The time for planning is over as Jonah prepares to launch his ship and the Runaways and the Pride Parents set their own respective plans in motion. Can Jonah’s assurances that the launch will be harmless be trusted? And will anyone be able to stop him if not?

At the tail end of last episode, revelations were flying thick and fast – Karolina’s confession to Nico that she’d been sneaking off to spend time with Jonah, and that Jonah had been the one responsible for Amy’s death, was not the sort of thing one expected the Runaways’ resident wiccan to take lying down.

And nor does she – once again we have a group meeting of the kids where people get understandably angry, but as ever what’s interesting is how rapidly that dynamic can shift. There are no absolutes in Runaways, always shades of grey, and here it’s no different.

Meanwhile the PRIDE parents are fast learning that it’s pretty hard to plot secretly against the alien genius you’ve been working with all these years. It’s interesting watching the interplay between Jonah and the parents – two sides who are now openly hostile to one another but who also, to a certain extent, are reliant upon one another. Jonah is in a tricky position wherein he clearly despises the parents but can’t quite afford to piss them off completely until he’s taken off in his ship, and the parents want to stop Jonah but also aren’t quite ready to let go of the possibilities his existence (and leaving) present them with.

As backdrop to this drama, you have the preparations of the church faithful, believing that they’re getting ready for some grand ascension. Frank is involved in that, playing his own long game, but there’s a particular fly in that ointment which one suspects will come back to haunt him and the rest of PRIDE later on.

Mostly it feels like an episode of contrasts – for once the kids seem to be even more fractured and prone to changes in mood between them than the parents, and as one character states, it starts to feel like the line between good and bad is getting real blurry. There’s also quite a few surprises, including various alliances and some extreme displays of power.

It all rattles along breathlessly to a crescendo ending which feels surprising because of precisely how it goes down. Here we are, roughly halfway through the series, and I for one have no idea where the show goes from here.

Verdict: Pacy, intense and packing more surprises, twists and changes of emotional beat per minute than some shows manage in a series. 9/10

Greg D. Smith