Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 19: Emperor Stark
What initially started off as "the new guy's spotlight episode'' ended up being a pretty dang good episode! The episode starts off with the automatic repairs done to Vision two episodes ago completing, and Vision wakes up... in a world where Iron Man is like supreme overlord of the world? With Avengers and giant Sentinel-esque Iron Man drones patrolling the world? It's an interesting concept, and while it's not Stark's ego that went haywire and merely a mind-controlling villain in Killgrave (known here by his far less cool comic-book moniker, Purple Man), it's still very interesting for Vision to try and figure out how to handle this situation.
Purple Man's taken over Tony Stark and used him as a conduit to spread his own influence and powers through a satellite, and we get a pretty cool scene where he tells Tony that everything he does is basically a corruption of Tony's own desires for ego, for control, for power... yet it's not Tony that's at the helm, but the Purple Man. With a voice provided by Star Trek's Brent Spiner, the Purple Man is a pretty gloriously sleazy villain. I'm not sure how much of his taunts are true, and at the end of the episode it's the same doubts that end up plaguing Iron Man's head. Sure, there's the whole mind control aspect and Captain America is quick to quash that particular train of thought, but Tony Stark's seen just how out of control his own ego can get, and what's to say some part of him doesn't actually want this?
And while the episode doesn't actually go deep into exploring the deep mental ramifications of Tony's control by Killgrave, the Vision story is pretty well-told as well. Free from the origin story baggage, Vision is free to just be a hero. And while he suffers from the same problem with Ms. Marvel that he's just... a hero without any real specific characterization, we do get a lot of great moments thanks to his more logic-oriented mindset. He ends up facing against Captain America and makes use of Cap's speech from episode 17 about what separates humans and machines to break him free of Killgrave's control.
Next up, Vision and Cap face off against Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel, leading to a pretty badass moment where Cap and Hawkeye argue about allegiances, with Captain America telling Hawkeye that "you've never listened to anyone's orders, now you're going to die because Tony Stark tells you to?" It's a line that really builds up on one and a half season's worth of history with Hawkeye easily being the most independent of the Avengers, and it's at this point where poor Marvel's lack of significant backstory ends up hurting the episode. She breaks free because... she feels bad for killing? That's not quite the history and emotional-driven freeing of mind control that Cap and Hawkeye went through. Oh, and Ms. Marvel ends up succumbing to the mind control again halfway through the climax, just because.
Of course, the Avengers take down the satellite, Iron Man manages to break free of the Purple Man's control at the last second, and in-between it all we get the utterly badass moment with Vision. "I will deal with Thor", he says, stepping out of the Quinjet and then increasing his density a couple hundred times before dropping down like a meteor to meet the charging Thor. Pretty badass sequence.
Overall, despite my complaints, an actually solid episode that I enjoyed the whole way through.
No comments:
Post a Comment