Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Fifty-Three: The Wedding

 The Wedding

First Aired: September 12th, 1997

Synopsis: Aunt May and Peter go to the bank, where Aunt May takes her and Ben's old wedding rings out of a safety deposit box to give to Peter. As this is happening, however, Scorpion attacks the bank, and manages to escape with Aunt May as a hostage despite Spider-Man's best efforts. Outside, Spider-Man taunts Scorpion so that he drops Aunt May, and he saves her while Scorpion escapes. In Ravencroft Asylum, Harry Osborn is in therapy, and although he still has issues to get through, he thinks that he was only imagining that Peter was Spider-Man. He gets a visit from Mary Jane and Liz Allen, and when Mary Jane tells Harry that she's marrying Peter, he has a breakdown and starts seeing visions of the Green Goblin again. Shortly afterwards, he escapes from Ravencroft and makes an alliance with Alistair Smythe, who also brings in Scorpion as muscle. Smythe builds robotic warriors to assist Harry.

Meanwhile, Peter is taken to see Wilson Fisk, who says he'll pay for Peter's wedding as a publicity stunt for a paper he's bought. J. Jonah Jameson is outraged and tries upping the ante, but Fisk consistently plans better than Jonah. On the day of the wedding, Robbie Robertson is Peter's best man, and Felicia Hardy finds time to return to New York for it. The Green Goblin crashes it with robots and Scorpion, leading to Spider-Man having to fight them alongside Black Cat, with some unexpected assistance from Kingpin using one of Smythe's robots he still has. Inside the church, Harry tries forcing the priest to marry him and Mary Jane, but it's drawn out enough that Spider-Man's able to get back inside. He's unable to talk down Harry, but Liz Allen comes in and is able to do so, convincing Harry that he still has friends and that he needs to respect Mary Jane's wishes. Harry collapses and the wedding soon resumes, after which Jonah reveals he did outdo Fisk in one respect - he got Peter and Mary Jane a vehicle; namely a Daily Bugle van. From the dimension he's trapped in, Norman Osborn tries contacting Harry, but can't get through.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• We see some of Harry's delusions when he's in Ravencroft, and part of them is a Daily Bugle newspaper with the headline GREEN GOBLIN STRIKS AGAIN. I guess Harry's subconsciousness left spellcheck off.
• Liz Allen reveals that she's interested romantically in Harry, and while it does come from left-field a bit, it's taken right out of the comics. Granted, it was also a bit left-field and mostly happened offscreen there, but hey, can't say it's not true to the source! (Also, props to her for being willing to overlook the guy's mental health issues).
• When Smythe reveals his robotic warriors, he announces that "I call it...the Goblin Robo-Warrior!" To which Harry responds, "I'm not interested in your dramatic flair for names, Smythe!" How the heck that qualifies as a dramatic name, I don't know.
• Careful, Robbie! You're Peter's best man now, and we all know what happened last time you and he got close to one another!
  

Review: I'm not going to call this a perfect episode, but it does manage to absolutely nail a lot of stuff. The fight between Spider-Man and Scorpion at the start is textbook Spidey, from the fact that it's a random bank robbery right when Peter's there, to Scorpion coincidentally choosing Aunt May as a hostage. But it all works great!  Harry's plot to marry Mary Jane himself works because he's delusional, and while the additional of the army of robots is a bit too cartoony for my liking, it does raise the stakes a bit. I'm also a big fan of Harry being defeated by being shown some compassion and sympathy (although it's undermined a bit by him only listening when a woman says she loves him).

For things I'm less keen on, let's start with the big one: unlike last time Harry Osborn was antagonising Peter, when it was ambiguous as to whether the Green Goblin was all a delusion or really was communicating with him, this episode more or less goes, "Ambiguity? In this show? Naaaah," and shows that the Goblin really is communicating with Harry. All of a sudden, that aspect is a lot less interesting, and raises some questions - I understand why Norman wants to get revenge, but why isn't he trying to escape the dimension he's in, especially given that Mary Jane seemingly has? As an aside, I also wasn't too big on Harry forming an alliance with Smythe; why not just have Scorpion as the secondary threat? You could even contrive him showing up there for his own reasons, and have the two work independently of one another.

That aside though, this episode does work pretty well, and it's great to get such a landmark moment happen in the cartoon (not that Peter and Mary Jane were ever married in the comics; right, Quesada?) The humour of the invisible war between Jonah and Fisk is absolutely perfect, and aside from the relationship status of Peter and Mary Jane, I hope that rivalry is something we continue seeing in future episodes, because it's great.