Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 1, Episode 17: The Man Who Stole Tomorrow
I originally wanted to review the three Kang episodes (episodes 17-19, which form a three-parter that acts as something of a mid-season finale) in a single review the way I did for "Gamma World", but turns out I actually do have enough to talk about each individual episode that I ended up splitting them apart into three entries. And honestly, each of the Kang episode actually works pretty well as standalone episodes as they do a self-contained arc. And while Kang himself has gotten a fair bit of screentime in the Captain America prequel episode, this is the first time that our heroes have actually met him.
Thankfully, the episode isn't just "Avengers vs a future blue-man" non-stop. A good chunk of the episode's first part shows Iron Man and Captain America interacting, a bit of a rarity in this show, and it's... it's definitely far more positive than any of the Civil War stuff that the Cap/Iron Man duo tend to bring up. After some talk about how Tony Stark is a "futurist", Captain America resolves to try and teach Tony how to actually fight and not just rely 100% on his armour. He probably should've shooed Hulk and Hawkeye out of the stands before showing off his combat reflexes and stuff, though. That's just mean. Steve means well and Tony knows it, but Tony also sees no real point in learning something he'll never use as his whole deal is to be prepared for any possible eventuality. There's also a very non-subtle underlining argument between the past and the future, with Captain America preferring to return to basics and telling Tony to slow down, while Tony is all about innovation and creating the future...
So of course the antagonist of this episode is a man from several decades in the future that Tony Stark is completely unable to prepare against. I do appreciate it that the moral isn't "Tony Stark learns boxing", though -- he still fights Kang in his own way, but takes Captain America's advice of going back to basics and ends up finding a 20-century old loophole in Kang's magic supertech hover chair to eventually defeat Kang... for this episode, anyway.
Of course, that's not all the episode has to offer. Far from it. As entertaining and well-voiced as Kang the Conqueror is, the fight scenes against a man with a super-forcefield and telekinetic powers end up being a bit samey. Instead, the drama comes from the fact that despite his title, Kang's more of an... anti-villain? He's a conqueror, sure, but he's trying to save the 41st century from being turned into a dystopian future because of Captain America's presence in the 21st century. And the destruction is revealed to be caused by the Kree-Skrull war that the previous two episodes have been building up to. And that some action that Captain America takes within the next 10 years is going to cause Earth to be obliterated. Kang plans to eliminate Captain America from the timeline, and also arm the humans of the 21st century to survive the invasion. It's a crazy plan, but, y'know, what do you expect from someone called Kang? Captain America is, of course, ever-noble and considers giving up, but stops short when he realizes Kang's a crazy megalomaniacal mofo.
The fight scenes do have some neat highlights, as it involves the full force of the Avengers. The moment where Tony notes that, yes, Kang's technology would be useful against the Kree and the Skrull, "but he's being a jerk" so the Avengers will take him down anyway. Ant-Man summoning a fuck-ton of cockroaches that survived the devastation is also hilariously fun. Ultimately, as noted above, Iron Man hacks Kang's chair, and returns them to their own time. Kang retreats... but he still has a big-ass spaceship ready for a good old-fashioned alien invasion, setting up episode 18.
Oh, and caught up in all this Cap/Iron Man and Kang stuff, I nearly forgot to talk about Idea Number 42, the Negative Zone prison that apparently Iron Man and Reed Richards (not the first time the Fantastic Four is name-dropped, which, again, is a bit of a gleeful moment considering how the F4 have been stuck in limbo from many Marvel stuff thanks to movie rights) built. We get to see that the Captain-Cold-esque supervillain Blizzard is captured and is just meekly overwhelmed by this prison. It's also overseen by Hank Pym's Ultron robots... which, while super docile and polite now... we all know what happens when strings are cut and all that.
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