Characters / MCU: Runaways

Main Character Index > Heroic Organizations > The Runaways

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Spoilers for all works set prior to the end of Avengers: Endgame are unmarked.

The Runaways

Appearances: Runaways

Karolina: We were friends because our parents were friends. We were just kids. We were always gonna grow apart.
Gert: Plus, it's kind of hard to stay friends with someone when all they care about is being the perfect church girl.
Karolina: Better than the insufferable social justice warrior.
Alex: Or a dumb jock.
Chase: Yeah, or Molly... I've got nothing against you. You're really nice.

A group of friends who discover that their parents are committing murders for an unknown purpose, and resolve to stop them.

In General

• Bash Siblings: This band of runaway teenagers and Action Survivors becomes a formidable team and True Companions after fighting alongside one another against their own parents, aliens, and interdimensional beings.
• Big Damn Heroes: The rest of the Runaways save Alex just as he is about to be brought into a plane by his dad.
• Breaking the Fellowship: Chase leaves the Runaways to reunite with his family. And in the Season 2 finale, Gert and Old Lace are kidnapped by Dale while Karolina is captured by Jonah and trapped in stasis to serve as an eventual sacrifice for himself and his family.
• Childhood Friends: They were close as children. Played realistically, as pointed out; they eventually grew apart as they were different people who were only friends because their parents were friends, although Amy's death and Alex's not attending the funeral are the last straws that broke them apart.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames:
  • Thus far, none of them besides Old Lace have used any codenames - but then they barely used them in the source material either as part of the book's Not Wearing Tights approach.
  • The kids actually discuss that they never came up with a name for their group in "Doomsday". Alex suggested that they call themselves "the Runaways" in honor of the kids who were sacrificed, but the others rejected it as "too dark". Ironically, by the end of Season One, the kids do in fact run away, which would make it more fitting.
• Deadpan Snarker: They are teenagers.
• Family of Choice: By the end of the first season, they come to see each other as more of a family than their actual parents.
• Five-Token Band: They're comprised of Alex (black male), Gert (neuroatypical Jewish female), Chase (white male), Karolina (lesbian white-appearing female), Nico (bisexual Japanese-American female), and Molly (Latina female).
• Hates Their Parent: While some members of the titular team continue to try and make excuses for them for certain, Alex and Nico definitely hate their parents after finding out who they really are, with Alex's season 2 arc ultimately culminating in him having his parent's arrested.
• Kid Hero: A group of high school students set on thwarting their parents’ plans.
• Love Dodecahedron: Alex and Nico show mutual interest in one another. Gert has a crush on Chase, who is far from indifferent but is trying to start something with Karolina, who is more into Nico who later reciprocates. Molly has no part in this at all.
• Ordinary High-School Student: The six are regular (albeit privileged) students at a private school called Atlas Academy — until they begin to discover the secrets their parents have been hiding.
• The Runaway: By the end of the first season.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Not even finding the truth about their parents can stop them from bickering over the same issues that drove them apart in the first place.
• Two Girls to a Team: Inverted. Alex and Chase are the only boys in the group.
• We Used to Be Friends: The kids are Childhood Friends who grew apart following the death of Nico's sister.

Members

Alex Wilder

Alex Wilder

"If we want to survive and stay together, we can't come out of every situation with clean hands."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Rhenzy Feliz, Krystian Alexander Lyttle (young)

Appearances: Runaways

"Look, I know that it's been a shitty couple of weeks, but, we're friends again, and I didn't think we ever would be. I wouldn't want to save the world with any other crew."

The only son of Geoffrey and Catherine Wilder, Alex is both computer-savvy and an unabashed pop culture nerd. After burying himself in his laptop following the death of his friend Amy, Alex starts feeling the absence of his childhood friends and tries to get the band back together - with consequences no one could possibly predict...

