Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S01E22 Review: No Strings On Me

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 1, Episode 21: Ultron-5

One of the bigger complaints I hear people have against Age of Ultron is that they changed Ultron's creator from Hank Pym (which, by then, wasn't introduced in the MCU yet) to Tony Stark, thereby robbing Pym of one of his more signature character moments. Again, as someone who's only marginally familiar with the source material, for me it's an "okay, nice to know" moment. But the execution of Hank Pym's character in this episode is definitely awesome, putting him squarely in the spotlight since, well, ever. I don't think it's hard to argue that Ant-Man is perhaps one of the more forgettable characters in this particular series. It's no fault of the performance, but perhaps it's deliberate. He did get a couple of spotlight episodes in the past, for sure, but at the same time storylines tended to revolve around other characters and their comparatively more exciting mythologies, while Ant-Man's biggest character moment was, other than generic lover's spats with Janet and his original introduction, the moment when he decides to turn Ultron from a bunch of robotic wardens into a robot army. Granted it's for the best of reasons -- to protect earth from Kang's time-travelling robot army -- but the perversion of what he had intended them to be versus what the Ultron robots are now is definitely felt. 

And throughout the series, Ant-Man has been front and center in grumbling about finding a different way. For the most part, we sort of take it as fluff -- kind of like when Iron Man throws a snarky comment, or when Hulk says something along the lines of punching people, or when Thor says "nay!". It's just something that Ant-Man does. But we've got an increased bit of these during the Kang saga, which are easily overlooked in favour of all the bigger things happening. But we've got several moments when Giant-Man and Hulk are fighting robots and both Hulk and Hawkeye are just bro-ing out about how fighting is fun, and another moment where Ant-Man expresses disappointment that their first course of action against Kang is violence.

In a very well-scripted and well-animated battle against a group of snake-themed villains called the Serpent Society, Hank is way, way more interested in trying to talk down the Society's leader, King Cobra -- a former inmate of his back in the Big House during the show's premiere. It is a neat callback to Hank's earlier lines in this series about how SHIELD doesn't really care about rehabilitating criminals and only imprisoning and/or dissecting their powers, and Hank's viewpoints certainly have merit. But maybe not do it when a giant cyborg snake-person is trying to eat Captain America whole.

And, again, just like the whole Ultron business, Ant-Man's attempts to stay true to himself and advocate peace clashes heavily when both Avengers and Serpent Society just want to smash each other up. Add that to Ant-Man's confusion and bumbling around causing other Avengers to miss their mark or cause property damage. The Avengers rightfully call Ant-Man out for easily causing poor Hawkeye to get killed, and Ant-Man quits in a moment of defeat when he realizes that his personal beliefs of trying to talk things through isn't going to work with the Avengers when they're a fighting team first and foremost. 

That argument is done pretty well, and Wasp, as the ever-bubbly and ever-excited girlfriend, tries to talk to Hank but because Hank's just a splendid dude, he basically ignores her. Yeah, Hank's viewpoints do have merit, but he's kind of making a bit of an ass of himself, isn't he? Meanwhile, the rest of the team have apparently caught a supervillain team called the Super-Apes off-screen (!), basically acknowledging that, yeah, the whole "dozens of supervillains have broken out of SHIELD's prisons" storyline is sort of wrapped up off-screen. We also get a neat little downtime acknowledgement of Tony swearing to Thor to do everything in his power to get him back to Asgard, a neat little character development from the previous episode. Tony also ends up figuring out that the Super-Apes, the Serpent Society and Radioactive Man's attack in the previous episode all follow the orders of some mysterious benefactor... from within the mansion itself.

Which, of course, is Ultron, if the title hasn't already clued you in. Ultron finally lights up with his creepy red eyes, beats up Ant-Man and Wasp, and we get a pretty scary bit when all the familiar technology our heroes have been using for the past season fight against them. The Hulk, riding a quinjet with his monkey prisoners, gets caught on autopilot as the quinjets shoots straight into space. Iron Man and Thor, having a nice conversation, ends up fighting each other when the armour moves by itself. The uber-dangerous training room also begins to try to kill everyone inside (including a welcome minor reappearance by Jane Foster). It all feels more like a distraction before the third act, but, of course, it's meant to distract the Avengers because Ultron doesn't want to engage them personally. We do get a pretty badass Iron Man/Thor fight, and I do appreciate that Thor quickly figures out that Tony is not in control of his suit, and it becomes a matter of taking the suit down without killing Stark. 

Ultron, meanwhile, has Wasp trapped in a bubble. And while we could brush this off as a simple "damsel in distress situation", Ultron actually delivers a very compelling argument as to why he's testing this on Wasp. He gives a pretty creepy (although not quite James-Spader-esque creepy, and the huge gaping mouth is distracting) speech about how humanity is inherently chaotic and flawed, and to bring peace to Earth as is Ultron's primary directive, he must eliminate humans. Oh, and by the way, because he was programmed to never hurt Wasp by Ant-Man, he is trying to actively seek a way to circumvent that. 

The beginning of the third act when Ultron apparently straight-up vaporizes Thor with a mouth beam? That was definitely a lot harder to swallow or buy that it's played straight, especially when Ultron's attacks later on in this episode clearly weren't that effective. We also get the sudden gigantification powers from Wasp, who have never really displayed that ability. But, of course, Ultron ends up trouncing the entire Avengers, and eventually comes face-to-face with his maker, with a pretty badass shot of Hank reflected in Ultron's metal forehead. Ultron, born out of Hank's own mental patterns, is more of Hank's dark reflection than his 'son' as the fandom likes to call him, albeit removed of all of the restraint and moral codes that make Hank Pym a flawed -- but still ultimately good -- human. 

The moral debates will have to wait until the second part of this two-parter, though, because all Hank Pym ends up realizing in this episode is that he's fucked up (and maybe a little lesson about how you shouldn't deal in absolutes, or it'll lead to fanaticism?) because the episode ends up going into a pretty goddamn badass action scene as Iron Man shows up in his Mark I "hunk a' junk" armour that he probably built in a cave with a box of scraps. Iron Man's old armour, combined with Ant-Man going into giant mode, and a very angry Hulk arriving on Earth, ends with Hank ripping the heart out of Ultron quite literally. It's a time for action, and Hank learned the hard way earlier this episode that talking things out in the middle of a life-and-death situation isn't good, and for all he knows, Thor's dead because of his creation. Tony's cold "destroy everything" is an order, something Hank would've likely bristled at in any other circumstance, but the defeated way he just acknowledges his monumental fuck-up, as well as the fact that Ultron was born out of his own psyche in a way, is definitely a neat, melancholic way to end this episode. 

(Of course, Ultron's not dead yet and just uploads himself into a new body. Oh, and Thor is randomly amnesiac on the laps of the Enchantress? Eh.)