Marvel's Runaways, Season 3, Episode 4: Rite of Thunder
Well, this episode was... it's certainly a thing. This season of Runaways have been paced pretty quickly, seemingly to get as much of the stories they wanted to tell wrapped up as soon as possible. It does lead to some episodes like this one, "Rite of Thunder", which is essentially the main conclusion of the Gibborim body-snatcher aliens storyline... and it's... I'm not sure how I feel about it? I watched a couple of episodes ahead, and it doesn't seem like we're getting the Magistrate's family back any time soon -- if they'll come back, it's probably in the final episode or two -- and for someone who's such a massive presence in the first two seasons, seeing that this is it for Jonah and his alien family is honestly kind of... it's not anti-climactic per se because the conflict in this episode is a pretty tense climax, but it does feel really rushed, and there's an obvious bit of foregoing a satisfying conclusion for one aspect of the series in favour for building up another... and that's not always ideal, y'know?
Anyway, this episode starts off... very hectic, just basically catching the cast up on things that happened in the previous episode. The Runaways discover Catherine Wilder's death through the news, figure out that Alex is possessed by the Magistrate's Son, and has basically kidnapped Leslie Dean. Also, insert obligatory mysterious Morgan le Fay foreshadowing and obligatory Xavin self-doubt scene. Leslie herself figures out that Alex isn't himself, but manages to play along and gets "Alex" to bring her to Tamar's house, and together Leslie and Tamar sort of draw things out (and protect Tamar's baby) before calling in the other Runaways. "Alex" manages to escape, although not before taunting Nico with the idea of him jumping bodies into Nico's body and then killing Karolina, while Leslie ends up giving birth to a new baby girl.
And this takes place over a very, very short amount of time, y'know? Sure, we do get enough time to breathe, with Karolina and Leslie going all goo-goo over the new baby Elle, but then we jump straight into Xavin reading the Abstract, and then just exposition-dumping to us about how the Gibborim plans to escape Earth, causing a huge catastrophe, and also they will send back a killing squad to wipe out every single person who interacted with the Gibborims, adding even more stakes to this conflict. Also, Chase and Gert sort of bond together and work to create brand-new weapon coated with the special anti-Gibborim tech or something. They can stop the Gibborims from jumping bodies, is all that's important.
And at this point, a character that perhaps hasn't been working as well as the writers probably intended her to, Xavin, gets her character arc very, very hastily wrapped up. Xavin has been an interesting enough character in that she's got a pretty interesting character quirk, that Thor-esque "I have no idea how human society functions", but without the rambunctious energy that Thor has. And in that, Xavin has had a lot of great scenes interacting with Molly... but the way that Xavin was introduced to the story in the first place was abrupt and shoehorned in, as is the random space civil war prophecy that she comes in with. And other than giving Nico a bit of an angry side-glance every now and then, Xavin's whole main goal has been kind of... m'eh? And I suppose it's just as well that this m'eh goal is basically handwaved aside with a genuinely randomly-inserted sequence of Xavin and Leslie realizing that Xavin has mis-interpreted her prophecy, and the 'great love' that will bring peace between the aliens is not a marriage between Xavin and Karolina, but rather Xavin taking care of Baby Elle like a parent? Or something? It feels genuinely random and out of nowhere, and just how blase Leslie is with parting with her newborn child honestly feels more like the writer wanting to get rid of Elle and Xavin from the second part of the season and just hastily wrapping this up. Maybe this wouldn't have felt so sudden if there was some sort -- any sort -- of foreshadowing prior to this moment, but no. It's just sudden, random, and easily the weakest part of this episode.
There's a bit of a typical pre-final-battle banter while all the Leslie/Xavin expositioning is happening, but mostly it's Nico and Karolina affirming their love for each other, and Chase and Gert affirming their... awkward post-breakup not-love for each other. I do kind of like the fact that Gert hasn't really forgiven Chase for all the betrayals that he's pulled off in season two, which is a lot more realistic than, like Gert points out, just falling to their hormones and adrenaline at the eve of their potential deaths.
Then the plot continues, and "Alex", having taken over an ambulance, kidnaps Baby Elle and goes off to meet up with the rest of the Gibborim family, because now they have a full set of four Gibborims to power up the portal. The little conflict in-between the Magistrate's family is likewise quickly smoothed over, although because the aliens are actually on a timeline, I can actually buy this a lot better than whatever's going on with Xavin and Leslie. "Stacey" and "Alex" quickly agree that the Magistrate's family can take Baby Elle back to their homeworld since "Alex" will never be forgiven for whatever crimes got him exiled in the first place, and he's more than happy going around killing donut store cashiers on Earth anyway.
And then the Runaways arrive, fully armed with their Fistigons, dinosaur and anti-Gibborim-laced weaponry, and for all my disappointment about many of the abrupt ways that this episode hastily wraps up a lot of the story arcs, this action scene is actually pretty cool. The Gibborim-possessed humans run around the facility fighting some members of the Runaways, and it's very neat. We get a fun thematic scene of the Runaways fighting against their possessed loved ones, with Chase fighting "Victor"/Jonah, Nico and "Tina" doing some martial arts fighting, and Gert and Molly overpowering "Stacey". Despite the anti-Gibborim weaponry giving them an edge, the Gibborim actually win this and it's not until some Xavin trickery that they manage to get Baby Elle, and then Xavin just uses the machine to teleport away and bring peace with the power of vaguely-worded prophecy. Again, the fact that Karolina and company are so okay with the fact that Xavin's going off with a newborn child with no concrete idea of what she's going to do other than a vague sense of 'bring peace' is bizarre.
And then all four members of Jonah's body-snatching alien squad appears, and they unleash all their sparkly alien light powers at the Runaways, knocking them all down. Karolina tries to hold them off, but one versus four isn't enough... and then Nico starts hearing Morgan le Fay's voice in her head, and she basically gives in to the dark side, her eyes turning black and summoning the Staff of One from within her chest, and unleashing an angry spell that causes the alien quartet and their human hosts to disappear. Elsewhere, Nico doing this seems to unleash Morgan le Fay into the real world, where she wakes up Robert Minoru in a hospital.
...And that's it for the Gibborim. And while the Gibborim storyline hasn't been the most exciting or engaging part of the show, it has been very much a major presence and a major driving force of the show. To have them (and especially Jonah, who's been Big Bad for two and a half seasons) be wiped out this easily in a very off-handed manner is genuinely pretty poor pacing, honestly, and there's also the aforementioned way that Alex's betrayal, Xavin's prophecy and Baby Elle are all basically piled on each other and wrapped up in the course of two or three conversations. Ultimately, while the actual confrontation was great and there's still a lot of great scenes in these episodes, I can't help but feel like these four episodes could've been a lot longer, maybe benefiting a lot from having one or two extra episodes attached to it to really let aspects of it sink in. I dunno. It was pretty exciting when I watched it, but ultimately looking back, it's a bit of a dud.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Nico Minoru finally follows her comic book counterpart's ability of storing the Staff of One in her own body, pulling it out as she needs to.
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