Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S01E26 Review: Asgardian Armour

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 1, Episode 26: A Day Unlike Any Other

The final episode of the first season of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and it's a pretty damn cool finale. It doesn't do anything particularly novel -- it's your basic case of having all the Avengers split across the Nine Eight Realms gather together with their newfound allies, and then laying the smackdown on Loki's armies. On one part, it does feel kind of repetitive just waiting for all of the players to assemble. At the same time, though, it's executed in a pretty damn badass way. The Hulk swings around the Executioner's axe, flanked by the Warriors Three! Wasp and Ant-Man swoop in on goddamn pegasi, with Sif apparently giving Wasp a custom-made Valkyrie armour! Hawkeye, Black Panther and their buddies...  get obligatory action scenes. Yeah, these two just don't get to do much here.

But, of course, the two bigger moments in this episode (and the previous one) are Iron Man and Captain America. Tony doesn't get a huge character revelation, but god damn the slow buildup towards Tony's creation of his Uru-metal armour (apparently called by the extremely badass name of the Thorbuster or the Godbuster in the comics, although it's never referred to as such) and his eventual dramatic entry? Pretty damn awesome. 

But the big focus in this episode, from a character standpoint, is Captain America and Hela. Realizing that this isn't the real hell, not exactly (apparently because Bucky isn't around!) the good Captain actually ends up being extremely cordial and polite towards Hela as he tries to convince her to let him out. It's a bit annoying that the show establishes Hela as Loki's daughter and ally, but doesn't actually tell us just what role she plays in Loki's huge scheme. But Hela knows Loki enough to realize that he's going to betray even her, so Hela does the whole "sell your soul to me" devil-deal, allowing Captain America to rejoin the Avengers in exchange for his soul.

And Captain America arrives just in time for a dramatic entry to aid the other Avengers against one of Loki's many minions, Hoarfen the Ice Wolf, and as the Avengers bring down the huge beast (and straight-up uses him to break into the castle!), the still-shackled Thor mocks Loki, telling him that even with his much-vaunted stolen Odin powers he still hasn't won yet. This finally gets Loki to actually fight back, and while the Odinforce basically just amplifies his inherent magic-blast powers, it's strong enough to shatter even Captain America's shield, a moment that is treated with a huge *gasp* from everyone. And then Iron Man comes in with the Thorbuster (Lokibuster?) armour and together with Thor, the two of them lay down the smackdown to Loki.

It sadly comes to a simple case of "do something with the plot device!" as Ant-Man, Hawkeye and Black Panther sabotage Loki's connection to Yggdrasil and straight-up ends up having to destroy the World Tree in order to stop Loki, and that's a somewhat weak part of this climax, I think. Odin himself gets awoken from his sleep, and just snaps Loki into a prison -- the same prison that Loki's real-life-mythological counterpart is sentenced to, to have venom dripped into his eyes from the fangs of a serpent until Ragnarok comes. Brutal.

There's a huge celebration as the Avengers are recognized by Odin himself, and the crisis is over. Asgard and the Nine Realms are saved, Loki and his minions are defeated. Sure, there are a fair bit of loose ends -- whatever happened to Zemo and Enchantress and the rest of the Masters of Evil, for example -- but not quite enough to leave this season hanging open-ended. Instead, the real cliffhanger happens with Captain America musing over the shards of his shattered shield. He looks at one and sees Hela's visage in it, leading the audience to think that maybe Hela is going to be the big conflict (or a big conflict) in the next season... only for a second Captain America to show up, knock out the real Captain America, and then shape-shift into a Skrull, declaring that "the infiltration has begun". What a damn awesome way to end the season!

It's not a perfect finale by any means, relying a bit too much on plot devices and stuff, but Loki's a well-acted and well-voiced antagonist, we get pretty great moments for Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, and a lot of damn awesome action scenes. It's been a fun ride, and I'll return to review the series's second season pretty soon, hopefully!