Marvel's Runaways S03E02-03 Review: Glitch in the Matrix

Marvel's Runaways, Season 3, Episode 2: The Great Escape; Episode 3: Lord of Lies

Episode 2: The Great Escape
I honestly feel that Runaways makes for a better binge-watch experience than many of the other Netflix shows, for the simple reason of the fast pace of the show in general. And part of it does admittedly come from the large cast, which, because we have to cover a lot of things happening to a lot of characters, so things understandably move pretty quickly. And while it did admittedly take a long while for us to get here, Runaways has settled into a pretty comfortable pace of quickly moving through its story in the late half of the second season and these episodes in the first season. Pity, then, that like the Punisher, this is also the final season of Marvel's Runaways. All these orphaned Marvel TV shows, man.

And this whole alien-takeover-in-our-cast's-bodies thing is a very, very interesting plot, and it's just such a shame that throughout these two episodes that we seem to be rocketing very quickly to its conclusion. Presumably, judging by what people have told me about this season, the Gibborim aliens will take up half of the season before being replaced by Morgan le Fay as the final big bad of the season. And I'm okay with having two big bads in a season -- one big complaint of the first and second seasons of Runaways is that things take way too long to get moving. It does help that the setup for the aliens taking over half of PRIDE has mostly been done in season two, making this more of a delayed climax than anything. Sure.

Episode two, "The Great Escape", spends a significant amount of its screentime with the three characters trapped in the Algorithm, though -- Chase, Karolina and Janet. And it's... it's not a terrible scene. It works in the context of the characters, and it is filmed well. Chase is reliving a version of an attack on the Runaways' home as a badass that takes down the bad guys and gets the adoration of his ex-girlfriend. Janet is living a hallucination where she's eating waffles made by a very loving and caring husband. Karolina is getting a wedding with Nico with everyone present. Then Janet sort of figures out how to manipulate the Algorithm and cause it to start collapse and get the three real people to sort of hang out with each other. It's all neat and stuff, but I just think that the episode perhaps spends a bit too much time with these scenes, and considering how much of a break-neck pace the rest of the second episode (and most of episode 3) is, I kinda wished that we had trimmed down some of these extraneous Algorithm scenes.

Alex and Nico try and break the Algorithm in the real world, but honestly, I don't remember a whole ton about their scenes. It's nice to see them work together after the friction they had in the first season, and Nico slowly losing control of her staff powers are always fun to look at, but their scenes mostly amount to a couple of close shaves with Jonah. There's a bit of an action scene and stuff as Jonah/Victor cuts off oxygen to Chase's tank when he figures out that Nico is nearby, but the timely arrival of Xavin and Molly ends up rescuing the day. Speaking of which... Molly and Xavin's great. There really isn't much to their scenes other than just bonding, with Molly being an adorable little girl who's just trying to make this emotionless alien friend actually be a proper, nice person. Very great interactions all around, and honestly, I'd rather see more of Molly/Xavin buddy cop hijinks compared to the Algorithm stuff.

Meanwhile, the aliens themselves are having a bit of a crisis. The Son (who is still stuck in one of the main cast members, but they don't know which) is still MIA and they need a specific amount of people to power the magic space portal that they're using Tina Minoru's company to create. The Magistrate's Daughter (a.k.a. "Tina Minoru") is making deals with Jonah/Magistrate/Victor Stein behind the back of the Magistrate's Wife (a.k.a. "Stacy Yorkes", I'll be using the quotation marks for the Gibborim cause it's easier to keep track in my mind) and because all of the Gibborim are kind of assholes, "Tina" agrees to swap out "Stacey" with Karolina and leave "Stacey" stranded on Earth in exchange for the birthright that went to the Son. "Tina", by the way, is an absolute delight in these scenes as Brittany Ishibashi hams the hell out of her scenes, particularly the bit in the board meeting where she is eating random things. Particularly the bit with the Grub Mates delivery dude... who, as the next episode reveals, "Tina" eats in the most literal sense.

The other big confrontation here is Stacey arriving at the woodland cabin where Gert and Dale are hanging out and practicing Gert's dino-mancy powers, and it's actual real Stacy for a change, giving them a bit more exposition about the aliens' plans to leave Earth via a portal, and in typical alien fashion, return with a giant army to scourge Earth. I mean, since this is the MCU universe, it's basically a bi-annual thing between the movies and the TV shows, but sure. Of course, right before she tells the weakness of the aliens to the heroes, "Stacey" takes over, and we do get a fun bit of Old Lace headbutting "Stacey" and knocking her out. She's not quite as entertaining as Ishibashi, but Brigid Brannagh's wild mood-whiplash from being a caring, eccentric wife and mother into a cold, psychotic supervillain is amazingly well-done.

Gert and Old Lace arrive to help save the people trapped in the Algorithm at about the same time that Molly and Xavin does, and they basically gang up on poor old Jonah. Because of sci-fi reasons, though, Janet has to stay behind to allow Karolina and Chase to escape. We do get a pretty heartwarming/tearjerker scene as Janet uses the Algorithm to set up a nice place to say goodbye to  her son Chase, and then everyone escapes back to the Hostel. And... Janet's death is perhaps slightly ever so anticlimactic, but I do agree that at this point, the show is definitely served well by writing out some characters. Either killing them off like Janet (who, uh, bursts into sparkles or something?) or just putting them out of reach of the main cast like Dale.

