Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Forty-Nine: Partners in Danger, Chapter 8 - The Return of the Green Goblin

The Return of the Green Goblin

First Aired: July 12th, 1997

Synopsis: Harry Osborn has a nightmare about Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, and when he wakes up, hallucinates the Green Goblin directing him to Oscorp and directing him to inhaling Goblin gas. Elsewhere, the Punisher is at a graveyard when he spots Anna Watson, and tries to comfort her. She takes him home and serves him tea, and says that she knows of a criminal, Peter Parker, who's responsible for the disappearance of her niece, although she doesn't have any evidence. Peter, for his part, is returning to his apartment when his spider-sense warns him of it blowing up, before the Green Goblin appears. Peter changes to Spider-Man and fights the Goblin, unmasking him to discover that it's Harry. Harry gets away, but he's soon declared missing by the media, and the Punisher decides to track him down. Peter heads to Osborn Estate in search of Harry and instead finds a laptop with Goblin hideout locations on it, but is followed by the Punisher as he leaves, who also went to the mansion to try and find Harry.

 

Peter goes to one of the Goblin hideouts in case Harry's there, but is confronted by the Punisher, who thinks that Peter's the Green Goblin. Peter doesn't help his case by using some Goblin gear to get away from the Punisher. The real Goblin attacks them, and in the chaos Peter gets away, but loses the list of locations of  Goblin bases, which the Punisher finds. The Punisher goes to one of them, an abandoned ship, and tags the Goblin with a tracer as he leaves. Spider-Man works out that Harry will go to Oscorp sooner or later, and finds him there, but when he tries to talk Harry down and tells him that Norman Osborn was the Green Goblin, Harry snaps and starts embracing the identity. Their fight leads them to the George Washington Bridge, and Harry's knocked into the water and disappears. Distraught, Peter returns home, where the Punisher has a restrained and even more unhinged Harry Osborn, who washed to shore. The Punisher confronts Peter over where Mary Jane is, only for the front door to open, revealing...Mary Jane? She says she doesn't know where she's been for the past few weeks, but is taken to Anna Watson by the Punisher, while Spider-Man takes Harry away.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Peter returning to his apartment, his spider-sense warning him that it's about to explode, and him only just escaping it is taken right out of Amazing Spider-Man #136.
  
• Just in case you missed it, because it bears repeating: Anna Watson serves the Punisher tea! We're nearing Spider-Man (1967) levels of surreal here, people.
• When Peter is looking around Osborn Estate, he finds Harry's laptop and thinks "His laptop, in sleep mode! He must have thought it was off!" For all the zeitgeist-y technology stuff in this show, this line still manages to remain relevant today.

Review: Harry Osborn is a complex character, and seeing what pushes him into becoming the Green Goblin is always interesting to see. While I mentioned in the episode where the Green Goblin "died" that the stakes were a bit lower without an actual death, this episode takes advantage of the situation by making it ambiguous as to whether Harry's hallucinations of the Green Goblin are the result of his unstable mind or whether the Goblin really is contacting him somehow from another dimension. It's delightfully vague, and I think I'd actually kind of like to see some more of this.

The introduction of the Punisher is a neat little extra to add some extra conflict to the episode, although after the excellent scene of him accusing Peter of being the Green Goblin, he feels pretty superfluous to the plot. His reason for being involved in everything feels a bit contrived too, and he ultimately takes away from screen time that could have been spent on Harry/Peter conflict, or on exploring Harry's state of mind further. Still, we got him being served tea by Anna Watson, so I guess I can't complain too much.

In spite of some missteps with the Punisher, I'd probably call this the best episode of this season so far. While the earlier Black Cat stuff was interesting, a lot of it felt divorced from traditional Spider-Man stuff, or didn't really get into the real meat of what makes Spider-Man and Black Cat's relationship so fun and interesting, even if it brushed close at times. Here we have Spider-Man and Harry, both having to deal with the legacy of Norman Osborn in different ways. It's good stuff. Add on top of that Mary Jane coming back, and it all adds up to a strong episode.