WARNING: This article contains spoilers about this week’s episode of ‘Marvel’s Runaways.’ If you wish to not have this information spoiled for you, then the best time to stop reading is now!
Most comic-book adaptations that make their way to TV and film do take liberties and make adjustments from the “print” version of the storylines, so it’s no surprise that streaming service Hulu chose to do the same with their series ‘Runaways,’ based on the popular Marvel Comics book of the same name.
Taking the lead from a very small sub-plot first introduced on the comic-book pages back in 2003, the TV series appears to be looking to explore the same-sex romantic relationship between Karolina (Virginia Gardner) and Nico (Lyrica Okano). In a recent interview, Executive Producer Josh Schwartz elaborated on why this piece of the plot was a big deal for the cast and creative team:
“It was a story that we always were going to tell. It was obviously hugely important to the comic, hugely important to the actors playing those parts. It was something that they really wanted to make sure we were exploring as well. We wanted to get there from a place of real emotion.
“First, Karolina is going to have to deal with Chase’s [Gregg Sulkin] very real affections for her and how she doesn’t reciprocate. This is all tied into Karolina’s larger journey of coming to grips with identity, which is going to increasingly drive more story as we come down the line. Realizing that everything in her life has been a lie, and everything she’s ever done has been to make her perfect mother happy, and live up to the tenants of the church that she belongs to, realizing now that her mother isn’t at all who she believed her to be, and that the church — this beautiful thing in quotes that she bought into — is actually hiding terrible secrets is going to make her feel emboldened to start becoming herself even more.
“She has feelings that she doesn’t know how to express yet. She’s always felt this way about Nico, even before she would put a label on if she was gay or not. She just felt this way about Nico and so that’s a story that we really wanted to explore.”
At the end of the most recent episode, the characters’ feelings were only briefly touched on, but Schwartz did confirm that their emotions will be a focus of a subplot as the series progresses.
‘Marvel’s Runaways’ airs new episodes every Tuesday on Hulu.
