Ads call this a Hulu work so I assume Americans watch it via that, Showcase is broadcasting it in Canada. I was pissed as hell about Molly Hayes > Molly Hernandez but enjoyed the comics and want to see if they try tying it into MCU or maybe The Gifted. From what I've seen of episode 1, I'm guessing the latter. Spiccing up Molly wasn't the only change they made to her character. She says her parents "died in a fire" and she was adopted by Gertrude Yorke's parents. They drive her to school and Mrs. Yorke encourages Molly to masturbate in the bathroom to alleviate period pain. I guess that explains why CTV didn't pick this up… though somehow Showcase lists this as an 8+ PG rating.
For those who read the comics, you'll know that Molly Hayes' parents ARE present as members of The Pride. They were telepathic mutants and Molly Hayes' super strength was a mutant ability. This is why upon discovering her powers she dreams of marrying Wolverine and becoming a member of the X-Men. The removal of her parents indicates to me they won't be playing up the mutant angle and will come up with some other explanation for her super-strength, and so the show can tie into the MCU. My wizardly prediction is going to be that Victor Mancha will not be in this show. With latina-Molly now filling the role of token Hispanic, it would be overkill. This also I believe is what they will appropriate as an explanation for her strength: she is a FEMBOT. Maybe instead of a cameo from Cloak+Dagger we'll be seeing cameos from Vision instead? Maybe ditching aryan-Molly was for the best… I don't know if there are any actresses who could live up to my expectations for what she ought to be. So if I'm going to get let down regardless, may as well have it be a HUGE letdown and let me focus on Nico Minoru and Karolina Dean who luckily they got a relatively attractive actresses for and kept their ethnicities intact.
Molly had more than just a race change and parental absence and period pain (I don't remember Molly having her period in the comics although I only read the first volume, did that come later?) but they're also changing her personality and discovery. For some reason they have her trying out for the dance squad and dancing to some Spanish pop music (cramps sideline her) and her period pain is how she discovers she has super-strength: crushing the metal bench in the nurse's office. She then naturally goes home and deadlifts a car. In the comics, the way her powers are discovered is the older kids (who find out about the Pride first) try to kidnap her (to rescue her from her parents) and Molly shulks out (in her PJs) trying to protect herself and protect her parents. It was quite the clusterfuck. This… just isn't as inspirational. It's like a bad channeling of Unbreakable.
Chase Stein and Gertrude Yorke are okay so far. I'm actually loving how they do Gerty. She seems slightly ethnic (which is weird because her parents seem very WASPy, I guess her dad got cucked) but that doesn't bother me because I'm pretty sure in the comics she was a Jewess and she's a fatty so we're not losing an epic beauty like we did with Molly. Gertrude is fun because they're making this RadFem stereotype ranting about the patriarchy and toxic masculinity and shit, and it's a spot-on parody that makes this show enjoyable. It's a persona which is obviously going to get abandoned as things get serious, a mask just like Chase's bully-jock, Karolina's smiles, or Nico's makeup, The show has enough elements to keep me around watching it once I found the willpower to tolerate the rape of Molly Hayes. They may as well just go and change Klara Prast to Klara Muhammad while they're at it, except that would be too spot-on and "Islamophobic" to acknowledge Arab were all about child brides a century ago too.
Agents of SHIELD from what I saw of the preview for the double-episode 8 days from now is going to take place in space. I saw the Kree again so Skrulls can't be far off, which bodes well for Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' future love life. This is a franchise with time travel and dimensional travel so for all I know they might rip through a dimension barrier to meet the Aryan Molly Hayes and have her beat the shit out of Molly Hernandez, so stay tuned, I guess? Why do I feel like they are going to swap the heel-turn out to Chase because a white male has to be the villain?