When ‘Runaways’ returns for its second season, things are going to be a bit different. That’s a given, in as much as the first season finale upended the status quo they’d spent the season establishing, as the show fulfilled the promise of its premise and saw the teenage cast run away from home. But these conceptual elements are not the only thing that will be different this year. In the course of a set visit, TV Line spoke with co-showrunners and executive producers Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz, who both hinted at some of the more significant new developments of the coming season.
One of the biggest changes will be the introduction of the Hostel, which provides a home base of sorts for the team. In the comics, the team has gone through several Hostels, with the original being a mansion built by a “crazy actor” in the 1920s which eventually fell into an abandoned mine in Bronson Canyon during an earthquake. The show, it seems, will be taking a similar approach, as Savage describes their version of the Hostel as a mansion that was buried by “a mudslide or an earthquake” and now resides somewhere under Griffith Park.
Additionally, Schwartz suggested that the show will begin to tie into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. Specifically, Schwartz mentioned a reference that comes late in the season (which begins a day or two after the conclusion of the first) that “will probably be our first real breadcrumb that connects us to the MCU, in some way.” Given that Schwartz describes this connection as a breadcrumb, it likely won’t be the ‘Cloak and Dagger’ crossover in which the latter show’s writers have publicly voiced their interest, though it may well pave the road for exactly that sort of inter-show connectivity.
But that wasn’t all that they learned. The show now has a premiere date for its second season. The release window that had been given previously was “winter 2018,” which as it turns out is more specific than we’d realized, as the second season will debut on Friday, December 21, 2018 (which is turning out to be a rather crowded day for new releases). But that’s not all. Just as the second season’s narrative is being defined by change, so too is the show’s distribution. According to TV Line, all thirteen episodes of the second season will drop on December 21st, in contrast to the more traditional model of weekly “broadcasts” that saw the first season released over the space of two months.
Be sure to check back with ScienceFiction.com for more on the upcoming second season of ‘Runaways’ as it becomes available!
The entire first season of ‘Runaways’ is currently available to stream on Hulu. The show stars Rhenzy Feliz, Lyrica Okano, Virginia Gardner, Ariela Barer, Gregg Sulkin, Allegra Acosta, James Marsters, Ryan Sands, Annie Wersching, Brittany Ishibashi, and Kevin Weisman. It will return for a second season on December 21, 2018.
