I feel like I’ve had a strange journey with Runaways. I absolutely loved season 1, feeling like it was a fresh, unique comic book show, and so I was excited to get more of it. Then, while I did consider season 2 to be slightly inferior, I did still feel like I enjoyed it. This is why it’s weird to me that, going into season 3, I just didn’t care anymore. I didn’t really want to watch it anymore, and I felt like I only did watch the season out of obligation to finish the series (since season 3 is the show’s final season). I have no idea what happened in the interim, but this went from being one of my favorite comic book shows to being something that wasn’t really doing it for me, over the course of just three seasons.

I think what happened is that the show lost its purpose after a while. Spoilers for earlier seasons, but the whole premise of the show was that these teenagers found out that their parents were evil and working under an alien madman named Jonah. Well, they killed Jonah about halfway through season 2, and quite a few of the parents have since been redeemed. So, while the plot has continued by having season 3 open with Jonah and his family possessing the bodies of some of our main characters, the show just feels like it’s meandering a bit. Plus, I wasn’t a fan of the change of direction midway through season 2, and they do the same thing here in season 3. This Jonah situation is resolved in the first half of the season, to instead pave the way for Morgan le Fay being the villain for the rest of the season. Again, this just lessens the feeling of actual purpose for the show, and instead just has a new villain tacked on to close out the story.

What I will say in the show’s favor is that it has always been strong at presenting interesting characters with complex relationships between them. The parent/child dynamic has always been interesting here, and that still rings true here. These are definitely characters that I still enjoy, and so this has prevented me from just outright disliking the season. It was a really cool experience to see how these storylines played out for everyone by the final season, and so I liked getting to see where everyone ends up in their arcs by the end of the show. So, while the overall storyline is pretty boring in season 3, the characters are still compelling at least.

The explosion of superhero shows in the last few years has been really interesting, because we’re really starting to see how some of them perform on a long-term scale. There’s a show like Arrow that I stopped watching in season 5 of 8 because I just wasn’t into it anymore, but then there’s a show like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where I’m eagerly awaiting season 7. There’s a show like Daredevil where I was upset that it got cancelled after only 3 seasons, but now there’s a show like Runaways where 3 seasons felt like too much. I don’t really know what to make of all of it, and perhaps it all just needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Either way, when it comes to Runaways, I am glad that they ended the show on this season. I really was enjoying it early on, but it’s a concept that only got so much mileage before it became stale for me. I will look back on it semi-fondly, but I’m also glad that it’s over now.

3/5