Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 8: The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill
Anyway, this episode plays out like "To Steal an Ant-Man", where the entire episode focuses on a single Avenger that's been missing from the main team all season long. In this case, Thor. It also ends up being a superhero origin story for their comic-book successor, although in this case, unlike Scott Lang, Beta Ray Bill doesn't quite end up succeeding Thor as, well, Thor. The episode is pretty slow-paced, though, with the obligatory "misunderstood battling" between Thor and Bill, because Bill's entire planet Korbin has been absolutely devastated by the forces of the fire demons of Surtur, and the magical energy that Surtur's forces emit are similar to that of Asgardians.
Meanwhile, on Asgard, Sif is giving Thor some sass for thinking about Midgard and Jane Foster all the time, and while we don't quite get enough to know if this is just a warrior's disgust or actual jealousy, it's actually neat to see Sif actually show some personality. This runs throughout the episode where there's a not-insignificant amount of scenes of Sif actually starting to get pretty attached to Bill (not in that way, and if it were, it's pretty one-sided) and eventually learn of Thor's own attachment to mortals.
The actual fight between Thor and Bill is sort of neat, I suppose, but I think it's dragged on for a bit too long and resolved too quickly with what amounts to "oh, I'm a good guy. You're a good guy? Cool." I don't think we really ever see just why Bill was so worthy to pick up Mjolnir is my big problem, because while he's clearly heroic, I don't think the episode demonstrates why he's more heroic than, say, any of the Earth-born Avengers or the other Asgardians. We get a fair bit of information dump about Bill's backstory and Surtur's backstory, we get through a side-quest to forge a new hammer, the Stormbreaker, for Bill... and then we get a prolonged action sequence as Thor, Bill, Sif and Bill's ship the Scuttlebutt do battle against fire demons. The action sequence are... pretty cool, I guess? It's not that impressive, though, thanks to the sameyness of the fire demons.
There's a neat bit of showcase of how Odin's honestly kind of a shit king because he apparently didn't care when Nidavellir was ravaged by Surtur's forces, causing Eitri to demand a 'favour' from Thor to be paid at a later date in order for him to forge Stormbreaker.
And there's, of course, the matter of Enchantress, who has traded out her green garb for some sexy red leather as she basically acts as Surtur's mouthpiece. She acts all confident and powerful until a very brief moment where Thor demands that Amora surrender... and then she breaks free from Surtur's control enough to plead and cry and ask for Thor to mercy-kill her, but ends up being spirited away by Surtur anyway. That's dark, yo.
(Also, Surtur is hammering on a sword somewhere, which is apparently a huge deal in the Marvel comics mythology)
And, honestly, taken on its own, this is a neat and solid episode. Not much is wrong with this episode other than the fact as well done as individual episodes of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes tend to be, they're also basically alternating between having plot-heavy episodes where it's the Earth cast dealing with the Skrull invasion, or guest-star heavy episodes that end up not mattering when the guest stars really end up not showing up elsewhere in the season. And normally that wouldn't be a problem, but the guest star spots that introduces Beta Ray Bill and Scott Lang end up being particularly egregious for not giving any of the cast any sort of appearance... and considering how utterly shafted a huge chunk of the cast end up being in this season, it's definitely an unfortunate side effect of that story model. Anyway, this one's a neat episode as a standalone episode. The fact that neither Beta Ray Bill or Surtur ended up mattering much, though, ends up making this episode feel a bit more throwaway than usual.
Hey there! It’s me! Your friendly neighborhood Beta Ray Bill fanatic.
ReplyDeleteSo, to clarify, because I’m unsure how deep into Bill’s backstory they go. Beta Ray Bill is what happens when you take Superman’s backstory (a dying planet,) combine it with Captain America’s, then ramp Captain America bit up to 11.
You see, the Korbinites planet was dying, and the population needed to evacuate asap, so the Korbinites built a massive fleet of ships with Skuttlebutt as its flagship.
All’s well that ends well, right? Wrong. The journey to a new habitable planet is going to be a long one, and the Korbinites are going to need someone to protect them while they’re in cryosleep.
So their top scientists gather up all of the “heroes” on Korbin, all volunteers, and instead of just feeding them a super soldier serum, they subject them to the most vile and gruesome experiments imaginable in order to create the ULTIMATE SUPER SOLDIER to protect their race. All of them die. Except for BETA RAY MOTHER FUCKING BILL who not only survives the experiments as a a twisted, gruesome cyborg who’s people will always revile him (the horse head is quite literally the face of one of the most feared predators on Korbin, and one of his deepest regrets is that he’ll always be a pariah because of it) but he COMES OUT SWINGING. Bill loves his people, he will and has done everything to protect them.
So when the Korbinite Fleet is attacked by Surtur’s demons, and Thor is asked to confront the incoming “Alien Warfleet” by Nick Fury, they come to blows. Bill fighting the “demon” who’s energy signature is so similar to Surtur’s minions, and Thor fighting the misshapen monster who leads these Invaders.
Etc., etc. They fight near to the death at Odin’s behest, Bill saves Thor instead of killing him, earning Odin’s favor and Stormbreaker, a hammer of his own.
He’s one of the most honorable and kind characters in Marvel, and it’s a damn shame that he doesn’t show up more.
If you’d like, I can offer up some of his best stories! They’re mostly self contained, so even a minimal knowledge of Marvel is enough to get into them!
Absolutely neat! I have absolutely no idea who Beta Ray Bill is. I know he exists because Bill was an unlockable costume in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (which I played) and the game has enough 'basic lore' about Bill for me to shrug and go 'so Thor was a horse-alien for a while? That's unexpected', and this episode was definitely my first encounter with him as an actual character.
DeleteThey actually deliver around that much of the Korbinite backstory -- as I mentioned before, the whole bit of Bill and the Skuttlebutt protecting the hibernating members of their race is there. But they give me nothing about the whole vile super-soldier experimentation, and I don't even think they even tell us that he's a cyborg or significantly more powerful than your average Korbinite. Bit of a shame that it was dropped.
Definitely a huge shame that his appearance extends to just a single episode in this cartoon as far as I'm aware of, although to be fair this season's REALLY going a bit overboard with guest stars showing up and disappearing after their spotlight episode.
Huh! I'm not 100% sure if they showed a regular Korbinite in the cartoon, but it certainly didn't imply that Beta Ray Bill is a mutant with beast's head.
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