Marvel's Runaways S03E05 Review: Fear Dimension

Marvel's Runaways, Season 3, Episode 5: Enter the Dreamland

(I originally did two-episode reviews for the rest of Runaways season three, but my laptop ate it, so... those are going to be slightly delayed. Whoops.)

So after the abrupt finality of the alien storyline last episode, "Enter the Dreamland" ends up kick-starting this huge Morgan le Fay storyline... with our heroes trapped in a creepy version of their hostel with a racist magician that once lived in their house in the past. We also quickly establish that none of our heroes have their superpowers, and they're also in some bizarre alternate 'world-between-worlds' dimension, or, well, whatever bizarre grassland-scape magical dimension that Nico's Staff of One connects to. The episode starts off leaving us as disoriented as the Runaways themselves are, not quite sure how they ended up in this bizarre dimension, but apparently they're just off looking for their missing parents. Just the parents, mind you -- we're just assuming that Jonah and the rest of his family were completely vaporized because of magic. Also, the magician warns that this Dark Dimension (a familiar name to both Marvel fans, and to MCU fans) will erode their memories the longer they stay there.

And it's a pretty interesting episode reminiscent of the Algorithm-heavy episode earlier in the season, which honestly leads me to question once more why they didn't just properly pace and wrap up the alien stuff if they were going to do a whole alternate dimension episode somewhere down the line. But I digress. We do get to see a bunch of different realities that correspond to their personal history and stuff, and it's actually quite brilliant that these fake worlds are basically crafted from their greatest subconscious fears or something (Karolina's certainly is) but with some of them, like Gert, Chase and Molly, we and the characters never quite know for sure if those are just repressed memories and ugly truths they want to forget, or things that never actually quite happened.

For Gert, it's her stumbling into Stacey experimenting on a proto-Old-Lace in the laboratory, and Stacey apparently has been injecting young Gert with amnesia serums since she was a kid, something Gert blames for her anxiety. Molly has brunch with her biological parents, but then gets to witness them being party to the child sacrifice stuff that the rest of PRIDE are party to. Chase sees his father being beaten up by his abusive grandfather, which is one of those 'explains but does not excuse' Victor Stein's own abusive tendencies. In two of these, we sort of see the real Stacey and Victor too, trapped in an endless loop of... well, for Victor it's a nightmare for sure, but for Stacey it's something? She's just experimenting on a dinosaur. Chase beats up Victor's dad, and the two sort of have a weird conversation or something.

Karolina's encounter is with the ghosts or spirits of Destiny and the rest of the sacrificed kids, who blame Karolina for abusing their faith and leading them to their deaths -- not Karolina's fault, but it's clearly something she blames herself for. There's also a creepy demon Nico dragging around the corpse of Jonah, which really doesn't add much other than allowing Lyrica Okano to ham shit up as a creepy demon. Nico's is perhaps the most interesting, meeting her hooded relatives who seem to,  obviously, know a bit more about what's going on. Also, Nico's scenes play out in grayscale, which makes it a bit more impactful when they start unleashing magical spells. The powerless Nico is saved by... Amy! Her dead sister! Who's trapped in the Dark Dimension or something and is a ninja sorcerer now, but doesn't remember Nico emotionally but does know who she is. Or something.

With the aid of Amy's ability to navigate the bizarre 'taken from your memories' scape, Amy leads Nico to Tina's worst nightmare, which is, naturally, the day that Amy died, with Tina desperately begging herself and Nico to remember a resurrection spell. Poor Tina is pretty shaken, and at this point I think I know what the episode is meant to do -- we're shown the PRIDE members like Tina and Victor as being absolutely broken people who are over in their heads, but at the same time we're also reminded that they're not innocent and that they're evil child-sacrificing cultists. The Gert/Stacey conversation is probably the best showcase of this (and since Stacey is 'real', it's likely that this is less a nightmare and more a replay of something that happened before) -- Stacey keeps saying that everything is for her children's good, but Gert quickly lampshades that mind-wiping your own daughter, creating a genetically-engineered dinosaur and sacrificing children... aren't really something that a sane people would do.

Eventually, though, all the Runaways and their parents regroup before the amnesia can settle in, without any real huge thematic conclusion or realization for the PRIDE members. It's something that's perhaps a bit more realistic than not, I suppose, but it also does cause this episode to end in a climax that's perhaps not the most satisfying. Tina and Nico do some blood magic spell to summon the Staff of One (which is now permanently within Nico's body, it seems) create a portal out of the Dark Dimension before the terrifying 'master' arrives, but Amy ends up staying behind, because she's basically a Dark Dimension being at this point now, and Morgan will be able to detect her in the real world. Okay, then. It's a bit of a bizarre handwave, really, but I'll buy it, having Amy back is going to be a glaring thing we're going to have to address in the subsequent episodes, so having her sort-of have a post-death cameo while not really being resurrected from the dead is probably the best.

Of course, episode 5 is merely a bit of a setup for the true second half of the season, because, like many other stories before it, season three of Marvel's Runaways is going to feature a time-skip. Our heroes and the three parents trapped in the Dark Dimension have been gone for six months (thank god Old Lace apparently, like, hunted things and didn't starve to death) and poor Alex is still trapped within the Dark Dimension. As we'll find out in episode 6, other things have changed too, as Morgan le Fay essentially had six whole months to put her master plan in action.

Ultimately, like most Runaways episodes, this is a very, very solid episode. Perhaps one that's a bit too self-contained, and one that ultimately isn't super-favourable to look at considering the haphazard pacing this season, but it's still a pretty solid individual episode nonetheless. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• It's not quite identical, but the various magicians in Nico's dream use magical circles similar to those used by Dr. Strange and his supporting cast in his movie.
• The Dark Dimension debuted in the MCU in Doctor Strange, but it has also been mentioned and been featured in the second season of Agent Carter and Cloak and Dagger.
• Nico does some blood-activated magic in this episode, and that is how she originally activates the Staff of One in the comics until the publishers realized how problematic showing a teenage heroine consistently cutting herself is.