Destiny Unleashed
First Aired: March 31st, 2001
Synopsis: The High Evolutionary is annoyed by everyone taking advantage of him and rants about it to the Knights of Wundagore, then declares that the dawning of the new world order is beginning. In the city, Spider-Man sees an army of machine men and is surprised when they don't attack him; he guesses that they have a more important mission and is proven correct when they start evacuating people from their homes and scanning their identification chips. Spider-Man can't save anyone since there are too many machine men, but when he returns home he finds Naoko being questioned by one since she's suspected of associating with Spider-Man. Spider-Man throws some bins around to create noise and distract the machine men. As Peter, he watches an announcement with Naoko from the High Evolutionary, saying that the machine men will keep searching buildings and emptying them out until the rebels and Spider-Man surrender. Peter changes back to Spider-Man and stops Sir Ram from destroying a building, but he gets attacked by machine men and buried in rubble.
Sir Ram has a free shot at Spider-Man but Lord Tyger saves Spider-Man, saying that the High Evolutionary wanted him taken alive. Spider-Man has to flee from the Knights but is saved by the rebels. They team up but are soon taken out by the High Evolutionary's sonics, as are Venom and Carnage elsewhere. The rebels, Spider-Man, and symbiote-less Eddie Brock and Cletus Kassady all wake up in cages, and the High Evolutionary reveals that he can use their brainwaves with his sonic weapons to kill all humans. Spider-Man uses the sonics in his suit to cancel it out, and the High Evolutionary attacks Spider-Man. The Green Goblin bursts in out of nowhere, reveals that he's alive, and saves Spider-Man. Spidey webs up the High Evolutionary and hits him into a wall, which electrocutes him and takes him out. The heroes rush to save Eddie and Cletus, but Eddie reveals that the Synoptic made a seeding device for if he lost his symbiote again, which activates and shoots millions of spores into the atmosphere, bringing all life to an end. The end!
Review: For all of the flaws of this show, it's been pretty good at the overall pacing, knowing when to seed a subplot here and there and how to build up to something. Here, it's the culmination of everything, as the High Evolutionary decides that he's sick of always losing and that he's going to just kill all the humans, since it's not like he's a fan of them anyway. In spite of the grand scope of this idea, it's pretty boring in execution - most of the episode involves machine men harassing civilians and taking them out of their home, and while there's a definite implication that they're killing a lot of them, we never really feel the impact of this or like this is going to have serious consequences.
Even if we were, this episode has a lot of flaws. The Green Goblin's reappearance is a giant deus ex machina, and unless he decided to burst into the middle of this rebellion so he can once again get Spidey away from his wife, it doesn't make sense as to why he's there. Karen's taken offscreen to Castle Wundagore and isn't really seen from, and while she presumably would have appeared if another episode had been made, one wasn't, and this being the second episode in a row where it happens is really annoying. Most egregiously of all, when Spider-Man finally defeats the High Evolutionary, it's not by using his brain, convincing him that his philosophy is wrong, or pushing his powers to the limit - it's with a bit of web and some convenient electricity. Anticlimatic is an understatement.
The one thing that I did like here was Lord Tyger and his interactions with the rest of the Knights of Wundagore. If another season had been made of this, I easily could have seen him joining the rebels, an idea that's ripe with potential. He's been pretty underutilised, and it's a pity because I like him. Other than that, the other thing I did like is that the episode ends with all life on Counter-Earth being wiped out, including the heroes. Yeah, I know there's comics set here, and it only happens because more episodes weren't made, but it kind of ends up being hilarious regardless. What a way to finish.
Next time: with this often overlooked series finished, I'll be posting
a retrospect of the entire series, giving my overall thoughts on it,
discussing what I liked and what I didn't, and
listing the best and worst episodes. I hope to see you there.
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