Runaways Season 3 Review

December 17, 2019 at 3:44am
By Jason Stettner

The end is finally here, and while the show didn’t last as long as I had expected I’ve enjoyed this run of the Runaways. This third season is sadly the end of the show and it somewhat concludes in a satisfying way. That being said, this was an absolute mess at times as this season whipped through story lines with essentially no slower moments for breathing. You could clearly tell that they tried to get through as much as possible and things get rough because of it.

The most important story point of the entire series thus far has basically a disappearance here and from there it goes wild in throwing people all over the place. Alliances are constantly shifting, time is being jumped through and there’s an entire extra magical story that’s thrown into the mix of this all. It sets up possible future seasons we’ll never see and teases things that will never come to be. The story suffers for this, as does the development for the various characters.

In the past we got a deeper look into the desires of this group, whereas there is zero time for that in this season. I honestly even forgot some characters as folks vanish, or come back in diminished positions and it’s just all over. There’s still some great action here, and it’s nice to see a sense of maturity across the team.

The general visual style of this season was far better, as were the CGI elements when they were used. The powers were very mystical with this style, especially with what Nico (Lyrica Okano) was producing. The acting was solid, but it was hard to keep track of everyone’s placement as things flew bye. The lines blurred, and this felt like too far of a distance from the initial two seasons that had better drawn alliances.

It definitely didn’t hold back on the damage, be prepared for some shocking moments throughout. There are surprises here too, that explain the lore of these families better while also leaving a lot untangled. You don’t even really get a sense of closure between the kids and their parents as that’s left aside for some wild time travelling situations. There was a fun cross-over which was neat, but strangely they aimed to introduce the characters we already know, instead of letting us get to know the folks from Cloak and Dagger as I still have no real idea who they are having not seen that show.

There were cool, but we were given little to no context about what they actually do or their motivations so that was a waste in my opinion. It’s a real shame this didn’t get a deeper connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that it never will at this point. It was a really interesting smaller piece of what could have been a great attachment to the universe. A missed opportunity I suppose, especially with the ending piece.

The Conclusion

The Runaways Season 3 is an alright ending to this series, it teases a lot while rushing through seasons worth of content. There’s not much room to breathe and things change far too fast. You’re never able to just take in the changes, and the characters can’t react to what’s actually happening. It’s just jumping as fast as humanly possible to get to the next narrative point.

The entire point of the overall series seems to dissolve with no actual resolution and extra enemies come in to fill those voids. The conclusive points featuring time travel were wild in advancing things while leaving viewers confused and perhaps just desiring to understand what actually might happen. I have so many general questions about things, with plot points being left behind and so many characters vanishing without any time to feel that loss.

This was disappointing in regards to wanting something straight forward to view that was intimate like the seasons in the past. I still enjoyed what was present here, they handled the final rush well and covered a lot. Still, I wish more could come down the road and that these story points were spread out more. I’m going to miss this group, they’ve obviously changed a lot over the course of the series and it’s a shame that the teases won’t be realized as they setup something cool that we’ll never be able to see realized.

Runaways Season 3 Review at Home with Streamed Viewing

Rating Overall: 6.2