Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Sixty: The Return of Hydro-Man, Part 2

 The Return of Hydro-Man, Part 2

First Aired: October 31st, 1997

Synopsis: In the aftermath of the fight with Hydro-Man, Black Cat briefly flirts with Spider-Man but says that she's returning to Europe to be with Morbius. Mary Jane is jealous of this, and goes to the police with Peter to report that she's been found. Afterwards the two of them go to Doctor Connors, who speculates that the nightmare she had last episode is repressed memories of where she was when she was missing. She recounts the nightmare and the sensations she experienced in it. At a laboratory elsewhere, Hydro-Man notes that he's having difficulty reconstituting himself to a scientist there, and snaps when he's reminded of Mary Jane. He eavesdrops on Aunt May and finds out where Peter and Mary Jane will be that day, which is the Brooklyn Bridge. He attacks them and Mary Jane disappears into the river with him. 

 

As Spider-Man, Peter starts following the clues from Mary Jane's nightmare, which had the Brooklyn Bridge in it. He goes to a pirate-themed restaurant, a bakery, and a toy store, the latter of which has the toys merge together into a robot and attack him. During the fight a hole in the wall is blown up, revealing a secret passage which he follows to the lab, where Hydro-Man and Mary Jane are. Mary Jane uses her water powers to stun Hydro-Man, and the group is approached by the scientist from earlier, who reveals himself to be Miles Warren. He explains that an anonymous benefactor hired him to create some clones, and when he couldn't get their cells to stick together, he got the idea to use Hydro-Man as a source. He extracted some DNA from where Hydro-Man dissipated and created a clone of Hydro-Man, but the clone demanded a clone of Mary Jane be made. Warren did so, but Mary Jane's clone escaped, where she found her way to Peter. Warren reveals though, that his clones are still unstable, and Mary Jane and Hydro-Man dissipate. Before Mary Jane fully disappears, she tells Peter that she loves him. Spider-Man heads to the Brooklyn Bridge, distraught, where he is unexpectedly contacted by Madam Web. He doesn't want to speak with her but she reveals that she knows where Mary Jane is, and sends him away into another dimension with a kaleidoscope effect, saying that only Spider-Man can save humanity.

Subplots:

• Miles Warren contacts his employer, who is revealed to be Alistair Smythe on behalf of Silvermane. He has a scrap of Spider-Man's costume, and says that he should be able to make some big developments soon. With five episodes to go, what are the odds that this goes nowhere?

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Miles Warren is better known as the Jackal in the comics, a villain responsible for the worst Spider-Man story to date. When he first appears onscreen, Spider-Man comments that he's known for his cloning research.
• Last episode we had a very melodramatic Peter Parker; this time it's Mary Jane's turn, as she comments early on that "I just can't shake the feeling that when we find out what's wrong with me, it's going to lead to my destruction!" I mean, she's right, but for all she knew it was going to be a minor issue that was resolved without hassle.
• The secret passage between the toy store and the lab has a rollercoaster-esque transport with OSCORP labelled on it. Does this mean that Warren's repurposing an old Green Goblin lab? That Harry's behind Silvermane being behind Warren? Who the heck knows?!
• Side note, the rollercoaster also completely fails to make a turn around a bend, flies off, and explodes, a fate Spider-Man naturally avoids. Did it explode by design? Was this secret passage built without health and standards checking it?

Review: The mystery of what happened to Mary Jane was dropped pretty quickly after she came back, with an implicit, "I got better," being the answer, so it's nice that we get a proper answer to that mystery (and hey, we even get an answer as to how Hydro-Man was able to return!) Getting an answer to what happened does mean that we get a lot of exposition dumping this episode, taking away from screentime that could be spent on Hydro-Man being a horrible jerk, but for wrapping up that question, I think it's worth the sacrifice. Bonus points for also giving Mary Jane a more dramatic, and quite frankly, emotional death compared to last time - as it turns out, when it's not being inevitably compared to one of the best Spider-Man comics ever, the cartoon is able to handle a death fairly well on its own merits.

While the episode is fairly good overall, it struggles to fill space in the middle act, with Spider-Man following clues from Mary Jane's nightmare like he's in a shitty point-and-click adventure game. Hey, why don't we throw in a robot fight here for no reason? Spider-Man guesses that the robot was built by Smythe, which I guess we can infer is probably correct, but why is it there? In case Spider-Man happens to question a woman who went missing and returned, follows the clues from her nightmare, and is onto discovering the secret lab? Yeah, that bit doesn't really hold up well. And while I'm listing complaints, why bother creating conflict with Mary Jane being jealous of Black Cat if you're going to kill her off at the end of the episode? Why not have her wholly understanding of Spider-Man, to give her death even more impact when it happens?

So yeah, overall this one is a fairly solid episode, and while there are a few plot holes and bits where it could be tightened, it does overall manage to do the job of solving a long-term mystery. I'd love to say that I'm hopeful about the ending, but honestly? Give us an episode where Spider-Man has to deal with the death of the love of his life again, without any spider-antics. That would be a lot more intriguing than "Only you can save the world, Spider-Man!" But I'm getting ahead of myself; there'll be plenty of time to judge next episode next time. Stick around for it.