Date of airing: November 25, 1995 (FOX Kids)
written by: John Semper, Meg McLaughlin
directed by: Bob Richardson
I am kind of glad that the Morbius story arc seems to be over for now. The writers have been spending a little too much time on it for my taste, especially since I never really liked the character, even now that I have watched the extemely boring and 90s-looking Jared Leto movie. But it was great to see that the story ended badly for the man. He lost the fight to become human again, and he lost Felicia. And who knows if he is still alive at the end of the episode, because the imagery of sunshine and him “resting” in the cave and saying his goodbyes to Felicia could mean that a couple of seconds after the end credits finished rolling, he turned to dust.
Spider-Man was unable to save Morbius, even though he tried his best to make him human again, although his best was certainly the worst in this half hour. What else can be said about Spider-Man breaking into Morbius’ lair and messing up absolutely everything, almost killing Felicia in the process and turning Morbius into a bat? I wonder if all of that might make Morbius more of a villain if he happens to return, or more of an antihero because he has not lost his soul yet. If Morbius manages to live life like Blade has been doing, Morbius could certainly be a hero like our other famed antihero vampire of scripted entertainment: Angel.
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| Terri Lee needs her own spin-off cop show. |
Blade hooking up with Terri Lee was hilarious. Not only did the first kiss come out of nowhere (especially after they just met), but her final comment “of all the men in the world I fall in love with a vampire” very much reminded me of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Things became even funnier after Terri pretty much shrugged off “love” as something dumb because she happened to fall for a vampire during the one or two days she knew Blade. For a hot second I wondered if Joss Whedon watched this episode (the comic nerd that he is) and decided that in his show, which he might have been working on at the time, a woman and a vampire will fall in love. This episode of SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES could turn out to be TV history, because maybe it is this episode that created the Buffy/Angel storyline. Can somebody ask Joss about that? I am sure he will appreciate different kinds of questions these days.
Anyway, it was a solid episode. To my surprise, Terri was involved in it quite a bit, and almost seemed like a main character, a third partner in crime, if she had not set her foot into Morbius’ trap. The idea of taking a recurring character and teaming them up with Spider-Man and whatever comic superhero the writers were getting themselves busy with is an intriguing one, and I hope that this episode was not the only one in which the writers deployed that idea.
I was also impressed by how different Blade and Spider-Man were. Blade was ready to kill, destroy, and make dust out of Morbius, but Spider-Man was the one with the soul and heart, and he could not risk a person’s death, especially since it was his fault that Morbius turned into a vampire in the first place. In addition, I liked that Peter got into the action of it all and decided to play bait for Morbius. Even Aunt May getting kidnapped was a nice story move, although she thought this was all just a nightmare, just so the writers would never have to do any type of complex writing for a weekend morning kid audience. Now I cannot stop thinking about what would have happened if the laser had hit Aunt May. If she had turned into a vampire, how much awesomeness could the show have had for the rest of the season?
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| Morbius, the immortal protector. |
The eternal love story between Felicia and Morbius came out of left
field a little bit though. I get that Morbius was madly in love with her
because that is how he got introduced in the show, but was Felicia also
thinking this way? Either Spider-Man misjudged the chemistry between
Felicity and Morbius, or Felicity, after being with Peter, Flash, and
probably even Harry (who knows at this point?), decided she wanted to
spend the rest of her life with Morbius pre-transformation, suggesting
that there was a story in there that was never told by the writers. I wished the episode would have gone deeper into that, depicting the Felicia/Morbius romance from her point of view as well, but now that Morbius is gone, so seems the importance of Felicia as a character, especially now that Peter and Mary Jane can focus on developing their romance.