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• Adaptational Heroism: In the comics, Alex was secretly working with his parents the whole time and betrayed the rest of his friends. His betrayal is adapted, but instead of having been working with PRIDE, his 'betrayal' is knowing details about Amy's death that he didn't share with Nico. The person to actually betray them to PRIDE instead seems to be Chase. Additionally, in the comics he cared nothing for the other Runaways (apart from Nico) and was only using them for personal gain. His MCU counterpart however shows he's very much friends with them and desperate for them to reunite. Also unlike his comic counterpart who cared only for power and his own ambitions, the MCU version is determined that the parents pay for the lives they took or destroyed.
• Adaptation Personality Change: This Alex seems more vulnerable and open with his friends than his comic book counterpart. Notably, in the comics Alex was actively against hanging out with the others prior to them learning about their parents, while here, he's very desperate to bond with them. His prior friendship with Amy likely played a role.
• Ambiguously Evil: Out of all of the Runaways, his motivations and actions are the most morally questionable despite being The Leader and The Heart of the team.
  • Out of all of his friends, he is the most insistent and obsessed with having their parents arrested, motivated by his desire to get revenge for Darius's death and the various other crimes they are guilty of.
  • In Season 2, he becomes possessed by the Magistrate's son, who is described as being nothing short of a total psychopath. It is left vague how much of his more questionable actions are Alex or the Son.
  • After spending an undetermined amount of time in the Dark Dimension under AWOL's boot-heel, he is eventually driven to killing his mother (or the Dark Dimension's manifestation of her, maybe) to save his team. When Tandy grabs his arm on their way out, she catches a glimpse of his biggest hope: himself, standing alone over Los Angeles, in possession of all of his teammate's equipment and powers.
• Amicable Exes: With Nico.
• Black and Nerdy: He's a black teen who enjoys nerdy endeavors. He even has a big pair of glasses just to ensure there's no confusion.
• Calling the Old Man Out: He calls out his father after learning about his past "Fifteen". "Metamorphosis" has shown that he has not let up on him.
  Alex: For as long as I can remember... whenever I was with you, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. You weren't just my father, you were my best friend. But the more I learn about you... the more I realize that you're just not a good person.
• Decomposite Character: As far as the first season goes, his role as the surprise traitor is instead given to Frank Dean.
• Did Not Get the Girl:
  • As of the end of Season 1, Nico dumped him after she was angry at him for keeping secrets about Amy's death.
  • His luck (or lack thereof) continues in Season 2, where he's forced to abandon his new girlfriend because said girlfriend's sister threatened him to stay away from them after they are almost killed by AWOL on PRIDE's behalf.
• Didn't Think This Through: Lampshaded by Alex, who first acts as if he didn't think things through when he walks up to AWOL alone. But then he lures him into a trap, which results in AWOL getting captured.
• Distressed Dude: He's kidnapped by his father's old associates in "Fifteen" but is rescued by the team in "Kingdom."
• Green-Eyed Monster: Discussed. The Runaways argue if Alex didn't want to save Karolina because she just hooked up with Nico, but Alex rebuffs it by saying that he didn't even know that Karolina and Nico are a thing.
• The Heart: He is the one who gets all his friends to start hanging out again, boosts their morale as a group, and even comes up with their team name: "Runaways".
• Hollywood Hacking: Has a history of hacking, all of which seems to be done from his laptop. In "Metamorphosis" he manages to retrieve data from the Wizard server, which is one of the most secure in the world.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: In Season 2.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: While the other Runaways feel more thrown together by circumstance, Alex actively wants to be close with them, notably this is a departure from his comics counterpart, who hated the idea, and only hung out with them because he had to.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Alex briefly tortures AWOL with Chase's fistigons, much to the horror of the rest of the group. This could be a sign of his possession by the cruel son of the Magistrate.
• The Leader: Slowly shaping up to be the teens' leader; lampshaded in "Metamorphosis" when they look to him for a plan.
  Gert: Okay, Alex, what's the plan?
  Molly: Yeah, Alex?
  Chase: Why does everyone assume Alex has a plan? Someone else might have a plan.
  Alex: Great. Lets hear it.
  Chase:(Beat) I was just speaking hypothetically.
• Like Father, Like Son: Geoffrey is a smart and ruthless man who was always "one step ahead of everyone" in his street days, but who also got one of his friends to take the fall for him and then stiffed him on the return favour and broke off all connections with him. Alex is, as per above, the man with the plan among the Runaways, but also the one who argued in favour of abandoning Karolina when she got captured and who distanced himself from his friends for years rather than admit that he knew something about Amy's supposed suicide.
• Lonely Rich Kid: While all the protagonists are fairly well-off, Alex in particular has been a loner at school since Amy's death.
• The Lost Lenore: All signs point to him still being in love with Amy. Subverted when it turns out that while he and Amy were friends and gamed together, she knew him well enough to have spotted his years-long crush on Nico.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Once Livvie gets involved in Season 2, he starts going over the deep end.
• Official Couple: With Nico and Livvie in Season 1 and Season 2 respectively. Neither couple ends up well, however.
• Revenge Before Reason: In Season 2, he's so revenge driven after Darius gets murdered he starts doing some really reckless things to bring his parents down.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Has this dynamic with Chase, being the introspective and quiet Sensitive Guy to Chase's abrasive and blunt Manly Man.
• The Smart Guy: His role on the team as the tech expert and planner. This is highlighted after he leaves the group after a disagreement. But the group brings him back into the fold as they miss him, and need him to come up with actual plans. However in season two the group and others notice that Alex is more willing to take shortcuts or make questionable deals all in his obsession to punish his parents.
• Spared by the Adaptation: He survives until the end of the series, whereas he was killed shortly after revealing himself as The Mole in the comics at the end of the first arc.
• The Team Normal: He's the only one of the Runaways not to have superpowers of some kind, either innately or through some kind of enhancement. He still manages to be the de-facto leader for much of the series due to his status as The Smart Guy, however. Leads to a few moments of I Just Want to Be Special, but for the most part Alex seems reasonably happy being the more down-to-earth technical and logistical guy on the crew.
• Too Clever by Half: He suffers from a major case of this in Season 2. Despite everyone telling him that getting mixed up with AWOL in trying to take his parents down was a bad idea, he still went with it. The net result was them getting majorly screwed over, and at one point Tamar just suggests he drops being clever and just shoot them.
• Took a Level in Badass: Despite some set backs in season two. Alex is more proactive and focused in his mission. He impresses his father with his hacking ability and has taken up quite easily to breaking and entry as well as car theft. Out of all of the Runaways he's the only one at the end of the season who ends up beating his parents, without any personal emotional cost or loss like Nico.

Nico Minoru

Nico Minoru

"Whatever I am now, it's not Amy. Sorry to disappoint you."

Species: Human

Citizenship: Japanese-American

Portrayed By: Lyrica Okano

Appearances: Runaways

"Some people hide behind makeup, others behind a smile. It's still hiding."

A goth teen who is experimenting with magic and the occult after the death of her sister Amy. The younger daughter of Robert and Tina Minoru.

