Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes S02E17 Review: Creating The Thing You Dread

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2,  Episode 17: Ultron Unlimited

So this is an episode that basically adapts Vision's change of heart from being a minion of Ultron into an Avenger. It also has to deal with the return of Ultron from the first season... and it's... serviceable, I suppose. The episode begins with Ms. Marvel being taken out by a bunch of fake "Synthezoid" Avengers, who then proceed to attack Captain America and Hawkeye, with Captain America infiltrating these fake Avengers. It's a standard cartoon episode plotline -- one that doesn't really offer much of a surprise, but has enough moving parts to last the episode.

If nothing else, at least the episode jumps around enough to actually sell Vision's confusion at his directives, unlike Vision's original debut. Vision first breaks through his programming when he accidentally shoots Janet in the shoulder, despite directives to abduct her unharmed, and he starts to show anger and frustration. Again, none of these scenes are particularly super-awesome as far as sci-fi robots gaining sentience go, but it's serviceable.

We also get the handwaved return of Ultron (he just happens to reassemble himself after season one or something), who... wants to transfer Janet's consciousness into a female robot body, Jocasta, because... creepy reasons that I'm not really going to ruminate about a lot? Janet does lampshade that Ultron himself is becoming more human by desiring a "girlfriend", and then we get the team-up of Captain America being revealed as the real deal, while Vision struggles with morality. We get the Captain's huge speech about how "I'm not here for myself, I'm here for my team" and how a mere machine can't understand it. This episode and the previous one really doesn't do Vision's heel face turn any real justice, though. Other than Ultron being a dick to Vision once or twice, there really isn't any proper reason that that particular line would sway Vision to the side of good. 

But, of course, because the comic book demands it, Vision ends up turning against Ultron, being the only one who can phase through Ultron's Adamantium body, allowing Thor to beat Ultron's head off,  and then gets rescued by Captain America. Vision ends up giving a speech about how perfection, in his mind, means becoming more human. Again, all the actual lines are well-written, but neither this episode nor Vision's previous outing really ends up selling the fact that this is a character who have changed because he was inspired by the Avengers. Individually it's an okay episode, but ultimately a bit of a miss for me. But hey, a new member joins the party!