Originally written March 5, 2018

Wow. I loved, loved, LOVED Runaways. I’ll be the first to admit that the superhero/comic book genre is starting to get a bit over-saturated in film and TV, so it can be a bit hard to stand out nowadays. I try to keep up with as much of it as I possibly can (although it’s getting to the point where it’s hard for any one person to consume all of it), so naturally there are some shows that are better than others. I typically enjoy most of the superhero shows, but it’s rare for one of these shows to truly blow me away…but Runaways has. I’ll admit, it’s still not my favorite superhero show or anything, but considering how easily it is for a superhero show to fade into obscurity nowadays, the fact that it stands out so much among its peers is a great testament to how awesome it is.

Runaways, like most of the new comic-book properties being adapted nowadays (since we’re getting to the point where we’re adapting some of the most obscure comics), is a series whose source material I was not familiar with going in, but once I heard what it was I was already hooked. So, every teenager thinks their parents are terrible people at some point or another, right? So what would you do if you found out that this was actually true? In fact, what if you found out that your parents are actually in a cult of villains with the parents of your friends as well, and that they secretly murder lost kids as sacrifices? Runaways plays with that this idea, following the lives of six teenage friends who discover that their parents are all in a group together doing pretty terrible stuff. They must cope with these new revelations and decide what to do with their newly discovered information. It’s such a cool concept to me, and it’s handled really well.

Interestingly enough, I really wasn’t all that interested in the show for about the first half of its first episode. This was where the kids are all being introduced to us. We get a peek into the home lives of each of these kids, who are each dealing with their own struggles. Here’s a quick rundown of who’s who. There’s Alex, a black nerdy kid who’s got a good heart and some skills with computers. Niko is a gothic Asian girl who’s been struggling with her sister’s suicide for the past two years. Karolina is a pretty, rich girl whose been very faithful to the church that her family owns. Chase is a jock dude with an abusive father, and he actually secretly has some brains. Gert is an SJW feminist who’s trying to bring down the patriarchy. Molly, Gert’s adopted sister, is a hyper girl who’s just trying to fit in.

So, when all of these characters are initially being introduced, I couldn’t help but notice that they’re literally walking stereotypes. You have the nerd, the goth, the pure one, the jock, the hipster, and the…uhh, annoying one. Seeing this in the first episode, my initial reaction was just “sooooo then it’s just The Breakfast Club?” However, this turned out to only be the surface of these characters, which is fortunate. Yes, the kids fit into different stereotypes, but those stereotypes get played with more and more throughout the show, even by the end of the first episode. The more they get developed, the more I winded up enjoying them. The only one that I really didn’t like was Molly. She’s just…ugh. She’s really annoying, and she always manages to find a way to screw things up. She’s impulsive, loud, and emotional. I understand she’s a teenager and I understand that it’s all just part of her personality and character arc, but…I dunno, she just didn’t work for me at all, and I hated her inclusion in the show.

Perhaps even more interesting than the way the show develops its teenage characters, though, is the way that it develops their parents. So, I mentioned in the premise that the kids discover that their parents are villains. Here’s the thing, though…it’s not really quite that simple. These are complex people, and so each of the parents actually have different personalities and motivations, which often wind up conflicting with each other. It becomes apparent very quickly that some of the parents have evil intentions, while others are just kind of victims of circumstance. While no one is innocent in this, I found the way that Runaways develops the characters of all of the parents to be really refreshing. Each one of them are unique, and there’s so many different dynamics between all of them that are played with exceptionally well. In fact, probably my favorite thing about Runaways as a whole is the way it deals with the complex relationships between all of its characters. It truly makes it all much more interesting.

At the time of writing, Runaways has finished its first season, which ran for 10 episodes. It’s exclusively on Hulu, so I had to use my one-month free trial to watch it. Only time will tell if Hulu will pick up multiple Marvel shows the way Netflix has, but as of right now Runaways is at least confirmed to have a second season (and thank God considering the cliffhanger this season ends on), and as far as I’m concerned Hulu scored a real home-run by adding this show to their original content. I really considered Runaways to be a breath of fresh air, and that’s saying something considering it’s part of one of the most over-saturated genres of today. It delivers a unique premise and capitalizes on it by providing a diverse cast of characters that all have very well-defined personalities and have very interesting relationships with each other. I’d recommend Runaways to anyone who has access to Hulu.

4.5/5