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• Action Girl: Even without the Staff of One, she's a trained martial artist who can hold her own against much larger adults. With the Staff, she's easily the most powerful of the Runaways in a fight.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Even before she learns the truth about her parents, this version of Nico is already mourning the death of her sister.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Downplayed, as she goes from merely Ambiguously Bi to explicitly bi. However, as of Issue 12 of the revived comic, it's no longer ambiguous.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Nico's superpowers were altered, likely to avoid comparisons to self-harm. When casting a spell, the staff instead spring-loads a small needle attachment to prick the skin for a drop of blood^note justified via Clarke's Third Law, as the Staff of One is actually a piece of technology that is using the blood to analyse the user's DNA so as to avoid being used by anyone besides Tina or Nico, rather than needing her to self-harm.
• Alternate Self: A Variant of her is set to appear in Spider-Man: Freshman Year as one of Peter's classmates.
• Always Someone Better: Nico's dead sister Amy, who has sporting trophies and seems to have been her mother's favourite.
• Amicable Exes: With Alex.
• Blow You Away: In "Last Rites", Nico uses the staff's power to escape the dig site by riding on a hurricane.
• Boom Stick: She's slowly learning how to use the Staff of One, which is a long staff with a circle that fires magic at the end.
• Closet Key: To Karolina, as Karolina said after kissing her that she's wanted to do that for a long time. Karolina may be this for Nico as well, assuming Nico never had a relationship with another girl before.
• Cynicism Catalyst: It's implied that Nico's gothic fashion and surly personality developed after Amy's death, as the two of them were close.
• Daddy's Girl: She has better relationship with her father than her mother.
• Dark Is Not Evil: A goth girl who wears mostly black Elegant Gothic Lolita but uses the powers of the Staff of One for good, even if it taps into the energy of the Dark Dimension.
  Karolina: Have you thought that maybe your darkness is you? Your power?
• Deadpan Snarker: Emphasis on both "deadpan" and "snarker". The Runaways have a lot of witty repartee amongst themselves, but Nico's quips tend to stand out thanks to her incredibly dry tone and dark sense of humor.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Stops to watch Karolina change clothes in the back of the van.

• Eye Scream: When Nico is taken over by the Staff of One, the areas around her eyes appear like dark purple craters in a way that's disturbingly similar to Kaecilius and the Zealots.
• Gender-Blender Name: Nico is an infrequent (though often unisex) given name, while "Minoru" is a Japanese given name usually assigned to men.
• Good Is Not Nice: She will do the right thing when push comes to shove, but she still acts very distant and downright abrasive most of the time, even to some of her friends.
• Goth: Played With. She dresses the part and seems to abide by some of the stereotypes (like trying to conduct a ritual to contact her dead sister), but Alex's picture of the group in the past shows Nico with much longer hair and more "normal" clothing, suggesting that she started acting goth to cope with her grief over Amy's death.
• Goth Girls Know Magic: Played with. She acts like a goth and is interested in magic, but while she tries to cast incantations from Wiccan spell books, they accomplish nothing. She only actually performs magic once she has the Staff of One.
• Heroic Second Wind: After being defeated by her parents in hand-to-hand, Nico once again (unwillingly) taps into the powers of the Dark Dimension and knocks them out with a powerful blast.
• Hot Witch: What she aspires to be. She's an attractive girl who catches the attention of Alex and Karolina, and eventually uses magic through the Staff of One.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: In the pilot, she taps on her earphones while talking to Alex to indicate to him that she doesn't care what he has to say.
• How Do I Shot Web?:
  • Struggles to actually control the Staff of One through most of the first season. The first time Nico makes use of it, she accidentally creates a snowstorm in her mom's study while reminiscing over one of her sister's snowflake paper crafts.
  • She's gotten better control of it by the second season, but is still working on getting around its limitations and struggles to maintain spells for long periods. She finally manages to tap into the staff's full power in "Hostile Takeover", at significant cost.
• In the Back: She kills Jonah by stabbing him with the Staff of One from behind.
• In the Blood: Her parents are also involved in the occult, with the third season strongly implying that her mother's relatives are or were sorcerers of Kamer-Taj, though she's initially unaware of it and independently came to magic. However, she doesn't get real magic until she obtains her mother's Staff of One.
• It Only Works Once: The second season establishes that the Staff of One has the same limitation that it does in the comics- outside of simplistic effects, it can only cast a spell triggered by a particular command word once. Trying to use "Block" twice in a row during a training session gets her accidentally blasted by Chase, and she needs to come up with a new command when the team needs to hot-wire a car for a second time.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: She's a capable martial artist in addition to wielding the Staff of One. In "Split Up", she's able to fight her parents while incapable of tapping into the Staff due to PRIDE's dampening tech, and in season 3 she takes on Jonah and later the Magistrate's Daughter in hand-to-hand after the Staff is destroyed, doing pretty well both times.
• Lady of Black Magic: One in training. She's an attractive, fashionable young woman with a dark, icy demeanor who likes to dress in black goth dresses, and learning to use magic through the Staff of One.
• The Leader: Takes over as the group's leader when Alex's extended absences at the start of Season 2 forces somebody else to step up. She relinquishes the role back to him after Darius is killed, but maintains her position as the team's field leader in missions.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The dark to Karolina's light; Nico is a surly brunette goth who cares about appearances and fashion.
• Mind over Matter:
  • After some time she can call the Staff of One to her hand willingly.
  • She can cast blast of telekinetic energy that sends Topher flying several feet back. When using the power of the Dark Dimension, it's strong enough to destroy the PRIDE office and knock out her parents.
• Mundane Utility: First thing she does after accidentally activating the Staff of One for the first time? Use it to crank a stuck drawer open.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Nico is horrified after killing Jonah.
• Official Couple: With Alex in Season 1, and later Karolina.
• Promoted to Love Interest: For Karolina. At the time the series aired, the comics had only suggested Nico might have feelings for her, and then only after Xavin showed up. Here, Nico kisses Karolina back at the first opportunity and season one ends with them in a relationship.
• Shoot the Mage First: Her magical powers are by far the most problematic for AWOL due to their versatility, and he tries to take her out first during his attack on the Hostel.
• Squishy Wizard: She can cast spells with the Staff of One, but has only the regular physical strength of a girl of her age and build. The second season establishes that she does have some martial-arts training, but is still a lightweight in a physical confrontation compared to Chase or Molly.
• Stepford Snarker: Despite reacting to events with either indifference or dripping sarcasm, she breaks down crying in the bathroom after staring at Amy's trophies.
• Summon to Hand: After witnessing her mother perform this trick with the Staff of One in "Doomsday", she manages to pull it off herself in "Last Rites".
• Superpower Lottery: The Staff of One allows her to do pretty much anything so long as she can think of the right words to make it happen. The only things really stopping Nico from solving every conflict in a blink is the Staff's built-in limitations and her own inexperience with using it. That and the fact that the staff has been trying to control her.
• Token Wizard: While the rest of her team is either a Badass Normal or their powers are a product of science or genetics, Nico is the only member of the team who's powers are overtly magical in nature. She is prominently reliant on the Staff of One in casting spells, though in "Cheat the Gallows", the version of her from that alternate future learns how to practice sorcery without it.
• Tsundere: She gives Alex a hard time and tells him to not read anything into her calling him for help, or into her covering up their activities through a Fakeout Makeout, and assures him that she definitely didn't want him to kiss her goodnight... and then she starts grinning goofily the moment she turns around.
• Twofer Token Minority: A bisexual Japanese-American.
• Two First Names: "Nico" and "Minoru" are both given names in Japan.
• The Un-Favourite: Has a strained relationship with her mother, who bans her from entering Amy's room.

