∇
troperville

This is a "Wild Mass Guess" entry, where we pull out all the sanity stops on theorizing. The regular entry on this topic is elsewhere. Please see this programme note.

Runaways

Xavin will be the Runaway to both die and come back in issue #11.

When we last saw him, she was being taken to be punished by the Majesdanians pretendng to be Karolina. He will use her shapeshifting powers to fake his death at the hands of the Majesdanian interigator and sneak back to Earth and rejoin the team thereby dying and living again.

Jossed by Old Lace being the one who died and the solicited cover for #14 having Gert on it.
- Actually despite Gert being on the cover we only saw a girl who looked like Gert and may or may not have been her in the issue. Kind of like Terra in the last episode of Teen Titans; hopefully we'll get a real ending, though.

The Evil League of Evil is a cover for The Pride.

Captain Hammer is one of their agents disposing of superpowered competition in the guise of a hero. Hammer stopped picking on Billy, not because he was defeated, but because he was accepted into the League. Besides, LA isn't a hot spot for super activities in most universes; and they both had Joss Whedon writing about them for a while.

So...if Joss had stayed on longer, we would've gotten a showdown with Bad Horse? Joss... we're sorry for doubting you, please come back...
- After Terry Moore, doesn't everyone want Joss back?

The Gibborim are the Marvel Universe's Haruhi Suzumiya, and The Pride was the SOS Brigade.

The Gibborim are Gods who, in an attempt to make the world a better place, created a secret society consisting of Time Travelers, Aliens, ESPers/Telepathic Mutants, Mad Scientists, and Badass Normals. This sounds like something Haruhi would do out of boredom. The Gibborim, however, are consciously aware of their powers; but they were sealed away by their previous espers when they went A God Am I and became evil.

Klara gets her power from mythology.

We have yet to be told where Klara gets her power from. Nico recently said even they aren't sure. Now look at the lineup, past and present, of the team: Alex (Badass Normal), Nico (magic), Karolina and Xavin (alien), Molly (mutant), Victor (robot), Gert/Old Lace (Time Travel/Genetic Engineering and Chase (technology). Here we have every power origin in the Marvel Universe except for one: the gods. None of the characters have ties to ancient mythology. So, Klara is daughter of a god or goddess, a goddess herself with amnesia, or blessed by a goddess. Since she was born around the Industrial Revolution, she may be Gaia's Champion.

The Pride had mythology in the form of the Gibborim so this wouldn't seem all that far fetched.

Old Lace and Gert have become the same entity.

The Psychic and genetic link between Old Lace and Gert somehow triggered when a plane hit Old Lace, giving Old Lace regeneration abilities, as well as giving Old Lace the ability to shapeshift into a semi-clone of Gert. Sort of like what happened to Doug Ramsey and Warlock in New Mutants.

The Gert look-alike seen recently is a clone/alternate dimension incarnation of the original (dead) Gertrude

When the Runaways ran into the past versions of the Yorkes, Nico enchanted them to always remember what would happen to their daughter, but leave them powerless to tell anyone about it. It's possible that they found some sort of loophole around the spell and were able to rescue or create a "back-up" to go on instead. Somehow, this second version doesn't have the original's memories and thus was unable to recognize Chase.

Or there was a modification that meant she would never recognize Chase, so her ties to him wouldn't get her killed again.

Molly can tap into the same power source as Squirrel Girl

Molly has one-shoted both Wolverine and Punisher, mostly because it is awesome and hilarious to see a 12-year-old girl gutpunching The Punisher. Molly gets more power by fighting in funny matchups.

I still wanna see someone sic Molly on Rulk. If your theory holds up, he wouldn't stand a chance.
So who wins a battle between Molly and Squirrel Girl?
- It would Go like this. Squirrel Girl would ask if she could wear Molly's hat. Then they team up without having a fight. That would be a good thing, as they would probably destroy the earth if they fought.

The Gert look-alike is Gert's Identical Twin

When the Yorkes got pregnant, they realized that it was twin girls. Knowing that only one would be able to survive when the Gibborim destroyed the world, they kept the second child a secret and abandoned it when it was born. They also destroyed all pages of the abstract detailing this. The twin has a latent psychic link to Old Lace. Speaking of which...

Old Lace is Not Quite Dead

It took a while, but Old Lace sensed the mind of the Gert look-alike. She had to go into suspended animation in order to stabilize that link and sever the one with Chase. She then ran away while nobody was looking to find the look-alike.

Not-Gert is a result of unknown interference from the Hayes parents

Nico enchanted the Yorkes to know exactly what would happen to Gert, but not to be able to do anything about it. The Hayes's? Are telepaths. So the Yorkes couldn't do something, but the Hayes's, once they "read" what had happened, just might...
- Highly unlikely, seeing as all of The Pride was pretty selfish unless it had something to do with their kids (or unless you're, you know, Karolina's mom).
- In a variant though, it could be that the Hayes read the memory and that somehow unlocked the spell or weakened it, allowing the Yorkes to act.

Xavin will be taken prisoner when the Majesdaneans realize she's not the real Karolina while other Majesdaneans will return to Earth for the real Karolina.

