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Runaways Season 1: Comparing The Teens In The Comics And The Show

Entertainment Weekly has done some compare and contrast work for Runaways. We're able to look at the similarities and differences from the various incarnations of the teenagers and get our first look at Old Lace.

Show and comic spoilers ahead

Alex Wilder (Rhenzy Feliz): The self-proclaimed nerd of the crew, who has no powers but his intellect, has long hoped to reunite with his childhood friends. "Alex is a smart kid," Feliz says. "He's a bit of a loner, a little bit of a nerd, but he's very calculated. In terms of how similar he is [to the comics], I'd say pretty similar. He naturally takes the lead in some instances, but he has no powers, so he doesn't jump into the battles, but he's brave and he's strong and he knows what's right, he knows what's wrong, and he's going to do whatever he has to do in order to create justice."

Nico Minoru (Lyrica Okano): Tough, intelligent, and independent, Nico is very similar to her comic book counterpart, down to being able to power the magical Staff of One. "We first meet her as this budding Wiccan that uses her goth appearance to sort of isolate herself from her peers and her family," Okano says. "Then throughout the course of the season, she discovers that her mom has the Staff of One, which she figures out that she has a power to activate as well, and the Staff of One basically is able to produce spells that are element-based, like water, wind, fire, and earth."

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Karolina Dean (Virginia Gardner): Though saddled with high expectations and many responsibilities from her famous parents, who run the Scientology-esque Church of Gibborim, Karolina is eager to spread her wings — which she may actually be able to do once she discovers she can glow with rainbow-colored light. "When we meet Karolina, she's in a place where she's not living her truth," Gardner says. "She's just unhappy, and she's pretending to be this perfect church girl with the perfect family, and then she realizes that that's not making her happy, and that's not who she actually is, and that she has desires that kind of outreach what she's been told to act like her whole life."

Chase Stein (Gregg Sulkin): The heartthrob and star athlete at his local high school, Chase is often assumed to be just a jock, but has a knack for engineering — which will eventually come in handy using his father's weaponized gauntlets, called fistigons. In the comics, however, he's not very bright. "My character is probably the most different from the comics," Sulkin says. "He's just a bit more layered, he's more complex. They've taken a character that was written years ago and made him a little bit more relevant and current. He has untapped brilliance in engineering, and I think that's an interesting storyline, because you see his similarities to his dad, but at the same time he also comes from a family that he doesn't particularly feel like he belongs to or, in fact, loves."

Molly Hernandez (Allegra Acosta): Known as Molly Hayes in the comics, the character yearns to find her place in the world, made all the more difficult when her version of going through puberty includes gaining super strength. "She's a 14-year-old girl, who's a ball of energy and she's so enthusiastic," Acosta says. "She's intelligent, she's very observant, and she's kind of like the detective. Even though she's still young and innocent, she's very mature for her age and very responsible and very noble." (Notably absent from the comics are Molly's parents — there's a very good reason why she's been adopted by the Yorkes family that fans will discover in season 1.)

Gert Yorkes (Ariela Barer): The purple-haired, contemporary riot grrrl is known to hide her true feelings by going all in on taking social justice stands. But she'll be shocked to discover the source of her power — which will be revealed in the next slide! "Gert is this totally badass feminist teen who is at that age, or at least the age I was at, when I first learned about all the injustices in the world," Barer says. "And just like me, she kind of took it personally and is this very passionate girl filled with contradictions and hormones, as many teenage girls are, which makes for a very interesting real character, and that's what I love so much about playing her."

Old Lace: Hold on to your butts and meet Runaways' very own clever girl — the genetically engineered ­velociraptor Old Lace. The scaly sidekick shares an empathic and telepathic link with Gert and acts as both an imposing bodyguard and 
a lovable pet. 
"It was never an if, it wasn't even when, it was 
 how," says Schwartz of bringing the comic book fan-fave creature to life. The how was achieved using CGI and a life­like animatronic puppet created by Legacy Effects, the dino geniuses behind Jurassic Park. For her part, Barer thanks Game of Thrones for breaking ground in this department for TV. "Daenerys really paved the way for us women with reptiles," 
 the actress jokes. 
 "I am the Daenerys of our show."

There are all of the kids. There are some differences between the comics and the show but, overall, it looks like they stuck pretty close to the source material for the kids.

Summary: After discovering their parents are super-villains in disguise, a group of teenagers band together to run away from their homes in order to atone for their parents' actions and to discover the secrets of their origins.

Marvel's Runaways, created by Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz, stars Gregg Sulkin, Ariela Barer, Lyrica Okano, Allegra Acosta, Virginia Gardner, and Rhenzy Feliz. It is streaming to Hulu now.

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