Karolina Dean

Karolina Dean

"Rebelling. What's it like?"

Species: Human-Gibborim hybrid

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Virginia Gardner, Valentina Gordon (young)

Appearances: Runaways

"It's just... everything my whole life has been for my mom and the church. Then I learned that what I thought was the ultimate good is somehow a part of the worst thing imaginable. And what if what I do is connected to that? What does that make me?"

The daughter of Leslie Dean, leader of the Church of Gibborim, and former teen star Frank Dean. She is seen as the youth face of the church, but Karolina resents the restrictions her status gives her and struggles with her identity in more ways than one.

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• Adaptation Species Change: She is half a Gibborim instead of a Majesdanian, though the Gibborim here are basically the MCU's version of the Majesdanians
• All the Other Reindeer: Implied to be a victim of bullying at school, largely due to her membership in the setting's Church of Happyology. Later, after her near-rape, it's shown more up-close with her being accosted for her being a 'lightweight slut' and people spreading rumours about her.
• Attempted Rape: Is nearly sexually assaulted by Chase's lacrosse buddies after passing out at a party. Chase saves her.
• Cain and Abel: Unbeknownst to her she has a nasty half-sister and an extremely nasty half-brother.
• Closet Gay: She realizes that she's gay in the first episode, but tries to cover it up, because she's from a religious family where that's frowned upon. She eventually stops hiding it after realizing that Nico returns her feelings.
• Coming-Out Story: Just like in the comics, it takes time before she reveals her sexuality. She reveals it by kissing Nico, who kisses her back.
• Daddy's Girl: Unlike the other kids, she's quite close with her father. It's why she tells him about the team's discoveries. Unfortunately, this trust is misplaced, as he proceeds to rat them out to Jonah.
• Drowning My Sorrows: In "Metamorphosis," starts drinking before the party and doesn't stop until she flies after falling off the roof.
• Drives Like Crazy: Her taking the team to rescue Alex is clearly the first time she's ever driven a car.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: When her bracelet is removed, her entire body glows like a rainbow.
• Flight: She discovers that she can fly in the sixth episode, much to her delight.
• Flying Firepower: As her abilities develop, she learns to fly and eventually manages to upgrade her light blasts into Frickin' Laser Beams, giving her the same role on the team as her comic counterpart.
• Glamour: Her bracelet appears to function as this, as she looks like a regular human girl when she wears it. Her powers come out when she takes it off.
  • By the second season she's learned to suppress her powers even when not wearing her bracelet, thanks to Jonah's tutelage.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Thanks to Chase's Adaptational Dye-Job, she's now the token blonde of the group, and aside from Molly is definitely the nicest of the bunch as well. She also flatly refuses to assume their parents are evil at face value and is determined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Her mother is human, while her father is the alien Jonah.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Her glowing power doesn't seem to actually do anything offensively, though it at least makes for a nice distraction in battle. She can fire energy beams, however, as well as fly, so its not like its her only ability.
• Human Aliens: She appears human when wearing the bracelet that contains her true form.
• Hybrid Power: Her father is interested in her because she's capable of using Gibborim powers without burning out her body.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: In "Radio On" Karolina reveals that she now (after her training with Jonah) doesn't need her bracelet anymore to control her powers.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Her lofty social status is made worse when she discovers her powers and her mother’s activities.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Her reaction to all the drama in episode six.
• Just Friends: Completely uninterested in Chase romantically, but that has nothing to do with Chase himself. Just that she prefers women instead.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The light to Nico's dark, as she's a sunny blonde who dresses in fashionable clothing and is the Token Religious Teammate.
• Lipstick Lesbian:
  • She's very feminine, and is all but stated to be into women. She watches two girls kissing with interest in the pilot, shows zero interest in Chase's advances, and in "Metamorphosis" she all but tells Nico that she has feelings for her.
  • Then, in "Doomsday", Karolina gets to kiss Nico. Who kisses her back!
• Longing Look: Before she came out, there are many occassions where Karolina just stares or glances at Nico, some of which are done in a subtle way.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Tuns out Jonah is her biological father.
• Moral Myopia: She blames Nico for the death of her father, conveniently forgetting that he murdered her sister.
• Not Quite Human: Something is up with her biology that her bracelet is implied to suppress; when she takes it off her body starts glowing like a rainbow.
• Official Couple: With Nico, as of the end of season one.
• One Head Taller: Than Nico, who she has to lean down to kiss.
• Power Limiter: Her bracelet hides her powers.
• Promoted to Love Interest: For Nico.
• Slut-Shaming: Subject to this by Eiffel in "Fifteen," who blames Chase's falling out with the lacrosse team on Karolina's promiscuity. Especially egregious since the "promiscuity" she's referring to was Karolina being a victim of Attempted Rape.
• Stepford Smiler: In contrast with the rest of the group, who have all become emotionally withdrawn in various ways, Karolina copes with her problems by putting on a happy face and compulsively posting positive images on social media. Nico succinctly sums up that she hides behind makeup the same way Karolina hides behind her smile.
• Super Cute Superpowers: Her body becomes rainbow colored and glittery, and she can fire very weak projectiles of the same colors. Lampshaded by Darius, who dismissively calls her abilities "cute."
• Token Religious Teammate: She belongs to a church and is very open about her faith, but it's more in the vein of Scientology than any major world religion. It's apparently a positive enough influence that she's depicted as being the most open-minded and positive member of the group, in-spite of Gert's initial bitterness towards her, and she despairs at the thought that her faith is likely tied up with PRIDE's misdeeds.
• Twofer Token Minority: She's a half-alien lesbian.
• White Sheep: She's the only genuinely heroic member of The Gibborim Magistrate's family, possibly along with her infant sister born in season 3. For that matter, she's also the most heroic member of either side of her human families too.
• You Are in Command Now: Leslie tells Karolina that with her power display in front of the Church in "Earth Angel", she is gonna be their new messiah now. Karolina is not happy to hear it and refuses to take it over.
• You Killed My Father: Despite everything he did, Karolina is not happy after Nico kills Jonah.

