Runaways - Fifteen - Advance Preview

Word of warning: I will be referencing in places the previous triple episode premiere. If you want a refresher you can check out Milo’s excellent review here. I'm again keeping this spoiler free, but you are free to ask questions and I’ll try my best to answer.

Episode 3 left us on the cliff-hanger of Destiny’s body being discovered, and Leslie realising they need another sacrifice. ‘Fifteen’ also sees the Runaways learning of Destiny’s demise, and trying to work out what exactly that means in terms of what happened in the basement. Some of them still want to believe their parents are innocent, and are still searching for an alternative explanation. Others are more interested in making sure they’re protected from their parents, and want to go to the police. This leaves us with an extremely interesting episode full of many twists and turns.

Starting off with the parents side of things this week, and the pressure is very must getting to Victor. He meets up with Geoffrey and Robert to show them what he thinks is another sacrifice in the back of his van. Only there’s no-one there, which Victor doesn’t understand, and an emergency Pride meeting is called. Victor doesn’t handle the questioning of his actions well at all, and Janet’s attempts to defend him aren’t appreciated. Leslie’s resolute that they need another sacrifice, but not from the Church as she’s afraid of drawing suspicion, so Tina instructs Robert & Victor to take to the streets. It’s not something Robert is at all happy with and their attempts to grab a homeless man don’t go well at all.

Gert’s parents Stacey & Dale miss out on the Pride meeting, as they’re busy trying to hunt down Old Lace. Stacey is very much at her breaking point and wants to take Gert & Molly, and escape the Pride. That’s of course not going to end well.

Frank decides to confront Leslie over her secretive behavior by accusing her of having an affair. She manages to sweet talk him, but her focus is very much on the man in the room. There’s very much a blink and you’ll miss it moment when she does visit him, that ties in with the Deans alien origins from the comics.

On the Runaways side of things, whilst ‘Destiny’ gave us plenty of interaction between Chase/Gert and Nico/Alex with Karolina and Molly to an extent on the side line, this episode is mixing things up.
The episode opens with a flashback to an extremely traumatic moment for one of the Runaways. It’s a minute crumb in a question I had regarding one of the families, and features some brilliant acting from a younger version of one of the Runaways. This crumb along with the discovery of Destiny’s body sends one of the Runaways to the police station, with another Runaway joining them for support. Obviously their visit to the station doesn’t go well, with one of the Runaways recognizing one of the Detectives who will be familiar to comic readers. There is later another discovery made courtesy of Gert & Karolina’s digging which completely devastates Karolina.

Speaking of Karolina, she’s in for an extremely rough time this week. At school Chase’s lacrosse buddies are extremely angry with him. They want an apology for being beaten up, which Chase finds rich considering they can’t even admit what they tried to do to Karolina. This leads to a big fight, and in the aftermath Karolina is told she tried to hook up with the lacrosse team. Of course we know that’s not true. Karolina doesn’t want to believe it and tells Gert what she remembers of that night. She tries to ever so gently tell Karolina what might’ve actually happened to her, and what Chase is protecting her from, but it’s not something Karolina is ready to process and who can blame her.

But this situation spurs on some lovely bonding between Gert & Karolina, who decided to try and find some evidence to prove their parents are innocent as a nice little distraction. This then leads into Chase showing up at Karolina’s house to talk to Karolina alone. They talk about what actually happened at the party, and then get my second favourite scene of the Runaways so far. I absolutely adore Chase & Karolina’s friendship in the comics, and seeing it play out on screen warms my heart.

With all this happening, Molly is again left on the side lines this week. She starts off an email to Alex’s mum Catherine, wanting some answers regarding her parents and her super human strength. She’s unfortunately interrupted in her thoughts by Old Lace coming home. They’re about to have a face-off when Gert comes through the door, and gets Old Lace to back-off. She’s completely stunned by this in a completely adorable way, but that’s nothing compared to her parents surprise when they come through the door to be greeted by Molly, Gert & Old Lace. Her parents are quite surprised that Old lace is listening to Gert’s orders. However Gert’s stopped from quizzing her parents any further when they receive an unwelcome visitor, and her father’s mood completely turns.

We also get a minute bonding scene between Chase & Victor this week, played out on the back of Bastille’s ‘Blame’. It’s a song I absolutely adore and fits in really well with the scene, even if it doesn’t have any special meaning. Chase is working on his super bionic hand when Victor returns home, and Victor’s reaction to Chase’s work is extremely surprising.

The episode ends on Karolina receiving some devastating news and one of the Runaways ending up in some serious trouble. It’s a cliff-hanger you can see coming a mile away, but that doesn’t make it any less fun or the wait for episode 5 any less torturous.

Over the course of the first 3 episodes Virginia Gardner really impressed me. She along with Ariela Barer who plays Gert and Gregg Sulkin who plays Chase were fantastic. Out of the parents I’d have to say James Marsters is playing Victor’s struggle with losing control well.

Don't miss an all new episode of Runaways this Tuesday on Hulu