Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E03 Review: Masters of Evil - Civil War

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 3: Acts of Vengeance

Well, this is a surprisingly darker episode! We get a proper follow-up to the Masters of Evil subplot that was sort of dropped halfway through the season one finale -- and with all the Loki and Nine Realms stuff going on, it's not hard to see why the storywriters decided to drop the Masters of Evil. Some clarification on the part of the two main players -- Zemo and Enchantress -- would definitely be far more preferable during the season one finale, though, for sure. The simple answer to their predicament, though, is that they've all survived... but the Enchantress is not happy. And it's an interesting nod to Zemo and Enchantress's dynamic throughout season one. Sure, Zemo might posture and call all the shots, but ultimately at the end of the day the entire group was just brought together as pawns by the Enchantress.

A very angry Enchantress, at this point, who is pretty dang pissed that Zemo did the whole "tried to betray her" thing. And as this episode starts off, the Enchantress and the Exeuctioner (who now dual-wields shotguns!) are going around hunting down every single member of the Masters of Evil, straight-up killing them off one by one as she works her way up the ladder. Well, maybe not kill them outright -- still a cartoon meant for kids, after all -- but god damn if the scenes that showed the Enchantress doing horrible things to the villains aren't pretty final-looking until some character off-handedly notes that "yeah, they're still alive. In a sense."

The one we get to spend the most time with is poor Chemistro, who's just a costumed dude in a gun, and gets turned into pure gold by the Enchantress as an 'ironic' death. We also get to see the aftermath of poor Living Laser, who is trapped in a weird, nightmarish 'frozen' form that seems to be mid-transmission. And then we get to see an encounter between the Enchantress and Arnim Zola. Poor Doughboy dies, and Arnim Zola is last seen smashed onto the ceiling and we never actually get the confirmation that "he's alive, kinda" by anyone in the cast.

The remaining Masters of Evil -- although at this point it's basically just Zemo, Abomination and Wonder Man -- end up asking the Avengers for protection. Iron Man is happy to build up a plan that involves using Zemo as bait to lure the Enchantress into some magic-nullifying device. Hulk is just happy to punch the Abomination in the face, leading to a fun background event while the big boys scheme and parley. There's actually a darkly hilarious bit at this point when Zemo reveals that he's left Crimson Dynamo to literally buy some time with his life to distract the Enchantress and Executioner. What's a team for, right? Iron Man and Hawkeye end up going off to some ice-covered wasteland to rescue Dynamo, and we get some of my favourite action scenes in this episode.

The episode's heavy with character moments, too, with a nice bit of Black Panther and Wonder Man continuing their talk about how Wonder Man could definitely try and be good and not rely on Zemo, especially since the Avengers are offering an alternative. Zemo himself also gets a fair bit of character moments, with Zemo agreeing to be used as bait only so long as Captain America is the one holding the trigger, noting that his old nemesis is the only one honourable enough to do so. Of course, Zemo didn't quite reckon with the fact that Captain America has been replaced with a green-skinned shape-shifting alien, but how would he be able to know? The Enchantress arrive, and while the other Avengers manage to hold back the Executioner, Amora ends up confronting Zemo... and SkrullCap refuses to actually rescue Zemo.

This ends up with Zemo to pull out his last resort -- the ninth Norn Stone, corresponding to Muspelheim, something that scares even the Enchantress. And while SkrullCap isn't quite happy to assist Zemo, the arrival of Iron Man, Hawkeye and Dynamo end up turning the tides in the good guys' favour. The Enchantress is subdued... but Zemo immediately orders the Masters of Evil to attack the Avengers. That is honestly kinda dumb, considering the Enchantress isn't fully subdued, but I guess Zemo's super-disappointed that Captain America has changed? Also there's the interesting bit where Crimson Dynamo doesn't actually betray Zemo even though Zemo basically left him to die.

The resulting firefight ends up freeing the Enchantress, and throughout the ensuing scuffle, we get the unexpected heroic sacrifice by Wonder Man, who straight-up blows up and seems to take out both the Norn Stone and the Enchantress with him. It's a final, heroic act by Wonder Man, and it's genuinely surprising for me to learn that Wonder Man actually dies in this episode and doesn't reform (in both meanings of the word) later in the series. Zemo, meanwhile, gets a brief acknowledgement with SkrullCap that he's not the man he once knew before being bopped in the head.

Oh, and by the way, there's a brief scene earlier in the episode showing Thor and Heimdall reacting to the Seal of Realms being broken, causing Thor to be unable to join the battles on Earth. This seems to just be a handwave and some ominous foreshadowing, which ends up ending up being relevant to the final scene of this episode -- the Enchantress being held in the palm of the Fire Giant Surtr of Muspelheim, the only realm that Loki did not list in his conquest in season one, and the bringer of Ragnarok for any of you that know about Norse mythology (or Marvel mythology).

Great stuff in this episode, lots of great character moments, some of the most exciting fights I've seen in a while, and it even leads with introducing a bigger threat for the future! This does mark the end of the Masters of Evil as a group, though, as the second season moves towards bigger things in the Marvel universe, and while I'm glad for the rising stakes, I admit that I'll miss the fun competent-Team-Rocket-esque quality of the Masters of Evil.