Gertrude "Gert" Yorkes

Gertrude "Gert" Yorkes

"When someone like me walks through a door, no one really turns my way. Unless I just barfed orange juice onto my shoes."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Ariela Barer

Appearances: Runaways

A "social justice warrior" who masks her insecurities with causes. The daughter of Dale and Stacey Yorkes.

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• Adaptational Curves: Though not quite Amazonian here, she's a bit thinner than her counterpart in the comics.
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: Subverted. While she doesn't actually refer to herself as "Arsenic" in the series, an advertisement for a local showing of Arsenic and Old Lace prompts Gert to compare herself and the dinosaur to their cinematic namesakes, along with other famous twosomes in pop culture. "Old Lace" eventually sticks for the dinosaur.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: In the comics, Gert often acted like an irritable jerk to everyone, while this version of Gert is more approachable and nicer with her snarky comments coming off as more playful than biting like Comics!Gert.
• The Beastmaster: Forms a bond connection with Old Lace, her parents' genetically-engineered dinosaur, allowing the two to communicate empathically and Gert to control Old Lace with mental commands.
• Big Sister Instinct: While she'll be sarcastic with Molly like with everyone else, Gert cares a lot for her adopted sister.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Invoked when she refers to her pet deinonychus as "the Old Lace to my Arsenic", referencing her comic book codename, which itself is a Shout-Out to the play Arsenic and Old Lace.
• Establishing Character Moment: She chastises Molly for wanting to join their school's cheerleading squad in the name of feminism.
• Green-Eyed Monster: She verbally lashes out at Karolina a few times after she realizes that Chase has a crush on her.
• Hypocrite: Karolina calls her out on tearing other women down more than anyone, despite claiming to be all about female empowerment. Also, she is entirely unapologetic about using a pair of X-ray goggles to look through Chase's clothes, even though that flies in the face of every feminist principle of anti-objectification and bodily autonomy. In fairness, she's a teen who is just discovering feminism, not the perfect poster child of the movement, and he didn't seem bothered by it, though he does call out the Double Standard of her donning a lead apron before lending him the goggles.
• Informed Judaism: Or at least her parents are, why she objects to them being part of the Gibborim cult.
• Jerkass Ball: Justified. In Season 2 Gert is extremely on the edge as a result of withdrawal from her antidepressants.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": She's initially freaked out by the empathic link she shares with Old Lace, but quickly comes around to how cool it is.
• Race Lift: Subverted. Though she's portrayed by a Latina actress, there's no indication that this version of the character shares that background.^note The actors who portrayed her parents aren't of Latin descent, either. Instead, her father's actor is Jewish-American and her mother's actress is Irish-American. However, as a possible nod to Ariela Barrer's Latin heritage, Gert is able to speak Spanish fluently.
• Related in the Adaptation: In the show, Gert is Molly's adoptive sister.
• Sanity Slippage: It's revealed in the second season that she has an unidentified psychiatric disorder, and is now without access to meds thanks to the team being on the run. Her behavior gets more and more erratic and unstable as time goes on, until she finally snaps and checks in at a hospital in a desperate bid for medicine, ultimately resulting in an uncomfortable encounter between Chase and his mom.
• Shipper with an Agenda: She encourages Karolina to act on her feelings for Nico, at least in part because this would encourage Chase to stop mooning over Karolina.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Gert is an unpopular pessimist, while Molly is a well-liked optimist.
• Single Girl Seeks Most Popular Guy: Her crush on Chase is very obvious.
• Soapbox Sadie: She's very invested in social issues (particularly on the subject of feminism and the modern patriarchy), much to the chagrin of those around her.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: She's somehow able to communicate perfectly with Old Lace the deinonychus, which is a complete surprise to her parents.
• Straw Feminist: Played with. Though she plays up every cliché and stereotype, Gert is portrayed as more akin to someone who just discovered feminism and has found in it a way to vent her insecurities and frustrations. Though she genuinely believes in her ideals, she's still an insecure teenager who often lashes out at girls she deems prettier, like a lot of girls her age. Karolina outright calls her out on how her behaviour flies in the face of what feminism is meant to be. She does, however, support Karolina after it is revealed two members of the Lacrosse team tried to rape her while passed out and Eiffel engages in Victim-Blaming and Slut-Shaming. Later, she is the one who notices Karolina's struggle with her sexuality and reaches out.