Perhaps the Runaways will steal their ship and try to bust Xavin out of prison.

The Staff of One only eats the ones who touch it if Nico doesn't want them to touch it.

The only people who touched the Staff before Mother were either friends of Nico or people that Nico did not want to die (Alex).
- The key words are "Things have changed". It is because she became more powerful after the torture in the XIX century, as it was already mentioned at that story arc. She did not want Alex to have the Staff, but neither wanted to kill him... and it's the same thing with this other guy: he was a villain, but he hadn't done anything so serious or personal to make her want to kill him, rather than just defeat him.

The Gert lookalike who got Chase hit by a car

did so deliberately.

The Staff of One can be reused

Reload. Reset. Refresh. Any of these spell could be used to allow the caster to cast spells as many times as they want.

Xavin will fake his death at the hands of the Majesdaneans

We've seen that Xavin can survive a good many attacks that would be fatal to someone with human biology, particularly a snapped neck and a gunshot wound. It's possible that while impersonating Karolina, he will make no attempt to defend himself and be given some sort of death sentence that he can secretly survive with his shapeshifting biology. When his "body" is abandoned, he will then sneak back to Earth. If the plan does work, it would ensure that Karolina is safe for good, since she'd be presumed dead by the Majesdaneans.
- True but Majesdaneans, having fought Skrulls for years, would know how to kill one.
  - Not if they don't know it's not Karolina...
  - Probably doesn't matter, what kills them can probably kill a Skrull.

Chace is an alternate reality version of John Bender

Both are abused and are more street smart the book smart.

Molly can see the future.

In addition to the time where she predicted exactly how Chase survived having a missile shot at him, later in the storyline, when Chase leaves in the time machine, Molly says that he will be back, "probably with some cool weapons or something." Sure enough, next time we see him he has his Fistigons back.

Molly's psychic powers can connect with the psychic connection between Chase and Old Lace.

Same incidents as above, noting that both times involved Chase. Given that it is theorized that she has psychic powers like both of her parents, and we know that there is a psychic connection between Chase and Old Lace, one way to explain this is that she is unintentionally using her powers to 'wiretap' that connection to know the things that Chase does.

Gert is a Time Lord.

Her parents are time travelers. The steampunk time machine was actually a TARDIS, making her parents renegade Time Lords. Also, there needs to be at least one DW-related WMG on every page.

The Runaways are currently not in LA

Probably left earth to look for Xavin. The proof is the fact that someone has finally filled the void the Pride left and calling himself "The Kingpin of LA" (Moon Knight book). And Daken has also moved to LA to expand his criminal empire(Also coming into conflict with the "Kingpin of LA" as well).
Jossed The Runaways will show up in Daken's book and they'll have a guest appearance in Avengers Academy(Who are also now in LA). There are multiple books in LA now actually.

Fake-Gert is actually from an alternate reality.

Where she has a different name and Chase wasn't a part of the Runaways. It would explain why she didn't respond to the name "Gert" and why there was a dinosaur in the alley behind her before Chase was hit. It's possible that in the alternate reality her parents or Chase's parents didn't join the Pride and she travels between realities instead of time to differentiate herself from her parents.

Runaways is not part of the Marvel Universe.

Standard Marvel canon has it established that time travel does not change the future but instead creates a divergent timeline where those changes have been made. Runaways has changed the future at least three times via time travel (Gert coming back to warn them about Victor so that he never kills the Avengers, Mr. Wilder coming forward in time and killing Gert so she never becomes an Avenger and starting a gang war in 1908 and bringing Klara back to the present with them) this is before we even count everything the Yorkes would have been doing before the series started. Runaways takes place in a divergent universe that explains the strange connection to real world time as obossed to Comic Book Time in relation to the rest of the universe, how the Pride never came into conflict with the West Coast Avengers and how the Secret Invasion happened one year sooner (Joss Whedon's trip that took a year in real world time that should only have been about a second of comic book time) and all other descripancies with canon that aren't caused by Nico's spell casting or Xavin being a SKRULL!!!111one11!!

That would certainly explain Topher's living through that spell Dr. Strange cast that killed every other vampire in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.
- Actually, plenty of vampires survived that and the spell was eventually reversed, we've even seen Dracula several times in recent stories(Teaming up with Doom, the Curse of The Mutants story where the X-men fought Dracula's son Xarus, the current Hulk vs Dracula mini, tec.). Hell, there was a Blade book going on back then and there were vampires there too(Because, without Vampires, Blade is out of a job). So really, Topher doesn't contradict anything, since Vampires had returned, quite clearly.
And all of the stuff happening in L.A. without them doing anything about it; the Kingpin of L.A. exists in the normal Marvel Universe, but not their version.
- Jossed, though i doubt you were that serious. Molly has actually made several appearances and so has the team and The Runaways will be showing in Daken's book.

Terry Moore's run was all Nico's hallucination.

She's still being tortured by the Witchbreaker. This would explain why we never saw the Witch Breaker releasing her, which would seem like an Offscreen Moment of Awesome. The moment hasn't happened yet.