Riverdale Meets X-Men In Hulu's Underrated 3-Season Fantasy Series

Published Aug 27, 2026, 1:30 PM EDT Arielle Port started as a TV producer, developing content for Netflix (Firefly Lane, Brazen) and Hallmark (The Santa Stakeout, A Christmas Treasure) before transitioning into entertainment journalism. Her love of story went from interest to lifelong passion while at The University of Pennsylvania, where she fell in with a student-run web series, Classless TV, and it was a gateway drug. Arielle Port has been a Writer for Screen Rant since August 2024. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and more importantly, her cat, Boseman. Riverdale was an absolute phenomenon for The CW. The TV show took a familiar comic book story, stripped away its wholesome 1950s image, and rebuilt it into a glossy, dark teen mystery. The Riverdale characters worked because each one was an archetype with a twist: Betty is the perfect girl next door, until she cracks into Dark Betty. Veronica is the spoiled, rich mean girl, but she has one of the show’s strongest moral compasses. Riverdale got more absurd as the series went on, going from a grounded murder mystery to supernatural chaos and alternate universes. When Riverdale characters got powers that augmented their nature, Veronica’s sexuality became literally deadly, while Jughead, who had always been the outsider observer, gained the ability to read people’s thoughts. Season 6 suddenly turned Riverdale into the X-Men. The combination of “Riverdale meets X-Men” is basically the premise of Hulu’s underrated superhero show, Marvel’s Runaways. Based on the Marvel comics, Runaways follows six very different teens — a nerd, a goth, the popular girl, a jock, a social justice warrior, and a younger sister — who discover their parents are secretly supervillains. Forced to flee together, the teens have to figure out who they are while learning to control their powers and stop their parents. Although Runaways was streaming at the same time as Netflix’s Marvel TV shows, including Daredevil and Jessica Jones, it didn’t get nearly the same amount of attention. Runaways Is The X-Men Students Without Professor X Image via MovieStillsD The Fox X-Men movies have largely focused on the older generation of mutants and the teachers responsible for guiding them. However, with Marvel’s recent D23 announcement revealing its new younger X-Men cast, the next era could put more emphasis on the students themselves. That makes Runaways feel particularly relevant, because the Hulu series captures one of the most compelling aspects of the X-Men: what it feels like to suddenly become different. The X-Men have long been a brilliant metaphor for otherness, including queerness, race, and religion, but mutant powers also work as an allegory for puberty, with bodies changing seemingly overnight. Marvel’s Runaways Characters & Powers Character Archetype Ability Parents Alex Wilder Nerd Genius-level hacker Geoffrey & Catherine Wilder (criminal masterminds) Nico Minoru Goth Magic (Staff of One) Tina & Robert Minoru (sorcerers) Karolina Dean Girl next door Alien powers (flight, energy blasts) Leslie Dean (leader of the Church of Gibborim) Chase Stein Jock Engineering genius, uses Fistigons Victor & Janet Stein (scientists) Gert Yorkes Social justice warrior Psychic bond with pet dinosaur Dale & Stacy Yorkes (scientists) Molly Hernandez Little sister Strength Gene & Alice Hernandez (biological); Dale & Stacey Yorkes (adoptive) Runaways gets at that idea immediately. In the pilot, young Molly thinks she’s getting her first period, only to discover that her body is changing because she has developed superhuman strength. The difference is that the X-Men have Charles Xavier. He can teach young mutants to understand their abilities, train them, and provide a safe place to belong. The Runaways have no Professor X. They have their parents, who are members of a mysterious supervillain organization called the Pride. While mutants can gather at Xavier’s school, the title Runaways says it all: these teenagers are on the run, trying to navigate superpowers, genetic revelations, and new technologies. Marvel’s Runaways Is The Best Superhero Show No One Watched Image via MovieStillsDB Marvel’s Runaways works because it puts characters and relationships ahead of superhero spectacle, giving its teenage ensemble believable conflicts, complicated family dynamics, and powers. It’s a coming-of-age story that happens to involve superheroes, balancing genuinely emotional family drama, teen romance, a supernatural mystery, and the wonderfully weird mythology of Marvel Runaways comics. At any given moment, the show can go from a heartbreaking conversation to a romantic complication to a supernatural revelation, and then suddenly there’s a dinosaur. Somehow, it all works. That character focus is especially important because part of what makes the X-Men so enduring is the messy relationships between its heroes, and Runaways has that in spades. The friends are initially torn apart by the death of one of their own, only to reunite after discovering that their parents are secretly supervillains and going on the run together. Marvel's Runaways is streaming for free on Tubi. Along the way, they deal with romance, broken hearts, betrayal, complicated family relationships, and queer self-discovery. The powers of the leads in Runaways are important, but the show is ultimately about who these teenagers become when they realize the adults they trusted have failed them. Why Runaways Wasn’t As Big For Hulu As Daredevil Was For Netflix Image via MovieStillsDB Marvel’s Runaways arrived in 2017, years before Marvel had a streamlined TV division. While Marvel already had a successful TV presence with shows like Daredevil, Runaways was part of a fragmented Marvel Television landscape. It also launched on Hulu, which had a much smaller, U.S.-only audience than Netflix, where Marvel series were available internationally. Superhero television had become closely associated with darker, more adult programming, making a show like Daredevil — a violent crime drama centered on a recognizable Marvel hero — relatively easy to position. Runaways was much harder to sell: it was a superhero series, but also a teen drama, family mystery, coming-of-age story, and supernatural adventure. Its slower, character-driven approach rewarded viewers willing to stick around, but it wasn't necessarily the kind of show that could hook audiences with a quick superhero spectacle. Runaways ultimately ended after season 3, its timing ultimately preventing it from becoming the breakout hit its quality deserved. Release Date 2017 - 2019-00-00 Network Hulu Showrunner Josh Schwartz Marvel's Runaways is a Hulu Original Superhero television series created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. Starring Rhenzy Feliz, Virginia Gardner, Ariela Barer, and Lyrica Okano. The story revolves around a group of teenagers who have criminal parents that join forces to create a villainous group called The Pride. To stop their parents, the teens create their own rag-tag group of heroes.