Ultimate Spider-Man S02E17-18 Review: The Goblin Returns

Ultimate Spider-Man, Season 2, Episodes 17-18

Episode 17: Venom Bomb

We're continuing with the Green Goblin/Dr. Octopus/Venom storyline that dominated the ongoing background plot of the first season... and, wow, I'm going to take this time to note just how badly it has degenerated. I know that Ultimate Spider-Man (and Avengers Assemble, and the rest of this "Marvel Animated Universe" or whatever) works on a far more child-friendly episodic mentality and abhors serialization... but really? This was their solution?

Where in the first season the slow buildup of Harry Osborn's frustration, Dr. Octavius's transformation from 'just' a mad scientist into a supervillain and everything about Norman Osborn was built up quite well, in this season Green Goblin is reduced into a mwa-ha-ha-ing generic recurring villain with very little personality beyond "make it tie into Venom/Harry somehow". And Dr. Octopus, while still gloriously creepy, has sort of degenerated into... well, a generic mad scientist enemy.

It's a shame, really. This episode has an admittedly simple storyline that could've been so great under a writing team that gives a shit (or isn't too afraid of making a plot more complex for anyone above the age of six), but it's just so... so dull. Green Goblin gets defeated and captured, but it's his plan all along to sneak in some Venom symbiote, who then zips around infecting everyone and replicating. So basically earlier this season it's Carnage-in-name-only, now it's Venom showcasing his replicating parasite ability? What is this? Are we going to get all the fifteen colour-coded variations of Venom before the season is over? Spider-Man gets a pretty bland attempt at setting up a moral dilemma about arguing with SHIELD about whether to save Norman or to just incarcerate Green Goblin on the moon, but the writing and scripting is so insipid due to the episode basically ignoring it other than a couple of obligatory lines.

It's kinda cool to see the Venom symbiotes take over the Tricarrier, and that one-eyed Fury-Venom is kinda neat, but ultimately it's another rehash of Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus teaming up, cooking up some instant antidote, and defeat Goblin and the Venoms. Octopus escapes, the Venoms are defeated and Goblin is turned back into Norman, which honestly is pretty underwhelming -- did Norman actually accomplish anything as Green Goblin? He's got a neat but ultimately more-of-a-setup season finale in the first season, but in this season he does jack shit and ends up being utterly disappointing. Oh well. This episode was a decent watch, at least, as an action episode. The animation team genuinely tends to have fun whenever Venom and Dr. Octopus are involved.

Episode 18: Guardians of the Galaxy

And, oh, man, at least with "Venom Bomb", the animation and voice-acting are great even if the plotline and pacing aren't. This episode, "Guardians of the Galaxy", is basically a textbook example of how to make something so utterly and mind-numbingly boring. And it's genuinely baffling! I've seen the Guardians of the Galaxy star in basically every other superhero cartoon post-MCU. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Avengers Assemble both did it, but god damn, you'd  think that the show who has a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy as a central character would try to at least give the Guardians some characterization. Every single god damned Guardian ends up being locked up in a prison cell for half of an episode, when they get released we get a long-winded and poorly-written information dump about their powers by Nova (which tells me even less than a toy advertisement) and for the rest of the episode, Star-Lord, Gamora and Drax genuinely have less personality than any given Chitauri soldier in the episode. And this isn't hyperbole. Every single line of dialogue out of the Guardians is either exposition delivered in the blandest voice-acting, or just them praising Nova.

Generic space villain Korvac is a genuinely bland random alien dictator, and comparing him to the Korvac from Avengers: EMH, it's a genuinely harsh comparison where one is going to be forgotten by me after I click 'publish',  and the other I will at least remember as a memorable villain of the week. But honestly, the Guardians of the Galaxy themselves are just so, so bland! There's not even any sort of attempt at showing any of the five's personalities, and even Rocket Raccoon's increased screentime as Nova's mentor ends up amounting to jack shit.

It's also supposed to be Nova's 'focus' episode, and this season seem to have one for each of Spider-Man's buddies (arguably, we ideally should've had all of these origin episodes in season one), but comparing it to White Tiger's Kraven episode where we learn all about her struggles with her totem and that she's a successor to her dead father; or Iron Fist and everything revolving his role as future king of K'un Lun... we learn jack shit about Nova beyond "he used to be part of the Guardians".

Honestly, there is absolutely nothing in this episode that's likable, and considering that it's supposed to feature madcap, colourful space aliens fighting more space aliens, it's actually impressive how utterly mind-numbingly boring they managed to turn everyone into. Probably one of the worst episodes this season, honestly -- I am genuinely bored throughout the entire thing, none of the action scenes work, none of the characters stand out, all the comedic beats fall flat and all the lines are bad. Did they have to rush this out in order to tie in to one of the live-action movies? Because that's really the only barely acceptable excuse here. This is bad.