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Weird
Hulu gave us our first look at the world of Marvel’s Runaways today at their Summer 2017 TCA event. Marvel Entertainment maestro Jeph Loeb was on hand, along with Executive Producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, and the show’s six young leads: Rhenzy Felix, Ariela Barer, Lyrica Okano, Gregg Sulkin, Virginia Gardner, and Allegra Acosta. While they teased some of the characters’ powers in a trailer that aired before the panel started, producers were mum about how closely the series would follow the original comic book’s twists and turns.
Runaways was created in 2001 by Brian K. Vaughn and follows a diverse team of six Los Angeles teens who discover that their wealthy parents are secretly supervillains. The comic book series won acclaim for its wit and its ability to accurately portray a number of different teen voices. The television adaptation is Hulu’s first foray into the world of Marvel. When asked how the series fit in with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jeph Loeb was loathe to say “it’s all connected!” but admitted that Runaways lives in the same world as the other Marvel television series, but “how it’s connected remains to be seen.”
Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage explained that Marvel’s Runaways will inhabit the conflict between the parents and the teens longer than in Vaughn’s series. The change actually came about because something Vaughn said. “He was very honest. They thought they were getting cancelled I think after every issue so they moved very quickly through a lot of story. Uh, we’ve been accused of doing the same.” One way the show will do this is by looking more closely at the parents as characters. Episode One is told from the perspective of the teen characters as they discover their parents’ dark secret and Episode Two follows the same narrative, but from the parents’ point of view. “It’s important to us that there are no true villains in the show.”
Marvel’s Runaways will also strive to update itself to reflect life for teenagers today. This process included Allegra Acosta teaching Josh Schwartz teen slang and Ariela Barer getting on the phone to update Stephanie Savage on what it means to be a feminist in 2017. Another update we saw in the trailer presented is that Karolina (Virginia Gardner) is no longer depicted as a California hippie, but a sugary sweet member of the “Church of Gibborem.” The church is shown in a flyer that evokes the Church of Scientology (and contains a fun Easter egg for Marvel fans).
When asked how the themes of the show reflect the current political atmosphere, the show’s youngest cast member gave the most eloquent answer. Allegra Acosta told the crowd: “I hope it gives hope to young kids that we can all be our own hero even if we don’t have a hero right now.”
Marvel’s Runaways premieres on Hulu on November 21.
