Runaways Showrunners Indicate Marvel Restructuring Lead to Series Cancellation

While fans now get to enjoy the third season of Marvel’s Runaways after its premiere on Hulu, they will have to make peace with the fact that this is the end of an era as the teen superhero series is now over. It has been billed as the final season, but Runaways has essentially been cancelled after the Marvel Television takeover by movie executive and Marvel Cinematic Universe mastermind Kevin Feige. Runaways showrunners Stephanie Savage and Joshua Schwartz indicated that they had plans for more seasons, but the show’s cancellation is likely the result of corporate shuffling as Feige takes over all creative divisions of Marvel.

Schwartz and Savage spoke with TheWrap about the decision to end the series, saying it that it was out of their hands.

“I think it was just a realistic assessment of when it felt like the show might be wrapping up,” Schwartz explained. “Sometimes, these things are out of your control.”

He added, “A lot of times when you’re making a television series, continuing is not always necessarily up to you. You can ascribe whatever factor you’d like to that. We just wanted to make sure that, should it play out that way, we were prepared to have an ending that would be very satisfying.”

The decision shouldn’t come as a surprise as Marvel Television’s current output has been dwindling ever since the announcement of Disney+ years ago. There was a deal in place with Netflix but all six of those series were cancelled, even after critically acclaimed seasons of Daredevil and The Punisher.

Cloak & Dagger was cancelled at Freeform, the pilot for New Warriors never found a home, Runaways ended after Season 3, Ghost Rider was cancelled before production could begin, and Agents of SHIELD is getting ready to air its final season in 2020.

“It’s definitely the case that in this new world of streaming, what used to be a five-season, 22-episode arc, is much more often a, 10-episode a season, three-season arc. That just seems to be more and more the norm,” Savage explained.

Marvel Studios seems to clearing the decks for Marvel Television as they absorb their personnel under the filmmaking banner. As Marvel scales up to create multiple movies per year as well as numerous shows for the Disney+ streaming service, they’ll need more resources to meet these demands.

The final season of Runaways is now streaming on Hulu.