TalkbackChase Stein

Chase Stein uses his natural athletic abilities, his brash attitude, and his way with technology to keep the Runaways one step ahead of trouble—or at the very least gives them a ride away from trouble when their adventures get too intense! Whether he's wielding the Fistigons, piloting the Leapfrog, or commanding a time machine, he's always there to keep his friends safe.

Not a Chip off the Old Block

Born to scientifically brilliant parents Janet and Victor Stein, Chase differed from his mother and father in seemingly every notable way. While they were intellectual and academic, he excelled at physical activities, like sports. This did not sit well with the Steins, who proved physically abusive and neglectful to their son.

However, thanks to an inborn cockiness, Chase persevered and eventually managed to use his knack for technology to help his friends, the Runaways, escape their Super Villain parents and forge their own path in life.

Fistigon Fun

Unlike many of his teammates, Chase has yet to exhibit any physical super powers, but he is still exceptionally valuable to the Runaways.

He becomes quite adept at using the Fistigons—high tech gauntlets created by his parents. He is very useful in battle with these. Further, Chase often serves as his team's pilot when he drives their vehicle, the Leapfrog. Chase has a knack for fixing things too—even when he doesn't understand exactly how they work—which has come in handy more than once.

Thanks to Gert passing it on to him, Chase has a psychic link to the genetically engineered dinosaur known as Old Lace. Beyond that, Chase is told by Dr. Hayes that he does, in fact, have super powers he isn't aware of, but their true nature has yet to be revealed.

For a brief time, Chase possesses the Darkhawk amulet, granting him Darkhawk's abilities, including super human strength, speed, flight, force fields, and energy blasts.

Meet the Parents

Compared to many of his fellow Runaways, Chase Stein has no reservations about seeing his parents, Victor and Janet, as genuine villains when the evil truth about them is revealed. After all, his dad beat him regularly and his mother would ignore what was happening. So, he stands firmly in opposition to Victor and Janet and their allies in the Pride. He also faces off with the Gibborim, and feels the deep sting of betrayal when their friend, Alex Wilder, betrays them.

However, no one hurts Chase quite as much as the time-displaced Geoffrey Wilder, who kills Chase's girlfriend, Gert Yorkes. Arcade also makes his mark on Chase when the madman kidnaps Stein, among other young heroes, and brings them to his new theme park, the aptly named Murderworld.

Win Chase Stein's Heart

Chase feels from his parents alongside fellow Runaways Gert Yorkes, Alex Wilder, Molly Hayes, Nico Minoru, and Karolina Dean—and the longer they stay together, the tighter knit they become. As a constant on the Runaways team, Chase also becomes friendly with latter day additions Xavin, Victor Mancha, and Klara Prast.

However, Chase's closest bond on the team is with Gert, as the two have formed a romantic relationship.

He loves her very much, and is consumed with despair when she sacrifices herself to protect him. Devoted to her, he spends his time after this loss looking for a way to save her and is ultimately successful.

Talkback

Chase Stein changed everything for the criminal organization known as the Pride just by being conceived. His parents, Janet and Victor, had joined up with the group after the god-like Gibborim offered them all additional power and control of crime in the West Coast in exchange for an innocent soul every year. After a quarter of a century, with enough souls to power them back up, the Gibborim would wipe the Earth clean and create a paradise for themselves and just six of the dozen members of the Pride. However, when the Steins discovered they were pregnant, the other members decided to also have kids and then give their spots in paradise to their offspring.

As Chase grew up, though, his folks seemed to regret their decision to have a child. In additional to belittling his athletic achievements, Victor would routinely beat Chase while his mother did her best to ignore the situation. The more this went on, the more Chase started making up reasons for his father to treat him so horribly. Sometimes the tales he came up with felt so real that even Chase himself would begin to believe them.

One fateful night, the Pride gathered for their yearly sacrifice while their kids hung out in the Wilders' game room. When Alex told the others that he found a secret passage, they traveled down it, and inadvertently came upon their parents murdering a teenage girl in cold blood.

Chase went along with the others in their search to find the body as proof, and in the process, he found and took the powerful Fistigons his parents had created. Chase also guided his fellow Runaways to the Hostel, an old mansion swallowed up in an earthquake that served as their first hideaway.

With the Runaways framed by the Pride, Chase joined his friends in several adventures, before taking the fight to their parents in an underwater lair during the Rite of Thunder, wherein the Pride offered the pure soul of the girl to the Gibborim. After getting inside, Chase tried to hold off a stone guard, but wound up nearly drowning to death. Gert gave Chase mouth to mouth and CPR, saving his life in the process, which resulted in their first kiss and the beginning of their relationship. During the battle, Chase managed to steal the Pride's amphibious flying vehicle, the Leapfrog, and got his friends to safety. Alex, however, was killed by the Gibborim after he betrayed the team to help his parents. The Pride were then killed in a subsequent explosion.

After that, word got out about the Pride and the kids split up. Though he didn't talk to his fellow Runaways during this period, Chase did keep busy trying to track down the whereabouts of both the Leapfrog and the location of Gert's beloved dinosaur, Old Lace. This information was crucial when the group reunited soon after to retrieve the Leapfrog and, thanks to Chase, Old Lace as well.

