While “Thor: Ragnarok” looks to be another Marvel Cinematic Universe home-run, the company continues to have mixed successes on the TV front. “Agents Of SHIELD” is apparently still on the air, and the Marvel Netflix series continue to stack up, but the former never became a real hit, and the latter have suffered from increasingly diminishing returns culminating with this summer’s “The Defenders.” And that’s without mentioning “Inhumans,” a critical and ratings disaster of rare levels.
Could the one that turns things around come from an unlikely source? The next year or so will see the debut of three shows on fringier networks that all seem like they could be a lot more fun than most of these dour shows to date. “Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger,” from “Beyond The Lights” director Gina Prince-Bythewood, and the more comedic-minded “Marvel’s New Warriors” will both air on Freeform in 2018, but first comes Hulu’s big entry into the genre game with “Marvel’s Runaways.”
READ MORE: ‘Future Man’ Trailer: Josh Hutcherson Sets Out To Save Humanity In New Hulu Show
Once in development as a movie post-“Iron Man,” before the connectivity of the MCU saw it scrapped, it’s an adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s excellent comic (which had later arcs written by Joss Whedon) about a group of ordinary L.A. teens who discover that their parents are really supervillains, and go on the lam from them.
The adaptation comes from Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who are teen show royalty thanks to “The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl,” and while the second trailer for the show does suggest a certain Freeform cheapness to it, it does look like a pretty faithful adaptation, right down to fan-favorite character Old Lace, glimpsed for the first time here.
Newcomers Rhenzy Feliz, Lyrica Okano, Virginia Gardner, Ariela Barer, Gregg Sulkin and Allegra Acosta play the leads, a few genre staples including James Marsters and Kip Pardue play their parents, and, curiously, “The Kid Stays In The Picture” and “Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck” director Brett Morgen is at the helm. “Marvel’s Runaways” rolls on out on Hulu from November 21st, and you can watch the trailer below.
