Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S01E12-13 Review: Fallout

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 1, Episodes 12-13: Gamma World

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes' first two parter is called "Gamma World", a Hulk-centric storyline as noted by its title. Or, well, it's a storyline that features Hulk's villains majorly, anyway. After the final scene of the previous episode, SHIELD summons the Avengers to help them deal with a dome of radiation emitting from the gamma villain prison known as the Cube... but not before SHIELD interrupts the Avengers chasing down Hawkeye, which neatly builds up Hawkeye's relatively huge role for the rest of the two-parter.

SHIELD's main officer is Dr. Samson, the same scientist that Hulk saved in the series premiere, now mutated by gamma radiation into a big, burly green-haired man (Thor and Captain America has a most hilarious exchange regarding Samson's appearance) and we get a brief rundown of the big names of the villains within. The Leader is the leader (duh) of the villains, but the Abomination and the Absorbing Man seem to be the two other main players... in addition to a smattering of other random gamma villains that I don't recognize, but I'm sure are well-established Marvel villains.

And Episode 12 basically just spends its entire screentime having the Avengers and Dr. Samson fight against the SHIELD agents that are gamma-transformed into hideous monsters, and later against the gamma villains. The latter is especially fun with the wacky superpowers that some of the villains exhibit, but we eventually realize that it's all part of a plan to wear them down and eventually break their containment suits. Wasp is transformed to a literal wasp-monster, which is genuinely horrifying when animated, leading to an even bigger 'we can't hurt them!' drama. 

Of course, Black Panther goes in alone and manages to disable the gamma generator while Thor (who is immune to gamma radiation owing to his Asgardian heritage) does battle with the mutated Wrecking Crew. It's a pretty fun episode.... but then the Leader announces that it "went well" for a test run, and it's a pretty chilling line before he activates the same device in a populated city. Good swerve there, and if the title didn't have "Part 1" in it, I genuinely would've expected the episode to be over without that twist.

Thankfully, "Gamma World Part 1" isn't just endless scenes of the Avengers beating up random gamma monsters, otherwise it'd be boring. Hawkeye continues his chase down of Black Widow, and gets a pretty badass scene as he infiltrates a Hydra safehouse, full of vengeance and wrath, and ends up taking down Black Widow, fully intent on delivering her to the Avengers in order to clear his name. 

"Gamma World, Part 2" picks up where we left off, with the gamma radiation expanding over Las Vegas and transforming its population into monsters. The entirety of the Avengers other than Thor and Dr. Samson ends up getting turned into gamma monsters, leaving Hawkeye and Black Widow -- who barely avoided the transformation dome -- to be our only hope. While Black Widow demands that Hawkeye allow her to help him (and she's likely to be innocent, if we're going by fiction conventions, but Hawkeye doesn't know that), Hawkeye leaves her behind to save the day. 

And that's where Hulk comes in. Sure, it does take some headscratchers because apparently Hawkeye's fancy space hoverbike is that fast, but Hawkeye tracks the Hulk down, noting that Hulk isn't the monster everyone makes him out to be for the simple reason that he was willing to save SHIELD agents when they first met, and manages to get Hulk to revert back to Bruce Banner by making Hulk laugh. 

Hawkeye and Hulk arrive at around the same time that Thor does a one-on-one battle against the Abomination and the Absorbing Man, the latter having absorbed the density and power of Mjolnir. Banner has apparently given Hawkeye arrows that allow him to revert the other Avengers back to their forms, Hulk and the Abomination have a slugfest... and in perhaps one of the more awesome moments in this series, Thor very calmly notes that he's concentrating because "the power of Mjolnir is MINE TO WIELD!" as he lobs Mjolnir'd Absorbing Man away with nothing but mental commands. 

Hulk and Hawkeye also get a pretty badass moment. The Abomination gives this huge rant about how he's stronger, smarter and better than the Hulk... but the Hulk just grins because he has "backup". Sure, the backup might just be a funny purple archer with an electricity arrow, but that's enough for the Hulk to get the drop on the Abomination and send him flying away. Hulk, Thor and Hawkeye make short work of the Leader and his silly robot suit, breaks the antenna and save the day. We get an unexpectedly horrifyingly graphic showcase of the Leader's brain mutating and expanding, which... is actually pretty creepy.

The ending of this two-parter is an interesting bit. Hawkeye has exonerated himself from being a Hydra agent, and refuses to rejoin SHIELD for so easily dumping him. He very nearly refuses to join the Avengers on account of how easily they were taken out by the Leader... but the Hulk sort of convinces him to join. Yeah, Hulk has apparently grown to like Hawkeye enough that he'll join the Avengers only if Hawkeye does. 

The final scene of this episode shows that the Avengers isn't the only group that's recruiting, though, because Baron Zemo's group (now having added Crimson Dynamo offscreen as well) comes across the Abomination to recruit him into the Masters of Evil...

Ultimately, it's a two-parter that isn't super-duper awesome. We do get a lot of fun action scenes, Hawkeye and Thor are pretty amazing here, but the fact that none of the villains other than the Leader have much of a personality or motivation hurts it somewhat. And even then, the Leader's a generic mad scientist type and not the most interesting character to watch. It's still a well-done storyline, though, having a self-contained mini-crisis in the span of two episodes, resolving something built up from previous episodes and setting up for a bit of a roster change for both the good and bad guys. Overall, not the best showing that Avengers: EMH has, but not its worst by any means.