Ultimate Spider-Man S02E21-22 Review: Daywalker & Giant-Sized-Man-Thing

Ultimate Spider-Man, Season 2, Episodes 21-22: Blade / The Howling Commandos

A pair of interesting episodes, in that we actually do have our first proper two-parter since... since the first season finale, actually! And it's a pair of pretty neat ones, especially when I didn't realize that it was even supposed to be a two-parter.

"Blade" the episode starts off with, well, the Junior Avengers meeting up and encountering Blade, the Daywalker, who unlike a vast majority of the guest stars in this show, is a certified lone wolf. Even Wolverine was willing to play nice! Blade is just a couple of dialogues away from being a straight-up psychopath at times, not really caring all that much for Team Spidey's survival or welfare as they team up to fight a bunch of vampire shadow-demon minions to protect the plot device of the week, Tekhamenthep's Ankh. Our villain in this two-parter? Count Dracula himself, who has a far, far better showing this time around compared to his pretty sorry portrayal in this show's cousin show, Avengers Assemble. Sure, he's kind of a generic vampire lord that speaks like a minimal-effort "hey, this is the boss fight for this dungeon" antagonist in a D&D campaign, but he does bring enough coolness and menace to the whole thing.

It's a pretty simple and slow-paced episode, although we do get the unfortunate side effect of having the rest of the Junior Avengers basically be window-dressing. Nova does get a couple of badass moments going supernova (heh) but they're ultimately reduced to dudes-and-a-damsel in distress when Dracula uses his mind-control powers to take control of all four of them and spirit them away as hostages. Apparently, Blade's sunglasses and Spider-Man's mask are 'polarized' enough to block Dracula's magic, but neither Power Man's sunglasses nor White Tiger's mask works? Huh?

That's when the first episode ends, on a pretty interesting cliffhanger of a villain winning for once. The episode was relatively light on wacky, fourth-wall breaking antics too, and most of the comedy ends up being derived more from the interactions between Blade and Spider-Man, as well as Spider-Man himself freaking out from all the vampire and mystical mumbo-jumbo.

The second episode, "Howling Commandos", introduces the titular Commandos, and they are not Captain America's WWII unit! The Howling Commandos here are a bunch of monsters, comprised of Frankenstein's Monster, N'Kantu the Living Mummy, Werewolf-By-Night (a very non-catchy name, that) and their ride, the Monster Truck. Later on we get to see the final member of their team, Man-Thing, who is the only one out of this motley crew that I recognize. And for a bunch of guest stars, the Howling Commandos are handled far, far better than the Guardians of the Galaxy are. They actually have personalities. Yes, they may be minimal, but I can quickly grasp that the Werewolf is the one sane man that's pretty chill with others, I can grasp Blade's friction with his former teammates, that Frankenstein's Monster is a gun-toting, simple but kind-hearted brute, Man-Thing is the silent powerhouse, and N'Kantu is a dick.

The show doesn't really go too deep into it, but I do feel like there's at least an effort at trying to contrast Blade with Spider-Man. Like most of Ultimate Spider-Man's efforts, though, it's unfortunately a bit of a shame that they built up the parallels only to not deliver any payoffs.

The team ultimately defeat Dracula in his wacky Escher-painting castle, free the Junior Avengers... and N'Kantu betrays everyone! Of course, at this point it's clear that he's the token-evil-teammate, and while not the most well executed of plot twists, at least it makes sense from what we've been shown all episode long about these characters. We get a bit of a kaiju fight between N'Kantu and a New-York-sewer-goop-empowered Man-Thing (I am an immature child and I giggled at the Giant-Sized Man-Thing joke). It's... it's actually a pretty fun, epic end to this wacky two-parter, actually. It doesn't do anything particularly well, but it's basically what guest star episodes should be more. It's fun, and it displays its guest stars pretty dang well. Again, I really do appreciate that they make the comedic moments actually about the absurdity of the events happening and not just weird random mini-skit comedy.