'Marvel's Runaways' Season 3: Nico Minoru embraces her witchcraft fully and comes closer to her comic book character
Most superheroes, be it Marvel or DC, have unique powers and bizarre origin stories in the comics, which are usually retconned later. Marvel's Nico Minoru is a fascinating example.
Nico's (Lyrica Okano) personality and powers in 'The Runaways' comics has an unearthly beauty and eccentricity about it. When she bleeds, a powerful staff called the Staff Of One, emerges from her chest, and she can bend magic. Born into a family of dark wizards, Nico runs away after learning that she has inherited her parents' magic. After the Runaways suffer a betrayal in the first volume of the comic book series, Nico unwillingly becomes the leader of the group, emerging as one of the few Japanese-American superheroine team leaders. She is a sorceress like her parents and grandparents before her and can cast powerful spells.
In the comics, Nico's Staff Of One can respond to verbal commands, but only once. If she tries to cast the same spell twice, the results could be disastrous. After working with the Witchbreaker, Nico learns to cast spells without the Staff and enhances her own abilities. After her resurrection in Murderworld, she receives a magical arm replacement that can channel supernatural energies, which are more powerful than the Staff.
However, in the series, the Staff Of One is shown as advanced technology rather than magic, with the need for blood to activate it being reinterpreted as the Staff being bonded to the DNA of Nico's mother Tina (Brittany Ishibashi), which is why only she and Nico can use it. While the Staff is still able to cast the spell only once, Nico has tried out different variations of this rule by casting spells with different command codes, such as using the command 'Hotwire' to get it working again.
However, all this is changed around in the third season of 'Marvel's Runaways'. Nico embraces her witchcraft and is a confirmed witch by the second half of the season as magic becomes a confirmed element on the show. Alien arcs wrap up as dark sorceress Morgan Le Fay takes the stage and tries to manipulate Nico with magic temptations. In short, she's like a fairy godmother from hell. Instructed by Morgan, Nico 'lets it all out', and releases Morgan from the Dark Dimension. After much battle that involves Gert dying (or does she?), Morgan is sent back to where she belongs.
Nico's character in the third season is more like her comic book counterpart, and the writers seemed to have given her a hard reset and she is no longer someone with an alien staff, but a proper witch.
'Marvel's Runaways' is now streaming on Hulu.