Chase Stein

Chase Stein

"Calc's boring. I like practical applications."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Gregg Sulkin

Appearances: Runaways

"As messed up as things are right now, at least we know the truth, who our friends are, who our parents are. It might suck, but it's real."

The son of Victor and Janet Stein, Chase is a very capable engineer but chafes under his father's high expectations; he'd rather play lacrosse or tinker with personal projects than keep his grades up.

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• Adaptational Dye-Job: Has blond hair in the comics, but is brown-haired here.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Chase is seen designing and attempting to build the fistigons, unlike his comics counterpart who just happened to pick them up. He later helps his father build the final version.
• Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed. Although Chase does join up with PRIDE eventually, they're portrayed as a bit more sympathetic compared to Alex's Evil All Along reveal in the comics and his own motivation for doing so is also fairly sympathetic. However he still ends up being the traitor to the team. When he organises a meet with his former friends, lying that PRIDE was unaware that they were meeting. Putting them in a secluded area where they can be picked off. While he was unaware that PRIDE where using him to get to the Runaways, he still used their trust in him to set up a meet, leading to their capture.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Stein is Jewish surname and his actor is Jewish, but his ethnicity isn't mentioned or referenced nonetheless.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Among the kids, he has the worst relationship with his parents, and is by far the fastest to assume the worst about whatever PRIDE is up to. This changes in Season 2, where Alex is the most antagonistic and even manages to trick the Wilders into be arrested.
• The B Grade: Struggling to earn good grades in Spanish class, which puts him at odds with his extremely education-focused dad.
• Big Man on Campus: He's a star lacrosse player in his high school, and quite popular because of it.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He's as smart as his father but prefers to learn about practical uses and applications. If he feels that it has no real use in the real world, he doesn't give a shit.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As the Future!Runaways disappear after they save Gert, it's entirely possible that Chase, out of all the other genuises and Sufficiently Advanced Alien Races that have tried it, is the first to discover actual time travel, rather than the Quantum Realm variation that just creates branched timelines.
• Composite Character: He ends up betraying the team for PRIDE, like Alex does in the comics.
• Drives Like Crazy: To the point where Alex uses two seatbelts just to be safe.
• Dumb Jock: Subverted. Although he's introduced as a lacrosse player with slipping grades, he's smarter than he lets on. As he mentions in "Kingdom", he's not so much Book Dumb as favoring practical applications of his studies.
• Establishing Character Moment: Alex catches him designing what will become his "fistigons", causing Chase to lash out defensively.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He's the one who invented the Fistigons in this continuity. He also fixes up a derelict car for the team to drive around in Season 2, and is generally Alex's go-to assistant for tech work.
• Genius Bruiser: He's a heavily-muscled athlete and handy in a scrap, and if his work with the Fistigons are anything to go by, he's definitely inherited at least some of his dad's technical acumen.
• Hopeless Suitor: Karolina is utterly uninterested in his advances.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Despite the horrible things their parents have done. Including multiple murders spanning over a decade. Chase still decides to return to PRIDE out of love for his father. Then he organizes a meeting with his former friends at PRIDE's request. This leads an ambush and capture of Karolina and Gert .
• Jerk Jock: Subverted. He plays lacrosse and acts like an entitled douchebag, but wasn't always that way. He starts making an effort to be nicer after the group reunites, and quits the team in "Fifteen".
• Just Friends: Ultimately this to Karolina. She's completely uninterested in him romantically despite his advances, but it's not because of Chase himself, but because she just doesn't swing that way romantically.
• Mr. Fanservice: His introduction is working out shirtless in his room, and he frequently wears tight clothing that highlights his buff physique. Even gets an (exceedingly brief) nude scene in "Destiny" when Gert accidentally gets an eyeful of him while using the x-ray goggles. Chase seems to consider himself this In-Universe as well, referring to himself as a "strapping lacrosse player" in a conversation with Gert.
• Mouth of Sauron: After joining PRIDE, he becomes their envoy to the Runaways, trying to convince them to follow in his steps to become the new heads of the organization
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Chase organizes a meet with the Runaways at the direction of PRIDE. Lying to his former friends that he is meeting them without PRIDE's knowledge. When he fails to convince them to return to PRIDE, the Runaways are in a secluded spot. All in one place ready to be picked off by their parents by drones equipped to take them down.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He pretends to be dumber than he actually is. Partially, it's to fit in with the cool jocks at school, and partially to low-key rebel against his father.
• Only Sane Man: Starts shaping up to be this in Season 2, where his own Character Development in the first season highlights the need for more of the same among the rest of the team, particularly opposite Gert's Sanity Slippage.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Quits the lacrosse team because of how it tolerates the boys who attempted to rape Karolina.
• Sympathy for the Devil: In "Last Waltz", much to everybody else's frustration, Chase keeps making excuses for their parents. It culminates with him leaving the group and then agreeing to join PRIDE.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The athletic, blunt, and popular Manly Man to Alex's nerdy and introverted Sensitive Guy. Subverted in that Alex is the more ruthless and driven of the two.
• Tricked-Out Gloves: The Fistigons, which he and his father build in "Kingdom", are a high-tech pair of gloves that can fire projectiles.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: His father is an abusive genius. Chase strives desperately to be The Ace because of it. However, he only gets a genuine emotional connection with his father when said father walks in on him tinkering with his Fistigons in papa's workroom.
  Victor: That thing is... work of a child. You got ahead of yourself. Don't worry about the execution. Not, not yet. Just tell me your idea. Everything. What it does. How it feels. How it makes you feel. Right now it is perfect in your mind, and that is where you need to live while we build this thing. Take me there. What is this thing called?
  Chase: ... Fistigons.
• What You Are in the Dark: When he sees his buddies carrying an unconscious Karolina to an upstairs bedroom at a Wild Teen Party, and goes after them. When he sees what they're planning to do, he immediately launches himself at them and spends several episodes hiding what he'd done from the rest of the Runaways.
  Jock: It's been all weekend, and still no apology?
  Chase: And you're not going to get one.

