Ultimate Spider-Man S01E23-24 Review: When Captain America Throws His Mighty Shield

Ultimate Spider-Man, Season 1, Episode 23: Not A Toy; Episode 24: Attack of the Beetle

Our last two standalone episodes before the finale of this season! I'm not sure if I'll do season two reviews. Ultimate Spider-Man is a fun show, but I'm not sure if I can really keep up with making reviews. Five seasons is a lot, and the show spends a good chunk of it with pretty filler-y episodes. We'll see. If nothing else, maybe I'll do seasonal reviews.

Episode 23, "Not A Toy", finally features Captain America as a guest star, the only one out of the four first solo-movie-starring Avengers to get a single guest star episode. Thor, Hulk and Iron Man all got two each. And the good Captain is basically this super-duper-competent superhero that can take down five other superheroes without breaking a sweat. Although to be fair, in that practice round, Nova did jack-all other than fly around and record his friends being pummeled.

Captain America is a great mentor, but after leaving his shield for the Juniors to play with, Spider-Man throws the shield and it... breaks through the Helicarrier's window and plummets down into the city. Spider-Man follows it with the old-school web glider things, only to see the shield fall into Dr. Doom's Latverian embassy. It's fun little hijinks as Spider-Man team up with Captain America to infiltrate the Latverian embassy, fight Doom's army of robot dogs, and get the shield back. We get the moral of "know your battle", and it's... it's a pretty simple one, honestly, but one that kind of works.

It's an insanely enjoyable and charming episode to sit through, honestly. All the characters are simultaneously funny and charming without losing any of their gravitas, and the imagine spots in this episode are all legitimately funny, whereas other episodes tended to basically try for quantity over quality. My favourite gags in this episode has to be Phil Coulson's subtle fanboying over the Captain and flustering that the Juniors will embarrass him, as well as the final shot of the episode, where Coulson accidentally throws the shield out... again. Spider-Man taunting Doom, and Doom petulantly going "mumblefineidontwantyourshieldanywaymumblemumble" is also perfect.

That said, I really don't have much to say about "Not A Toy". It's a great episode. Episode 24, "Attack of the Beetle" is... huh. It's weird. Coulson and Aunt May go for a date (hilarious, considering who Coulson ends up settling down with in Agents of SHIELD) and Spider-Man decides to be possessive, follow the two and fuck up their date. The episode decides to unnecessarily open in medias res for no good reason, and I honestly just shrugged my way through the whole Coulson/May stuff. It's... it's something, I guess? I mean, I'd be creeped out too if my SHIELD handler who also happens to be my school principal starts making moves on the only motherly figure I have, but at the same time, Spider-Man's jealous "no Aunt May is mine" mentality is also pretty weird. And on the weird Coulson/May shipping thing, I honestly don't have much to say beyond a noncommittal shrug. At least Peter actually learns from this episode to basically respect the boundaries of his family members, telling Aunt May that she deserves a chance to be happy.

The action sequences in this episode is flat-out badass, though, especially on Coulson's side. He just straight up goes toe to toe with the Beetle in the restaurant with nothing but his suit and some martial arts, with the affirmation to Spider-Man that he was the only SHIELD agent that ever took Beetle down. Lest we forget, Beetle required the combined forces of the Junior Avengers to take down last time, and while the show clearly plays favourites as the plot demands... Coulson's badass enough that I don't really mind. He got to injure the Beetle's suit with a goddamn fork and the cheesy-ass line of "Cooking school. One year." And that's before fighting Beetle with a staff that, when sliced in half, he uses as a fence. Pretty badass stuff.

While a fair bit rockier than "Not A Toy", and with a wee bit too many jokes that just fell flat on his face, "Attack of the Beetle" is a decent enough episode, I suppose. And... and that's it before we go into the two-parter finale!