Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man S01E09 Review: Thou Shalt Not Kill

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Season 1, Episode 9: Hero or Menace

As we go to the final two episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, we get some more interesting confrontations. Norman Osborn and Otto Octavius have an interesting conversation in prison, and I do like the worldbuilding here as the two intelligent control freaks' egos are butting heads towards each other. It's not anywhere as good as the recent PS4 Spider-Man game's take on the two's relationship if I'm being honest, and particularly because Peter Parker has not even really interacted with Otto, but it's a neat bit of worldbuilding. Otto's rambling about how Norman doesn't actually build anything but just steals whatever other people builds does serve well as both a motive rant for the soon-to-be Dr. Octopus, but also an indictment of how Norman has been utilizing Peter. 

A follow-up on the whole 'gang wars' storyline has The 110th stake out the transport of the Octavius equipment... and frankly, I do feel that with how much of a control-freak Norman Osborn is, I felt it was weird that he wasn't at least watching this shipment. I guess he assumed with Otto behind bars, no one can touch the technology he's stealing? The 110th try to hijack the truck, and the truck almost hits Nico Minoru (who happen to be walking nearby, thanks to the plot-mandated 'all side characters hang out' trope). Spider-Man, of course, swoops in to save Nico, and drops her safely off in an alley.  

We then have a bit of a scuffle as Spider-Man finally confronts the 110th. Lonnie's story has admittedly been shoehorned in our faces all season long, but it was executed relatively well. Him finally realizing that his actions have consequences when he sees the truck almost kill Nico, and the subsequent verbal confrontation with Spider-Man finally punches some cracks in his reliance towards Big Donovan and the 110th. 

Of course, since this is the climax of a superhero season, you can't talk things down. The Scorpion and his gang shows up, and Spider-Man understandably goes into a bit of a panic attack over his recent near-death experience at the hands of the supervillain. He does manage to pull himself together to at least put up a fight, but this freaks out Big Donovan... who runs away once he realizes that his gang is at a disadvantage. Big Donovan's escape really shatters whatever trust Lonnie has in his leader, which... again, I kind of wished that they had played up some realization to the slow gaslighting and build-up of dependance instead of a simple 'he ran away, the coward'. But oh well.

This leads Lonnie to go into the truck of Octavius goodies to try and get something to even the scales, and in typical superhero/supervillain origin story fashion he gest dosed with an experimental gas. While initially seemingly wounded, turns out that the gas gave him superhuman strength and he manages to save Spider-Man by grabbing Scorpion's tail. We get a typical superhero team-up, but in the process Scorpion seemingly kills Lonnie by dropping some construction i-beams on top of him. 

And the superhero team-up stuff and boss fight is cute and nicely executed, but it's honestly quite by-the-books. What's far more interesting is Spider-Man's subsequent rage as he sees red. Shocked that his friend might just have been killed in front of his eyes,  and remembering Norman's words about 'pulling his punches', Spider-Man just goes berserk and beats the shit out of Scorpion, in stark contrast to the panic he displayed earlier in the episode, and the fun irreverence he showed during the Lonnie team-up. In a scene somewhat reminiscent of No Way Home's Green Goblin confrontation, Spider-Man beats the everloving crap out of Scorpion, and almost impales him with his own mechanized tail.

Lonnie, of course, has Luke Cage powers now and isn't actually dead (he basically is less of an adaptation of Tombstone, and more of a teenage Luke Cage, isn't he?), and he stops Spider-Man in time before he kills the Scorpion. We get a basic -- but very well voice-acted -- argument about how Scorpion will always try and kill them and will always try to kill more people, but Lonnie convinces Spider-Man not to sink to the level of scum like Scorpion. 

Again, it's nothing really new to the superhero genre, but I did enjoy it -- it was pretty well executed. As the police come to arrest the unconscious Scorpion, Lonnie leaves with his gang while Spider-Man goes to see Nico. He finally gives a big speech about being sorry for keeping a secret, while Nico gets some perspective at the sheer amount of danger and responsibility that Peter has on his scrawny back all this time. The two reconcile, although the show shows Nico's uncomfortable expression that implies she's hiding something from Peter... something that anyone that's a bit more familiar with Runaways would probably already be clued in towards. 

Despite multiple huge storyline elements being wrapped up, however, this is just episode 9 out of 10. In the last scenes of this episode, Norman calls Peter and congratulates him. I do like that Peter does still view Norman as a mentor in some way, and confides in him about his near loss of control, but Norman kind of brushes it off with some speech about the hero's path being difficult. After the call, Norman reconvenes with his little scientist minions... and his plans are slowly coming together. Wittman tells Norman, in particular, that Oscorp has succeeded in researching Spider-Man's blood and have a way to duplicate the power within... dun dunn dunnn!

So yeah. This is the finale to the Lonnie Lincoln origin story, while also wrapping up a bunch of other story threads too -- the Scorpion storyline, Otto (for now) and Peter's drama with Nico. Scorpion himself is a pretty simple but effective antagonist, and as I mentioned above I did like the Peter-rage moment. Lonnie is perhaps the break-it-or-make-it part of this season to most viewers, because... well, he might be using the name and powers of comic-book Tombstone, but most of this characterization is original to the show and it's undoubtable that he does take up a significant portion of the show's attention. I do lament the albino representation of comics Tombstone and I still find it odd that they chose not to do it, but the execution is... it's all right. I will admit that I like the buildup a lot more than the rather basic payoff. All in all, though, not too much to complain about. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The title screen with Scorpion holding a shredded Spider-Man mask is a reference to Spectacular Spider-Man #215.
• In the comics, Tombstone also gained his super-strength and indestructible skin via exposure to an experimental gas. 
• The 'menace' in the title is a nod to J. Jonah Jameson's catchphrase of calling Spider-Man a menace. 
• The idea of Spider-Man brutally beating up a villain and almost killing the villain with his own weapon, before being stopped by an ally, is notably the climax of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
• Otto swears revenge on Norman, growling "the die is cast". This is Otto's catchphrase in the comics as the Superior Spider-Man. 
• This isn't the first time that Spider-Man swings upside-down in front of a girl, since that is the most famous shot from the original Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movie. Unlike Mary Jane, a surprised Nico punches Peter in the face. 
• This isn't the first time that Oscorp has experimented with Spider-Man's blood or genetically enhanced spiders, being particularly relevant in the Amazing Spider-Man duology. 
• The broken vial that gives Tombstone his super-strength is identified as Diox-3, the same chemical that gave comics Tombstone his own powers.