Molly Hernandez

Molly Hayes Hernandez

"You try lifting an SUV with your bare hands. It's exhausting."

Species: Enhanced human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Allegra Acosta, Evelyn Angelos (young)

Appearances: Runaways

"That's what I love about you Molly. Our parents are killers, the cops are crooked and we almost got killed by some gang members. But you see it as everything is going great."

— Karolina Dean

The Baby of the Bunch who wants to find her place in the world. The daughter of Gene and Alice Hernandez; following their deaths, she was adopted and raised by the Yorkeses.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: Has brown hair in the comics, but black hair in the show, reflecting her Race Lift. Her eyes also glow gold instead of reddish-purple when her powers are in use.
• Adaptation Name Change: Played with. Her name in the comics is Molly Hayes. Presumably, the change is to accommodate her Race Lift. Hayes is still her middle name, as revealed in "Last Waltz".
• Adaptation Personality Change: Molly's a bubbly Genki Girl in the comics; this Molly is a bit shyer and more withdrawn, though her original personality is still there.
• Adaptation Species Change: She's a mutant in the comics, but since mutants were Exiled from Continuity in the MCU, she will not be one in the show. During season 1 it's left ambiguous as to where her power comes from, and the Yorkeses speculate as to if she always had her powers (which would make her a mutant), or if it's the result of something that happened prior to the fire. It is later revealed her powers come from being exposed to rocks that her biological parents were researching, making her a mutate instead of a mutant.
• Adaptational Upbringing Change: Molly was orphaned at an early age and thus was adopted by Gert's family, whereas her comic-book counterpart had her own family. The result is a much closer bond between the two of them than existed in the comics.
• Adaptational Wimp: This version of Molly can only use her Super-Strength for a couple seconds at a time, and it's extremely tiring for her to do so. Furthermore, said super strength only allows her to pull trucks or rips walls open with great effort. While this makes her the strongest of the Runaways, it absolutely pales in comparison to Molly Hayes from the comics. In the source material, she can use her powers much more freely, and while it does drain her it's not nearly to this extent. And that super strength dwarfs this version of Molly, considering she can bench press 25+ tons with ease. For reference, this version of Molly can pull trucks if she tries really hard, while comics Molly can lift a similar-sized vehicle over her head as if it were nothing◊.
• Age Lift: A slight example. While she's introduced in the comics as a pre-teen, here she's in high school with the rest of her friends.
• The Baby of the Bunch: She's the youngest of the group, and is treated as such by the others. She actually manages to exploit this trope, as she complains that nobody takes her seriously to deflect Catherine's suspicions about what she and the other kids were up to the night they discovered PRIDE's activities; as the Wilders previously suspected her because she dropped her hairclip by the entrance to the lair.
• Bad Liar: In "Metamorphosis," she accidentally lets slip that she saw PRIDE's activities to Catherine.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: She refers to the Yorkeses as "Dale" and "Stacey," because even after living with them for years she doesn't consider them her real parents.
• Cast from Hit Points: Using her powers for more than a couple of seconds at a time is extremely draining, to the point that she passes out in an alley in "Fifteen" after tearing out part of a wall in an attempt to escape Mrs. Wilder.
• Cute Bruiser: Her super-strength is contrasted by her bubbly personality and young age.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Inverted. The group has all grown apart since Amy's death, and while most of them are antagonistic towards each other, everybody still seems to like Molly. When the group is lashing out at each other in the pilot, Chase gets to Molly and admits that he actually does not have anything against her.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her eyes glow gold when using her powers, as can be seen in the picture. Played with in the sense that she's actually a very nice person and hasn't yet made any attempt to use her strength to hurt people.
• Happily Adopted: She's been with the Yorkeses since her parents died, but doesn't show much angst over it.
• Menstrual Menace: Played with. The manifestation of her super-strength appears very much like a young girl's first period, and other characters assume it to be that.
• Nice Girl: The sweetest and most optimistic of the kids, making her very well-liked by the older ones.
• Not Now, Kiddo: The other kids dismiss her claims of being "super strong" until Molly lifts an SUV in "Kingdom." They're understandably impressed afterwards.
• The Pollyanna: Even with her adoptive parents' secrets looming over her, Molly is always friendly, upbeat, and optimistic. Lampshaded in "Refraction".
  Molly: Maybe my true superpower is my positive attitude.
• Race Lift: Is portrayed by Latina actress Allegra Acosta, and has an Adaptation Name Change to "Hernandez".
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Allegra Acosta can pass for older, but she was fourteen years old at the time of the series' release; Molly's Age Lift is actually rather slight.
• Related in the Adaptation: In the show, Molly is Gert's adopted sister.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Molly is a well-liked optimist, while Gert is an unpopular pessimist.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Her irises glow gold whenever her powers come to light.
• Super-Strength: A power she shares with her comic counterpart. She's still developing her abilities, but proves to be strong enough to crush metal with only pressure from her fingers, break down a locked door the rest of the group combined couldn't open, and even rip a concrete window block clean out of a wall.
• Tragic Keepsake: She greatly treasures a cat hair clip that her mother gave her, and literally rips her room apart when it goes missing.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Downplayed, but the initial sign of her powers manifesting are painful cramps that everybody else assumes to be her first period. They continue to resurface as her strength develops.
  • More seriously invoked when it's revealed that an early onset of her powers manifested during the fire that killed her parents, protecting her from the blaze.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She calls out Nico for never having trusted Topher and being responsible for his possible death. She even compares her to her mother.

