Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S01E10 Review: Wonderful

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 1, Episode 10: Everything is Wonderful

A bit of an... odd episode, this one. I guess we're in a slightly more villain-of-the-week segment of the show, although Hydra is still acting as the bigger-scope villain. The episode starts off in media res with some dude being experimented upon by A.I.M. and their funky yellow anti-radiation suits, with Thor and Wasp battling against MODOK (more on him later), before flashing back to three hours earlier where we see that same man, one Simon Williams, argue against Tony Stark over the buyout of the company.

This ends up being the catalyst of much of the episode, because Stark's general douchebagginess and disinterest in his interactions with Simon Williams ends up alienating him completely -- something that Hank Pym calls him out on. Sure, we later learn that Tony Stark is doing the company buyout for Simon's own good, and he isn't just being a soulless corporate overlord, but he ends up being extra-douchey in this opening scene. The scripting is also done well enough to make it seem blatant that Stark's not just distracted, but his own inherent arrogance seeps into the whole thing. I could have done without Hank and Tony spending most of the episode arguing over this, though.

Meanwhile, while this is going on, Wasp and Thor do battle with AIM and their flying spheres, with a fun bit involving a black hole grenade and Wasp teaching Thor that sometimes you need to let these 'geeks' go to lead them to a bigger target. Simultaneously while all of this is going on, Simon is apparently brothers with the goddamn Grim Reaper, who ends up leading him to talk to MODOK, the master of AIM. MODOK's the goofiest and most glorious looking villain among Marvel's roster -- a literal giant head with stubby arms on a floating robot suit. He even has hair! MODOK basically promises to transform Simon into a more powerful being with his supervillain science, turning him into a being of energy.

Of course, the Grim Reaper doesn't exactly have the best relationship with his brother, and it's heavily noted that he doesn't really care if Simon dies or not. And we catch up to the battle in the cold open, Simon Williams gets transformed into a being of pulsating purple energy who's just straight-up going to murder Tony Stark. The action scenes are pretty neat, with Iron Man showing up in a bigger armour (not quite the Hulkbuster, but similar enough). The difference in opinions as Hank tries to talk Simon down and Tony is in full shoot-first-negotiate-later is well done, even if the dialogue isn't super good. Simon gets blown up by charging into the Stark Industries' arc reactor, and Tony drops down in full regret because he never even meant to harm Simon. Bad communication kills, everyone!

Of course, Simon isn't dead, and the final scene has Enchantress, Zemo and Executioner show up to add Simon into their growing army... I know that Simon "Wonder Man" Williams is supposed to be a good guy in the comics, but I'm so unfamiliar with the character that I'm not even going to look up if there's a heel-face-turn somewhere down the line, or if he actually does spend a chunk of his career as a villain.

Oh, and the B-plot of the episode is Captain America meeting with Nick Fury, and bonding over the fact that Nick's dad Jack Fury is buddies with Captain America in the war. Whatever Nick Fury's other objectives are as far as Stark and the Avengers is concerned, Nick's relationship with Steve at least seems to be very positive. Oh, and Steve gets a bike out of it all!

Overall, it's an episode that perhaps tries to seem more smart than it is. In particular I didn't think the in media res adds anything to the episode. The story's decent enough, though, with the Wasp/Thor/AIM story melding in seamlessly with the Tony/Hank/Simon storyline. We get to further build up the larger world and build up the whole Masters of Evil storyline. Good stuff, overall.