Marvel’s Runaways Ep.3: ‘Destiny’ Asks “What If The Runaways Stayed Home?”

“You had me at PI.” – Gert Yorkes (Ariela Barer)

Around this point in the comics, Alex and the others were hightailing it out of their parents’ homes (the series is called Runaways). With Destiny’s death unclear until the end of this episode, they decide not to take any drastic measures, and wait to confirm what happened to her the next day.

Funny enough, Alex’s mom, Catherine (Angel Parker) is in a similar boat. After finding Molly’s hair clip in Geoffrey’s study, she needs to find out if Molly knows the truth about Pride. The difference is she has a syringe of Synnergy Serum in her hand, which errs towards putting a fourteen-year old’s memory at risk on the chance she might blab.
Molly proves an impeccable liar, and the show spins out another reasonable explanation for what’s going on with her body. In that regard, Catherine not spotting the property damage Molly inflicted on the restroom makes her seem pretty oblivious. Molly’s parents were Pride members before they died and anyone who’s read the comics know Molly’s a (SPOILER) mutant, and that her parents, the Hernandez’s, were mutants, too. Unless this has changed, Catherine should be on the lookout for signs, and pulling metal bars out of a brick wall qualifies.
There’s a lot up in the air around Molly’s parents’ deaths, including whether they were accidents, or the reason Tina burned her hand. Tina’s once loyal husband, Robert (James Yaegashi) has become Janet’s lover, so something tore them apart, but they have their pick of reasons why, between Amy, Nico and the Hernandez’s.
Overall, we get a lot of the parents again, as the show is much more interested in splitting time between the elders and their offspring than the comics were. This model worked on The OC, which both Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage wrote for (Sandy and Julie’s storylines often rivaled Seth and Ryan’s), but six kids take time to develop, and that’s without trying to make their parents real people, too.
Placing them in these soapy scenarios certainly paints them as callous, but in the comics the adults were ruthless, willing to hurt their kids, and that’s something you don’t see. Here Nico messes around with her mom’s staff and makes snow. In the comics, mom pushes that staff into her daughter’s chest. That’s more shocking than any sleazy affair.

Other thoughts on ‘Destiny’:

• Best introduction from the comics: Chase’s goggles, which look exactly the way Adrian Alphona designed them
• Scene Most Riddled With Subtext: Karolina listening to a meditation tape narrated by her mom, when her mom’s one of the reasons she’s meditating
• Gert’s parents are arguably the toughest to picture complicit in these murders but in this episode, they’re responsible for creating the Synnergy Serum as well. Whatever therapeutic applications they’d imagined for it, they let Catherine get ahold of some vials, so must have planned for abuse. Also, how about that throwaway line about the serum being used on Frank Dean? Talk about burying the lede. Could he have been a member of Pride, and, if so, what did he do to get kicked out?
• Another isolated scene the show could’ve done more with: Victor hallucinating Destiny alive. Her appearance foreshadows her fate of being found, washed up on the beach.

Marvel’s Runaways streams Tuesdays on Hulu.