Old Lace

Old Lace

Stacey Yorkes: We created it for your protection. For our protection.

Species: Deinonychus

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: N/A

Appearances: Runaways

"We have a connection. You're the Costello to my Abbott. The Harpo to my Groucho. The Old Lace to my Arsenic."

— Gertrude "Gert" Yorkes

A genetically engineered Deinonychus created by the Yorkeses to protect their children. She winds up becoming Gert's "emotional support dinosaur" and partner in crime.

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• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: In the comics, her name went with Gert's codename "Arsenic". In "Hostile," Gert refers to her as "the Old Lace" to her "Arsenic" after seeing an advertisement for a local showing of their namesake play; it eventually sticks for the former.
• Badass Adorable: She's a terrifying raptor monster, but her interactions with Gert and Molly are surprisingly endearing.
• Bond Creatures: With Gert, which Dale and Stacey are quite surprised by. This gets turned against them when a Gibborm-possessed Stacey poisons Old Lace and what she experiences gets passed along.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Played straight until "Hostile", when Gert starts formally referring to her as Old Lace, much to the initial confusion of their friends.
• Empathy Pet: Like the emotionally guarded Gert, Old Lace is aloof bordering on hostile around the other teens. Around Gert's sister Molly on the other hand, the dinosaur is sweeter than a kitten. Their psychic bond is so strong that when Old Lace is poisoned, Gert also suffers the symptoms.
• Fluffy the Terrible: She's a vicious dinosaur named after a classic Hollywood film.
• Kids Love Dinosaurs: Gert and Molly are understandably thrilled to have one in their basement, once she's under control.
• Music Soothes the Savage Beast: It's implied that she bonded with Gert after hearing her sing a lullaby.
• Raptor Attack: Although she's certainly a more realistic depiction of Deinonychus than Jurassic Park's "Velociraptor", Deinonychus was much more feathered than depicted here, and likely had full, hawk-like wings on its arms, as well as having bird-like eyes.

Associates

Topher

Topher

Species: Enhanced human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Jan Luis Castellanos

Appearances: Runaways

A crafty runaway who schools the kids on their street game.

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• Adaptational Species Change: Topher in the comics is a vampire. Because vampires haven't yet been introduced in the MCU, here he's an enhanced human with the same powers as Molly.
• Addled Addict: Contrary to his claims, Topher is extremely addicted to the alien rocks, to the point where he murders a guard on the dig site over it.
• The Ageless: Turns out that the night that Molly's parents died, Topher was there on guard duty, and the alien rocks he found after the explosion apparently halted his aging process.
• Composite Character: This version of Topher seems to combine him with Victor Mancha. His role as a street smart older kid who joins the team, turns on them, and is accidentally killed comes from the former. His Latino heritage is taken from the latter.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Almost to the point of it being a Verbal Tic.
• In Name Only: He has practically nothing in common with the comics version of Topher, outside of his name.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When Topher hurls a big container at the Runaways, Chase blasts it away with his Fistigons and it nearly lands on the car with Gert inside. Topher is horrified at the sight and pushes the car away, getting squashed by the container himself in the process.
• Race Lift: His comic counterpart is white, but this version is Latino.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Molly points out that they look alike.
• Ship Tease: With Molly.
• Unreliable Expositor: Topher's version of why his family kicked him out is later shown to be wrong, as they kicked him out after he accidentally put his father in a wheelchair.

Xavin

Xavin

Species: Xartan

Citizenship: None

Portrayed By: Clarissa Thibeaux

Appearances: Runaways

An alien from the planet Xartan with connections to Karolina.

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• Adaptational Species Change: Xavin is a Skrull in the comics, but this version of the character is from a more obscure race in the comics, the Xartan.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Xavin mentions previously not having a mouth or even being familiar with the concept of eating, so it's implied she took a human form after arriving on Earth. Invoked verbatim when she takes Karolina's form hoping Leslie will be comfortable with her.
• Gender Flip: Sorta. Xavin in the comics was a gender bender who would switch between male and female forms, but is presented as female here, though there's some implication that Xavin's people have a more complicated view of gender than humans.
• Last Episode, New Character: Sort of. While Xavin is referenced a bit earlier in season 2 and appears sporadically in the background in the last few episodes, it isn't until the season 2 finale that they are properly introduced and join up with the rest of the kids.
• Time Abyss: Is millions of years old.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Though it's unclear if shapeshifting is a biological feature of the Xartan, or just unique to Xavin.

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