While on their own, Chase and Gert's relationship evolved. However, nothing could have prepared him for the appearance of Gert from the future. An Avenger then, she attempted to warn the group about Victor Mancha, saying he would present himself as a friend, but eventually turn on them and become one of the world's greatest villains, like his father was. This older Gert then died in Chase's arms immediately after giving this warning. Chase wanted to take this threat out immediately, but Gert wanted to give Victor the benefit of the doubt, thanks to their own experiences as children of villains.

They eventually met the young man, who turned out to be the cyborg son of Ultron and a human woman. The Runaways brought Mancha in, but both Chase and Nico agreed that they would take him out if he ever switched sides. During a later trip to New York, Nico kissed Chase, and though he pulled away, this moment would come back to haunt them both.

A group of Alex Wilder's friends later formed a new incarnation of the Pride, recruiting a younger Geoffrey Wilder into their group via time travel. Geoffrey met with the Gibborim and, after kidnapping Molly, intended to offer them a soul in exchange for his dead wife and son. During the fracas between the new Pride and the Runaways, Gert learned about Nico and Chase, and was crushed.

When the Runaways tracked Wilder and his crew down, Chase confronted Geoffrey in the Griffith Observatory as flames danced around them. Geoffrey intended to kill Chase, but Gert convinced Geoffrey that Chase was far from pure. This saved Chase's life, but ended hers, as the villain threw a knife into her chest. Although they reconciled, Gert died before she could finish telling Chase she loved him—although she did pass her psychic link with Old Lace to Chase.

Distraught, Chase tracked down the new Pride's resident magic expert, Lotus, and demanded she help him find the Gibborim. When he did, they made the same deal they did with Geoffrey Wilder: they agreed to bring back the dead in exchange for a pure soul. Stein spared Lotus' life and then returned to the Hostel and his friends, but only long enough to team up with the Young Avengers during the Super Hero Civil War, before making his play with the Gibborim.

Chase tied up Nico, though he didn't intend to sacrifice her. He'd learned that any soul sacrificed to the Gibborim would lead to that person being completely erased from memory and reality, so he wanted her to know how to shut Victor down if he did, in fact, turn evil. The Runaways managed to catch up to Chase, and he discovered that he was nowhere near pure enough for the Gibborim. With no deal, the Gibborim ran out of time and disappeared from this realm.

Following a time travel adventure in 1907 and the Skrull's Secret Invasion, the Runaways returned to the west coast and set up shop in a Malibu house the Steins owned. To help support his teammates, Chase got a job as an assistant for a local DJ. Thanks to some invading Majesdanians and a magic spell gone awry, the team found themselves in need of a break. After a trip to the desert, they returned to the city where Chase's radio host boss had used his own brand of magic to turn anyone with plastic surgery into a monster, but the Runaways handled it.

Their idyllic life then got a nasty dose of reality when a drone crashed into the house, killing Old Lace, who had shielded Runaway teammate Klara from the blast. This drew the attention of a paramilitary group, as well as Hunter Stein, Chase's uncle. Hunter offered to give them a place to live and more access to the Steins' tech, but the kids decided to go their own way in a new Leapfrog. Soon after, Chase thought he saw a woman who looked like Gert and, while running after her, got hit by a car.

Chase healed up before long and went on adventures with his team that introduced them to Daken, before getting Old Lace back from another dimension with an assist from the Avengers Academy students. Not long after, Chase and Nico found themselves kidnapped by Arcade, alongside young heroes from around the world. The villain put them in his new Murderworld, where only one survivor would be able to walk out after 30 days inside. During this turmoil, Chase stumbled upon the Darkhawk amulet which embedded itself in his chest, giving him the Darkhawk abilities.

After several traumatic experiences in Murderworld, including Nico's death and resurrection, the kids escaped, and Chase returned the Darkhawk amulet to Chris Powell. However, Arcade released all his recorded footage online, which turned Chase and the others who survived the experience into celebrities. Chase was the only one to accept and embrace this new level of fame.

Alongside Nico and several other Arcade survivors, Chase posed as a burgeoning villain to fool Baron Zemo. But, soon after, the Runaways went their separate ways completely. In the wake of this, Chase returned to the site of the Hostel and discovered a still-inhabitable main house near the destroyed previous building.

Still desperate to somehow save Gert, Chase traveled back in time to when she was killed, intending to prevent Geoffrey Wilder from murdering her in the first place. He appeared too late to stop Gert from being stabbed, but instead used his mental connection with Old Lace to have the dinosaur drag his younger self out of the room so that he could grab the wounded Gert and bring her to the present, where he and Nico were able to get her help and save her life.

Unfortunately for Chase, Gert—feeling out of sorts having jumped into the future—made it clear to him that their romantic relationship was over.

However, he soon joined Victor in bringing the Runaways back together again, with the reunited old friends stopping Molly's villainous grandmother. Then, the team set up shop in the new Hostel that Chase had discovered.