Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Fifty: Partners in Danger, Chapter 9 - The Haunting of Mary Jane

The Haunting of Mary Jane

First Aired: July 19th, 1997

Synopsis: At a pirate-themed fundraiser, robotic pirates attack everyone and start getting away with valuables. Spider-Man fights them off right before Mysterio, who is behind the attack, appears, but Spider-Man's able to defeat him and get him thrown in jail. One prison guard explains Mysterio's origin to another, and mentions that in the last film he was working on before he became Mysterio, the actress, Miranda Wilson, disappeared during a stunt gone wrong. Coincidentally that same film is being picked up to be finished, and Mary Jane has been cast in Miranda's role since they look similar. The film is shooting at the same studio where Spider-Man first fought Mysterio, which was filled with traps and hidden passageways back then. On the first day of shooting, Mary Jane is preparing for the role when a ghostly figure of her father appears and leads her away. Peter, who is on set for some reason, changes to Spider-Man and investigates, and leads Mary Jane away from the underground cavern she's ended up in.

 

Spider-Man goes to see whether Mysterio was in it, and while Quentin Beck is still in jail, Spider-Man slips a spider-tracer onto him to be sure - but unbeknownst to him, Beck uses it with some technology he snuck in to escape. The next day, Mary Jane is knocked off-set by a heavy torrent of water used in the scene, and encounters the ghostly version of her father again. Spider-Man goes after her once more and is attacked by Mysterio, but is then saved by a second Mysterio when it's revealed the first is a robot. Mysterio reveals that Kingpin sold him some technology under the condition he use it to defeat Spider-Man, but that it's too dangerous and needs to be destroyed, which he wants Spider-Man's help for. Spider-Man agrees since Mysterio can lead him to Mary Jane. They fight their way through Mysterio's robots until they find Mary Jane captured by Miranda Wilson, who is mostly robot at this point. She reveals that she was heavily burned when the stunt went wrong, and was found by Mysterio and wants to steal Mary Jane's youth and looks, but Mysterio reveals that he can't actually give them to her, and that he loves her as she is. She starts blowing up the lab, and Spider-Man gets away with Mary Jane. In the aftermath, he unmasks in front of Mary Jane, saying that it's time to reveal his identity to her.

Subplots:

• Mary Jane noticeably avoids the topic of where she's been all of this time, implying that whatever happened to her, it's not going be something as simple as "I found my way back to our Earth tee hee."

Review: This episode shows promise, but it's definitely one where the concept is better than the execution. Miranda Wilson being involved in the plot is incredibly obvious once she's given a name and role in the backstory, but it manages to work since her character has purpose beyond just being a shock twist - she's actively driving the plot, and her goal of regaining her beauty is very human and realistic (especially if we're talking about Hollywood stars, amirite?) She's also got a pretty good design - between that and her motivation, I'd easily call her the best original villain we've seen for a while, and probably the best original villain we'll see for a while yet.

Unfortunately there are some issues here. For one thing, the pacing could be tightened up a bit - the opening scene with Mysterio trying to steal money (using fucking robot pirates, like this is Spider-Man (1967) or something) drags out for far too long, and we don't really spend much time on the fun concept of Spider-Man and Mysterio teaming up. Even in what time is allocated to it, it's mostly just Spider-Man fighting robots while Mysterio shouts at him; there's a lot of wasted potential there. Why don't we get Spider-Man and Mysterio bonding over gadgets, or have Mysterio try to discover how web shooters work?

Really, this episode could have been - and feels like it was intended to be - either a Mysterio or a Mary Jane character piece, but we don't really get anything interesting with the former, and we haven't started peeling back the mystery of the latter. What we get is an okay Spider-Man adventure, but I've seen enough of those by now that I want something a bit more interesting.