Much like the ever-expanding world of comic-book films, TV has been flooded with shows adapted from or inspired by popular superheroes and villains. But as we all know, more is not necessarily better—and 2017 has been a particularly abysmal year for new comic-book shows. ABC’s incomprehensible Inhumans debuted (in IMAX!) with a whimper. Fox’s X-Men property, The Gifted, is hemorrhaging viewers. Even Netflix—which set a benchmark for what a comic-book show could do with Daredevil—unveiled a series of disappointing and increasingly irrelevant-feeling shows in Iron Fist, The Defenders, and The Punisher. Only FX’s audacious Legion, the CW’s enjoyably ridiculous Riverdale, and, now, Hulu’s Runaways have managed to capture comic-book storytelling at its best.
Runaways, from teen TV experts Josh Schwartz (The O.C., Gossip Girl) and Stephanie Savage (The O.C., Gossip Girl), is based on a dearly beloved 2003 Marvel comics series created by revered writer Brian K. Vaughan (Lost, Y: The Last Man) and artist Adrian Alphona. The comic follows a pack of teens with very little in common who are reluctantly thrown together once a year when their parents gather for a “charity event.” The book series kicks off when, during one of those events, the kids discover their super-rich and talented parents are secretly a pack of supervillains called “The Pride,” and they decide to, well, run away. Since its inception, the series has been published, sporadically, with writers like Joss Whedon and Rainbow Rowell taking on the motley crew of teens. Just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer—which was founded on the concept of those jerks you went to high school with being literal monsters—Runaways anchors its more extreme powers and adventures in a concept every teen can relate to: what if your parents were, like, actually evil? Oh, and have we mentioned that along with puberty, these kids are discovering a variety of latent “gifts?”
Hulu’s adaptation of this superpowered Breakfast Club has a massive advantage over the other comic-based shows vying for attention. Sure, Josh Schwartz has nerd bona fides. He created two of most memorable and beloved TV geeks of the aughts: Chuck’s Charles Bartowski, and The O.C.’s Seth Cohen. But more pertinently to this particular project, Schwartz and Savage are fluent in teen drama. For any comic story to land, it has to have believable, grounded characters caught up in extraordinary circumstances. That’s been key to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—and Schwartz and Savage never once forget that despite all the supernatural mayhem, they’re telling the story of very real teens.
This version of Runaways is altered slightly; one set of parents was cut out, bringing the cast regulars down from an unmanageable 19 to a still-massive 17. Molly Hernandez (Molly Hayes in the comics) has been aged up a smidge and is now the adopted sister of one of the other Runaways: Gertrude Yorkes. But the lineup of classic teen character archetypes is unchanged. In fact, early on, the Hulu show signaled its intention to stay faithful to the comics by releasing a first-look image that was ripped directly from the cover of the first collected volume of Runaways.
Molly (Allegra Acosta), the youngest, is the pesky little sister. The amethyst-haired Gert (Ariela Barer) has been updated slightly from rebellious teen to woke brainiac. (The phrase “social justice warrior” wasn’t a thing when Runaways was first published, but Gert, undeniably, is one.) Chase Stein (Gregg Sulkin) is the handsome, muscle-bound jock with hidden depths, Alex Wilder (Rhenzy Feliz) the gaming geek (with his own Seth Cohen-esque guest house), Karolina Dean (Virginia Gardner) the willowy, serene blonde, and Nico Minoru (Lyrica Okano) the depressed goth chic. The Hulu series has also added in a little tragic, grounded backstory that ripped these kids, once close friends, apart before the action of the show starts. Both Vaughan’s comic and Schwartz and Savage’s show know full well that clashes between ordinary teens with hurt feelings can be even scarier than the most outlandish monsters.
For those TV viewers who actually like monsters, superpowers, and, oh yes, telepathic velociraptors mixed in with their teen drama, Runaways delivers in spades. Schwartz, Savage, and their writers have cleverly grounded some of the Los Angeles-set monstrosity in a religious organization that’s clearly a take on the church of Scientology, but the show didn’t need to invent a monolithic institution in order to find structures of power in need of interrogation within modern Hollywood. That the first evil act viewers see from “The Pride” involves the nasty manipulation of a young, impressionable woman gives Runaways a relevancy that Schwartz and Savage couldn’t exactly have dreamed of when they wrote the pilot, long before the Weinstein scandal broke.
The young cast of newcomers is balanced by a roster of TV veterans playing parents and members of The Pride, including genre alums Kevin Weisman (Alias) and James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). But as with any teen drama, this show is really made and broken by its young stars—and Barer, Okano, Gardner, and Sulkin are early breakouts in a cast that could yield the next generation’s teen idols.
In other words, if you liked what Savage and Schwartz have done in the past, don’t think of this as a comic-book show; think of it as just the next evolution in teen TV, a la Riverdale. But if you do like comic books—and especially if you liked Brian K. Vaughan’s original story—you’ll appreciate how precisely Runaways captures that spirit. The first three episodes are available to stream, right now, on Hulu. The accumulation of bad comic-book television over the past year may have you burned out by Thanksgiving week, but save room for Runaways.
