Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 2, Episode 24: Operation Galactic Storm
From this episode onwards we're having a two-parter that wraps up the Kree storyline, and then a series finale. It's been quite a while since we've started reviewing Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and I'm actually quite glad to have watched it despite my problems with the pacing and character balancing that plagued a good chunk of the second season. It's a bit of a shame, then, that these final episodes are also pretty problematic, although they tend to make up for it in fun action scenes. "Operation Galactic Storm" is finally the long-awaited arrival of the Kree, where the full might of the Kree Empire is determined to destroy Earth and turn the remains into just a pit-stop in their huge Kree/Skrull conflict. We get a fun little cold open as the SWORD-commanded Falchion One ends up encountering a distortion which turns out to be a wormhole that allows a good chunk of Kree ships to enter and set up a proper portal system for an invasion force.
But as Falchion One comes under assault by the far superior Kree weaponry, the Avengers end up having to face off against the strike-force sent by the Kree to Earth. Oh, and we get some intro-dump from Mar-Vell, and he also modifies the Avengers' Quinjet and spacesuits in like the span of three seconds to allow them to survive the heat of the sun. That was a bit hard to swallow, timeline-wise. Oh, a bunch of Kree ninja attack the SWORD base, but Yellowjacket and Agent Brand elect to stay behind and hold the line while the Avengers and Mar-Vell go off into space. We get a couple of great fighting scenes, of course, whether on Earth or in space (Black Panther calmly just teleports a Kree robot into the sun!).
After a fun bit of a scuffle against the Kree ninjas, Yellowjacket and Brand manage to drive off a good amount of the Kree, but not before they escape with Ronan and his big hammer in tow, and leave behind a continent-destroying bomb. And... and this is a bit of silliness, honestly, where we spend way, way too much time with Brand panicking and Yellowjacket insisting that he's totally not Hank Pym before whipping out his gun and shrinking the bomb into such a small size that the explosion is nothing more than a puff. Yes, Yellowjacket definitely deserved that punch to the face for being such a dick when everyone's literally praying for their lives.
Meanwhile, in space, the conundrum is raised -- they have to pilot a ship into the wormhole to allow Hawkeye to shoot and destroy the wormhole generators, but someone has to pilot the Falchion to operate its tractor beam. Around halfway through this operation, the Falchion sustains enough damage that T'Challa is forced to operate the ship manually to maintain the tractor beam as the ship falls into the Sun. Captain America, of course, refuses to leave Black Panther behind, and... and it's pretty contrived, really, and it's the Avengers' own fault for putting all three of their heavy-hitters into the same ship. Apparently this is the decision that Kang was talking about, how Captain America made a decision that will lead to the devastation of the sun and Earth... and with Black Panther's blessing, they just watch as T'Challa's ship blows up, Hawkeye shuts down the wormhole, while the Quinjet enters Kree space.
And it's honestly not the worst ending for T'Challa, all things considered. He's clearly been a little ignored throughout the second season, and I kind of wish that the episode actually built up Panther's role in this episode a little to 'sell' the fact that they're killing him off... but the sheer abruptness of the ship exploding, how everyone is somehow suddenly helpless and how this ends up being Steve's big moral choice out of nowhere felt pretty rushed. Worst of all is, of course, the conclusion of this particular storyline which would be revealed in the next episode, which is just all sorts of messy and walks all over the whole fact of Captain America having to make a hard decision. I dunno. At least the action scenes are kinda cool.
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