Big shake up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: small screen addition this year with Netflix canceling three of its five Marvel shows with the other two likely to get the axe after their next seasons air (oh, and I guess something big happened on screen too this year, not that a bunch of teenagers in California notice or care). Of course that begs the question will Marvel resurrect those characters elsewhere even though it is reported there is a contractual two year waiting period. The upcoming Disney+ streaming channel (Disney owns Marvel Studios) is supposedly family friendly, so if we ever see Daredevil and the rest of The Defenders, it would most likely be on Hulu, which Disney will soon own sixty percent of.
Hulu being the current home of its own Marvel show Runaways. So could we see the Runaways team up with or battle The Defenders? Since they are on different coasts, unlikely. And Runaways first season was low on references to the larger universe it inhabits. That does change a little in season two where I caught a Black Panther reference as well as a Cloak and Dagger reference that they really want you to notice because it is in two episodes. The latter airs on Freeform, another Disney owned channel which makes a crossover a little like even though the shows again are on different coast, Cloak does have the ability to teleport.
The first season of Runaways was just one long tease. Given the show’s name, it was a huge shame the titular characters decided to wait until the last frame of the first season to actually run away. And that first season should have been great: a group of super power kids team up to take on their supervillain parent, each with their own tried and true super villain traits: the mad scientist, the witch, the alien, the time travelers, and the street thugs turned real estate tycoons. Then the kids take the traits of their parents, including a sixth teen with super strength whose parents died, to take them down. But the first season just came off as a bad The CW teen show with superpowers. It was created by the writing team that gave us The O.C., Gossip Girl, and The Carrie Diaries.
So has the show improved now that the Runaways have, you know, actually run away? Well, a little, but it was not the leap that other bottom of the Marvel heap show did in the second season of Iron Fist. Although where Iron Fist wisely went from thirteen to ten episodes, Runaways actually expanded from ten to thirteen episodes. The show is much better at answering question at time, both others they take to long to get to the point. But one of the biggest problems with that first season was none of the kids on the show were particularly good actors and I found much of that first season rooting for the evil murderous parents.
I found myself rooting for the parents less in season two but that is mostly because some of their motives were weird or unclear and after a major event in the middle of the season, they just start to become aimless. Sure, that unclear motive is explained for three of the parents, but I still wish they would just go full on supervillain just to make the lines clearer. When it comes to superheroes, you just really cannot have shades of grey that you need in more relationship drama.
As for the children, yes they ran away but they did not go far as they start the season on the streets of Los Angeles with no sense of direction until they find an underground mansion that they co-op. But they seem as aimless as their parents seemingly have six different plans among the six of them. They spend most of the season going off by themselves on side missions they do not seem to add to much. Sometimes the kids go back to their parents voluntarily and sometimes the parents just let them go even though they plot to reunite with their kids by any means necessary. This season really misses a common goal that actually builds to something and actual motivations that make sense and are consistent.
We do get a couple of potential Runaways this season; comic book readers should recognize both. There is a third person who is brought into the mansion and is called a Runaway, which just let me scratching my head as to anyone would do this. But I made a dent into my skull at the number of times I had to scratch my head watching this season of Runaways. With that said, I will likely still be back for season three. Hopefully the dent in my head has been repaired by then.
All episodes of Marvel’s Runaways are available tomorrow on Hulu.
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