, but haven't really shown himself. Nico is kind of an obvious red herring, but I'm curious if the revelation next season on who the "Son" is will end up being. 

Ultimately... it's definitely a bit messy. Season two of Runaways started off really strong, and while a lot of the characters do end up getting in the grove and this does make the second half definitely watchable, the storylines and exposition of the second half of the season does leave a fair bit to be desired. I kinda wished that they either committed to having the second half be a bunch of shorter story arcs, or if it's about the return of the Magistrate and a rekindling of the PRIDE/Runaways. A lot of characters (particularly PRIDE members) just also sort of simmer down into the background in these post-Jonah episodes, which also hurts the season somewhat. This finale is still strong enough for me to care about what happens to these poor children next season, but I really do wish that between the body-hopping possession aliens and the various subplots that the children are embroiled with that we hopefully have better focus and character management next season. 

Random Notes: 

• Chase is briefly shown looking at the designs of a weird device called the Leapfrog, which is the Runaways' stolen future-vehicle in the comics. 
• Xavin's a Xartan, a completely different race from the Gibborim. The original Xavin from the comics is a Skrull, but now he's a Xartan, a completely different race of shape-shifting aliens. 
• So Leslie is just now an honorary Runaway member now? She seems content to cut ties with everyone else in PRIDE, if nothing else to protect her unborn child who the Magistrate's going to be happy to be hunting. 
• Alex relaying Chase's message to the four girls who promptly do a simultaneous bird-flipping is hilarious. 
• That bit with Gert randomly finding some boy named Earl who shares her emotions (and is bizarrely okay and unoffended with Molly using the scooter as a boomerang) is very random and out of nowhere, yeah?
• “I should never have let him play Grand Theft Auto.” -- Geoffrey Wilder. 
• When did Dale start wearing sunglasses? Either way, it's hilarious just how much he pretends to be this cool dude with a swagger whenever he has those on. 
• Robert Minoru randomly pulling out the second brain-scrambler with an apologetic "sorry" is probably the most unintentionally funny scene in what's otherwise a pretty tense scene. 
• We don't learn with any certainty that Robert survived. Tina seems to momentarily revert to her human persona to look at Robert's neck-wound, but we don't really learn what happened to him afterwards.