Marvel's Runaways - Rewind

This episode is neat. It's the first episode again but from the parents' perspective. We don't find out the full backstory or anything, just get more details about that day. I like it.

I don't know what the hell is going on with his tie.

First up we've got the jock's parents. His mum is clearly having an affair (or something is going on that looks like an affair but will turn out to be something else - it could go either way). His dad (Spike from Buffy) is basically Reed Richards - that is, a super-science genius and absolute arsehole. He's doing some kind of experiment with the magic box they use for their sacrifices, and it's not working right. But neither of them seem too worried about that.

I have no idea what the fuck is up with this dude's face, but it is not right.

Then we've got the fake cult family. Apparently the dad is an actor, but he hasn't been getting any work since he got involved with the fake cult. And he's not part of the real cult either, so he's kind of got nothing to do with his time, since his wife's keeping all the dodgy shit secret from him. His agent shows up to basically tell him to give up on being an actor because everyone thinks his wife's cult is weird and creepy. So he starts snooping around trying to figure out what his wife's up to.

She does not have time for his bullshit today.

Blerd's dad is being menaced by his former criminal associates, and he thinks they want money so he goes to threaten them to back off. They do, but it turns out they weren't expecting to get paid anyway, they just wanted to hack his phone. So they're obviously going to start poking around in the real cult's business soon too.

This is what hacking looks like.

There's a lot of everyone reassuring each other and themselves that what they're doing (child sacrifice) is OK, but obviously they're getting a bit uncomfortable with it - even though they've supposedly been doing it for years by this point. But the sacrifice goes ahead anyway, only the box still isn't working right and the girl doesn't disappear like she's supposed to. But only Spike from Buffy knows that, everyone else thinks it went as planned. We have no idea at this point what he did with the girl or what the consequences of the sacrifice not working will be. I think maybe it's meant to keep the old man alive?

I think maybe he's the fake cult leader's father?

At this point it seems like we're supposed to be quite invested in the parents as well as the kids, because they wouldn't take this time to establish them and their internal conflicts - or the people other than the kids trying to find out what they're up to - if they were purely villains. It's also looking like the titular runaways will not, in fact, be running away any time soon. I'm still enjoying this show and looking forward to seeing where it goes.

But if he's her father, why does the Asian family have the magic staff?

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