Marvel’s Runaways is looking very likely to be renewed for a third season, with Hulu’s content chief Craig Erwich praising the performance of season 2. One of two young-adult Marvel TV series, Runaways stars a group of teenagers who discover their parents really are evil - in fact, they’re actually full-on supervillains.

The show’s 13-episode second season dropped on December 21 last year, and it was pretty clear Marvel expected it to be renewed. The series ended with a cliffhanger, with the alien race known as the Gibborim possessing key members of the Pride and potentially one of the Runaways as well. What’s more, while the partnership between Marvel Television and Netflix appears to be winding down, Hulu has recently announced the launch of a whole swathe of Marvel animated series.

According to Deadline, Hulu’s content chief Craig Erwich was asked about Runaways season 3 at the Hulu panel at the Television Critics Association’s Winter Press Tour, and confirmed there will be an announcement soon. “We’re really happy with the performance of Runaways,” he explained, “both creatively and in terms of its performance, and we’ll have an announcement shortly.”

While it’s a little disappointing not to have a definite confirmation at this stage, the fact remains that a renewal was always likely in the cards. According to third-party analytics, Runaways is one of the most in-demand young-adult shows in the United States, beating the likes of The Outpost, Orphan Black, and Misfits. Strong Marvel brands are clearly real assets for Hulu in what looks set to be a year of major growth; there have been reports Disney intends to expand the streaming service to overseas territories when the Fox acquisition is complete, and Runaways would be very marketable indeed.

The real question is over how Hulu will choose to release season 3, though; season 1 followed a typical episodic pattern, with one episode dropping every week, while Hulu chose to release the second season all at once for binge-watching purposes. No doubt they’ll have monitored viewing patterns very carefully, and will choose to take whichever approach performs the best in terms of viewing figures.

Runaways fans may well get to see their heroes sooner rather than later, though, given the stars of Runaways and Cloak & Dagger have been teasing a crossover between their two young-adult Marvel TV shows. That will presumably be part of Cloak & Dagger season 2, which has recently been confirmed to premiere on Freeform on April 4. Given the Runaways’ current troubled status quo, it’ll be fascinating to see how that plays out.

Source: Deadline