Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Thirty-One: The Sins of the Fathers, Chapter 4 - Enter the Green Goblin

Enter the Green Goblin

First Aired: May 18th, 1996

Synopsis: Oscorp's board of directors are disgusted with Norman Osborn for making chemical weapons at Oscorp, but unbeknownst to them, he's only doing so since the Kingpin - himself a board member - is forcing him to. As Osborn and another scientist, Stromm, work on the chemical, it explodes and there's a fire. Spider-Man shows up and saves Stromm, but Norman Osborn can't be saved. Harry Osborn soon joins Oscorp's executives, but is stressed out and blames them for the death of his father. Soon afterwards, a new character calling himself the Green Goblin starts kidnapping the board members, and when Spider-Man fights him, it turns out that the Goblin has super-strength. When Spider-Man investigates Oscorp, remembering that Hobgoblin's weapons came from there, he sees a stressed-out Harry looking at blueprints for the Goblin's weapons, and starts to wonder whether Harry might be the Goblin, getting revenge on the board of directors.

 

Mary Jane reveals to Peter that she thinks Harry's behind the board of directors getting kidnapped, and while Peter defends his friend, he also puts a spider-tracer on Mary Jane since he fears she's correct and Harry might hurt her. Shortly afterwards she investigates Oscorp, where she runs into the Green Goblin who kidnaps her and takes her to his underwater base. All of the board members are there, and the Goblin starts to put on a mock trial for them before Spider-Man shows up, having followed his tracer. He fights the Green Goblin, and frees everyone when a stray pumpkin bomb causes the base to start flooding. While they get out, Spider-Man manages to unmask the Green Goblin, and discovers that he's Norman Osborn, not actually dead. The chemicals he was working with gave him a split personality as the Green Goblin, but they start wearing off and he doesn't remember what happened. Spider-Man gets him out of the base, and at a press conference he announces that he wants Harry to join him at Oscorp. Later, Spider-Man visits Felicia Hardy, who had given a note to Peter Parker, and she kisses him as thanks for saving her mother from the Goblin.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When the Green Goblin talks about the chemicals which created him, he reveals that the costume was originally one of the Hobgoblin's at Oscorp, which changed colours as a result of the chemicals. Was that really necessary?
• Norman's scientist friend, Stromm, has the first name of Wardell here, whereas in the comics his name is Mendel.

Review: Man, the rule about the Green Goblin automatically making any episode awesome continues to be proven true. He's ruthless, very clearly insane, and his motivation makes complete sense. Leading us to believe that Harry will be the Goblin and then revealing that it's Norman all along seems like an obvious twist, but The Spectacular Spider-Man will do a similar thing and pull it off just as well, while The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will actually have Harry precede Norman as the Green Goblin, shortly before their universe is deleted by the Omniscient Council of Sony. So while I wasn't really expecting Harry to turn out to be the Goblin, there were enough concrete examples for there to still be some doubt.

Suspecting that Harry might be the Goblin also leads to an amazing moment for Peter - when Mary Jane tells him that she thinks Harry might be the Green Goblin, he briefly thinks about agreeing with her solely to make himself look better than Harry. It's human and flawed, and that Peter ultimately disagrees with Mary Jane is a great example of the sort of person he is; ten out of ten for that scene. Another small thing I loved was Kingpin public berating Norman while privately being the one responsible for his foray into chemical weapons. The Kingpin's identity being secret isn't a plot the show goes to often, but when it does it leads to excellent moments like that.

Any flaws? Well, the Goblin Glider still looks like (and probably is) a toy advertisement, and Peter putting a spider-tracer on MJ without her knowing is a little creepy (and on that note, why's she investigating Oscorp, anyway?) But really, who the hell cares? This is an excellent introduction to the Green Goblin that knows that part of his hook is the mystery of who he is, but also knows not to draw out the mystery for more than it needs to be. Absolutely fantastic writing overall.