Either way, though, while the Runaways are reunited, things aren't quite as clear-cut or as happy-fun-times as they have been. Everyone is still suspicious about Chase and his betrayal of the group in season two, especially Gert. Despite learning about human customs and emotions, Xavin clearly doesn't like her 'betrothed' Karolina smooching Nico. And, of course, there's the Magistrate's Son, who's hiding somewhere among the Runaways... and Nico's theory is that the creepy dark eyes and unexplained inner-demon rages that she's been having is actually the Magistrate's Son.
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Episode 3: Lord of Lies
So one of the plot lines that I've always felt to be very distant and detached from everything else that's going on is the Wilder family, which, with the plot of Alex trying to make his parents accountable for their crimes and get them in jail feels... well, it's certainly connected and fits with the PRIDE and its "villains from different walks of life" theme in the first season. It's even a neat expansion from the comics, where the Wilders certainly don't get much focus. But we're three seasons in and at this point, with the far more pressing storyline of the aliens jumping in and out of people and whatever the hell's happening to Nico, it feels like such a bizarre decision to return back to the focus of Alex dealing with his parents, especially after I felt like the final episode of season two has wrapped up their confrontation pretty well.

And I get it, it's basically a huge send-off for Catherine Wilder, but... eh? Catherine got herself arrested last season thanks to Alex, and we start this episode with an interesting scene -- Catherine and Geoffrey's actions during Amy's funeral, where they have an argument and are clearly disturbed by the child-sacrifice rituals in PRIDE, and telling Alex that Amy's death was not his fault. And Catherine spends the episode in prison, telling Geoffrey to contact Alex and stuff, wanting to make amends.

And while Alex is involved in a lot of the other stuff with the Runaways, I feel like I want to get his storyline in this episode over with first. Geoffrey calls Alex and gives him a string of numbers that's his IP address or something, and that gets Alex to see Catherine (despite, y'know, the fact that Alex's secret meeting is basically the same thing that fucked them over last season with Chase). Catherine basically wants to make amends and make the family whole again, but Alex simply isn't interested and tells her mother to go to hell... which leads to the final scene of the episode, where Catherine gets ambushed by a bunch of other prisoners, who are apparently exacting revenge for Tamar (!) and shivs Catherine to death. (Shouldn't like, former DA's and stuff not be mixed with the general populace in a prison?) Which... okay, it's a great, tragic story for Alex, rejecting his mother's attempts at reconciliation hours before her death, but ultimately I feel like in an already jam-packed season, this episode just takes time to take a character that's already written out of the main story... and write her out of the main story for good. I dunno. I just felt like while the actors certainly did their job well, it's not a particularly good storyline. A neat way to wrap up the Wilder stuff, certainly, but eh?

Meanwhile, the rest of the episode deals with the Runaways trying to figure out which one of them is housing the Magistrate's Son, but things seem to point to a saboteur among them. Alex's X-Ray goggles are smashed, there are a lot of finger-pointing between Chase and Alex, Xavin is way too quick to suggest murdering Nico out of jealousy, Nico keeps having strange dreamy encounters with the mysterious raven woman in a field, and Molly just wants some peace and quiet. Molly trying to teach Xavin about dreams -- or, as Xavin calls it, 'night-time delusions' -- is adorable.


Alex, in-between running out of the group to see his mother, comes up with the plan to use the inhibitor chips from the Minoru mansion to make sure, and the group makes it clear that they have to stick together at all times since there's a potential psychotic alien hiding within them... which makes it far, far more baffling when they let Alex leave with minimal resistance. There's a bit of a creepy spooky stuff going on when Nico sees a picture of Tina with the mysterious crow-lady Morgan le Fay, and then talks to Robert for a bit. And then Robert, uh... turns into a smoky crow, the picture of Morgan transforms to a regular Minoru photograph, and apparently the real Robert is in the hospital, having convulsions while the crow watches? It's all interesting set-up as this mysterious Morgan le Fay sorceress lady seems to be manipulating Nico, but things are being kept extremely ambiguous at this point. Pretty fun foreshadowing, though. And I suppose to anyone who's not spoiled on the identity of Morgan le Fay, I guess Nico meeting a mysterious other person in her own mind-space could be her meeting her inner alien? After all, there's no real rule saying the "Magistrate's Son" has to appear as a dude. But the magical crows flying all about the place makes it clear that Morgan is clearly something more than just a body-snatching alien.

Again, despite the fact that they make it clear that everyone needs to be present to make sure the alien doesn't slip away, the Runaways decide to test out the inhibitors without Alex and Leslie present. And, sure, Leslie is a pregnant woman and everything, but doing it without Alex just seems to be such an oversight for them, y'know? I dunno, I don't think the episode really makes a good case why they're so blase about letting Alex run around on his own personal meetings unsupervised. Of course, by process of elimination turns out that the Magistrate's Son is within Alex, and it seems that the Son has just 'woken up'? Or something? Because all of the scenes of Alex and Catherine seem to be genuinely Alex, and he's certainly got none of the ruthless streak that everyone keeps saying the Son has in the previous two episodes. But when Geoffrey calls Alex to tell him of his mother's death, Alex (or "Alex", as it is at this point) gives out a devilish grin, then seems to do something with Leslie's unborn child before calling "Victor"/Jonah and sets about at making a deal. 

Ultimately, I think episode 3 is a bit of a weaker episode. As I mentioned, the Wilder family stuff just isn't that interesting to extend it as one of the main plotlines of the episode. The character work is great, but I felt like it's a wee bit too obviously shoehorning Alex into the forefront before the huge alien revelation is made. I dunno. I kinda felt like this was a bit of a mixed bag, where it feels like we're going through a bunch of B-plots when suddenly we get a swerve back to the Magistrate's Son and stuff. I dunno. Feels a bit odd, is all, and I'm not sure how much I would've bought the "Nico has the alien within her" red herring if I didn't already know about Morgan le Fay. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the original comic book run of Runaways, Alex Wilder is actually the mole in the group. And while the show takes things in a different direction (Chase ends up being the PRIDE mole, albeit in a far less malicious way) this season allows Alex to be a traitor in a different way.