The cast of Marvel’s Runaways gives us 5 reasons to binge the show

With Season 2 of Marvel’s Runaways now streaming first and only on Showmax in South Africa, we asked the show’s cast why we should watch. Here are their five best answers:

1. Every teenager thinks their parents are evil, but these superheroes’ parents really are

Runaways is the story of six diverse teenagers who can barely stand each other anymore but who must reunite against a common foe – their parents.

James Marsters, who plays Victor Stein, says, “It takes this inevitable tragedy – which is that you give up everything for your kids and then your kids turn around and go, ‘You’re not so great’ – and turns it up to 11. I was joking with Gregg Sulkin, who plays my son. We were shooting season one. He was like, ‘It’s about to come out; I hope people like it.’ And I‘m like, ’Well, the theme is kids who think their parents are supervillains, which is basically every teenager on earth, so it’s probably going to be pretty popular.’”

2. The teenagers have the superpowers this time

According to Rotten Tomatoes, Runaways offers “the youngest team of superheroes on Marvel’s TV slate yet.”

As Virginia Gardner, who plays Karolina Dean, says, “A lot of kids don’t have superheroes they can relate to because it’s usually the adults who have the powers. So a different thing about this show is that it’s normal teenagers dealing with normal teenager things but then they have superpowers on top of it. I know if I read this as a teenager, I would have been really excited by it – to have the teens get to be bad-asses and have superpowers and be the ones questioning authority.”

3. It’s a diverse cast anyone can relate to

Ariela Barer, who plays Gert Yorkes, says, “There are characters of diverse ethnicity and orientation and personality. No one is alienated when they watch this; anyone can watch this and connect to whoever they want to… The beauty in the amount of representation we have is that no one has to be the perfect representation of each type of person they are – because we have it in abundance, we’re allowed to explore the nuance within it.”

4. Spoiler alert: Season 1 featured Marvel’s first on-screen gay superhero kiss

Pride called Karolina kissing Nico “Marvel’s first on-screen gay superhero kiss… That’s right. Two queer superhero women shared a kiss. On screen. And we could hardly contain our excitement… We need more queer superhero women in our lives.”

As Virginia says, “The response has been so great. I’ve had so many people come up to me and say they wish they had characters like this when they were in high school and confused.”

5. The girls save the guys…

According to Rotten Tomatoes, Runaways is “the first predominantly female superhero team on TV or film.”

As Virginia says, “It’s pretty cool to be part of a superhero troupe that is predominantly female – especially because in our show it’s the females who are the ones who actually have the powers. So it’s a very empowering thing to be part of. We get to save the guys a lot of the time, which is cool too. For our generation of girls, growing up with these kinds of role models, it’s a really strong image to have.”

If the cast didn’t convince you, we should add that Runaways was nominated for a Saturn Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Film as Best New Media Superhero Series and currently has an 85% critics rating and a 93% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.