Date of airing: October 7, 1995 (FOX Kids)
story by: John Semper, Michael Edens
teleplay by: Francis Moss, Ted Pedersen
directed by: Bob Richardson
For my taste, Wolverine and Spider-Man became friends a little too quickly. They were putting each other’s fists into their faces, with Hobgoblin watching, but not even a minute later, the two superheroes were able to have a good conversation and show each other what they were really after, helping each other in the process. I guess it needed to be done quickly, with only 18 minutes of storytelling time available to each episode, but I would have loved some more conflict between Spider-Man and Wolverine, maybe even with the entire X-Men clan, for more than just the last couple of minutes of the previous episode, in addition to the first minute of this one. Then again, some of them saw in Spider-Man their new best friend, so I cannot even blame them for liking him. After all, don't all X-Men like everyone they assume to have mutant powers?
The episode was pretty okay. Hobgoblin was still in the story for
some reason, and I still did not get what he planned to do or what his
master plan was, how he was involved in Landon’s schemes, or why
Hobgoblin wanted Landon dead. There seemed to have been a backstory
missing here, because it looked like Hobgoblin was only in this arc to
guarantee the viewers that all of the villains will return sooner or
later. After all, Spider-Man is like Christopher Nolan’s Batman when it
comes to killing his enemies: He does not kill them. Maybe it would not be
such a wrong idea for Spider-Man to be Zack Snyder’s Batman, because
then he would not have had the problems with Hobgoblin in this episode.
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| "Ah ah ah, you did not say the magic word!" |
The storytelling was generally quite tiny this time around, noticeable by the fact that there was not a single second of Peter Parker in this episode. Spider-Man and Wolverine fought it out. Spider-Man and Hobgoblin fought it out again. Spider-Man and Wolverine saved Beast and threw Landon into his soup of madness, so he could become a mutant himself (become your worst enemy and all that stuff). Landon transformed into a monster, did a King Kong number by kidnapping Genevieve, and made like the T-Rex in act three of THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK by invading downtown while looking like the monster from CLOVERFIELD, taking on helicopters and all that jazz. And actually, it was the second half of the episode that interested me more, because it did not have the underdeveloped Landon versus Hobgoblin thing going on, and the writers were focusing on the team-up between Spider-Man and the X-Men – a team-up that made me a little giggly about the potential team-up of Spider-Man and the Avengers or the Fantastic Four in this series, if it ever comes to that. Because really, if the wallcrawler gets to work with one superhero team, the other one is waiting behind the scenes already.
That Genevieve turned out to be a mutant was a nice surprise, although a twist was to be expected after Spider-Man’s life was kind of saved in the previous episode. And I liked that the story was all about acceptance in the final minute. Spider-Man gets thanked once more (after he made that experience with Fury in the first season finale already) and he finally realized that he does not have to be alone in this world and maybe could start thinking about being in a superhero rock band ("The Avengers? What is that?"). Especially the latter could be an intriguing change in Spider-Man’s life. Now that he has friends to go back to when he needs help, the writers were able to get team-ups going if they wanted to get to the bigger story arcs of the comics that do not have Spider-Man fighting all by himself. In a way, the writers made sure they liked the idea of Spider-Man not fighting his fights alone, and they made sure that Spider-Man asking for help every once in a while did not come out of left field.
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| I will be shipping Spider-Man and Rogue for the remainder of the episode. |
But yeah, when it comes to the villains, SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES does not quite shine at the moment. The earlier episodes of the season at least had the guarantee of the Sini–– I mean, the Insidious Six going for itself, but they have disappeared now, making it even more disappointing that their replacement villains – Hobgoblin and Kingpin – are so dumb right now. Hobgoblin because he is the worst villain of the series so far, and Kingpin because he is just mulling in the background of the action, waiting for the writers to give him some more attention. I understand why the writers went that direction, with the mutant arc moving along nicely, but it kind of hurts to see a Spider-Man series without functioning Spider-Man villains.
