The Runaways (Marvel/Hulu)

November? That's cool. No need to wait until 2018 if it'll be ready before that. And perhaps this means Hulu likes what they're seeing, and are hoping to move forward with a second season sooner rather than later. (And the trailer certainly seems good enough.)

Though now that I think about it, we're supposed to get Punisher in November too, right? That's going to require some serious sitting-and-watching time. (And if you add in all the regular weekly superhero tv shows that should be in full swing by then, and Thor and Justice League, November is gonna be a batshit crazy superhero month!!)

 

Good news! Looks like I'll be subscribing to Hulu sooner than I anticipated.

 

Marvel TV boss Jeph Loeb has confirmed that Runaways "lives in the same world" as the MCU. It sounds to me like it is part of the MCU, but like the Netflix shows it will mostly be doing its own thing with the occasional reference to the wider MCU. Which is pretty much how I expected this show to go.

Meanwhile, the pilot will be told from the kids' perspectives, while the second episode will tell the same story from the parents' perspectives. (See tweet from a Variety staffer below.) This is a very interesting way to go, and I really hope they can pull it off.

 

Your second link doesn't actually go anywhere. At least not from my phone.

 

I know nothing about the Runaways, outside of the characters popping up in some other books I read.

 

Whoops! It's a tweet. I'll just post up a screenshot, hang on.

In fact, here's the whole thread from the Variety staffer, minus the one tweet I already posted:

 

The article I read said it was in the same "narrative universe" as the Netflix shows, much as Inhumans is in the same narrative universe as Agents of SHIELD. That struck me as odd, since they're all the MCU, but I guess a "narrative universe" means stories that share specific continuity elements rather than just generally presumed to be in the same reality. So if what I read was accurate, that might mean Runaways has some specific concept in common with the Defenders continuity. At a guess, maybe the bad guys are connected to the Hand, or to the group behind Jessica's powers, or to Wilson Fisk, or something.

Anyway, I've been presuming that all the Marvel Studios TV shows are meant to be in the MCU, since so far they haven't made anything that wasn't. It's the opposite of the DC situation where everything but the Berlanti family of shows is in a separate reality; the only Marvel shows to date that aren't MCU are the Fox-produced ones connected to the X-Men, Legion and Gifted. So my working hypothesis is that Cloak and Dagger and New Warriors would also be at least nominally in the MCU.

 

Sounds like they're trying to do the characters justice. We'll see if it works, but at least they're on the right path.

As for the "it's all connected" business, yeah, I think at this point we recognize that all this stuff takes place in the same universe, but at the same time it would be a full miracle if any of these tv characters ever showed up in the same scene with Tony Stark. If they can at least try to give us some tvshow-to-tvshow crossover, that would be about all I could hope for at this point.

 

I know that Cloak and Dagger appeared early on in the comic. It'd be neat to see them appear on the show, too, but I don't expect it to happen given the potential legalities since they're on different networks.

 

Netflix has done just that.
Several characters have crossed over from one show to another,
Now, we're getting The Defenders in August.

 

The Runaways actually almost got involved with Fisk once in the comics, so that would be amusing. I don't know if this series has the budget for Donofrio, though.

 

That arc also featured the epic throwdown between Molly Hayes and The Punisher. Do you think they can afford Jon Bernthal?

 

For a chance to enact *that* scene, I think he'd do it for scale!

 

I guess I was thinking less along the lines of an actual guest appearance and more just that there might be dialogue linking the villains of the show to one or more villains in the Netflix shows. Kinda like how Luke Cage alluded to Hammer Industries from Iron Man 2 as the inventor of the Judas bullets.

 

It would seem that they are ignoring the Tina Minoru seen in Doctor Strange...

 

Probably for the best. I doubt the movies will actually be using her, and she was never named in dialogue.

 

I suspected as much. Both Tina and the Staff of One were really just visual easter eggs that weren't referred to by name, not unlike the Infinity Gauntlet in Thor.
Trying to explain the age difference and massive gap of circumstances is probably more effort that it's worth just to tie up a tiny piece of continuity and it would hardly add anything significant to the show.

I suppose if someone were *desperate* to tie up loose ends then maybe one might suggest the Tina Minoru from 'Doctor Strange' could be a relation (niece or second cousin or something) and the one in 'The Runaways' is her namesake and the black sheep of the family. It would be consistent with the notion that magical ability runs in the family.

The Staff of One being in two places at once might be a bit more tricky. It is after all *The* Staff of One, of *A* Staff of One.

 

I just happened to have read through all the Runaways issues on Marvel Unlimited recently and there were actually at least one or two moments where it was referred to as *A* Staff of One. Which sounds weird, obviously, but there is precedent.