Spider-Man: The New Animated Series Episode Thirteen: Mind Games, Part Two

Mind Games, Part Two

First Aired: September 12th, 2003

Synopsis: The Gaines twins discuss whether or not Spider-Man will be up to the task of killing Kraven the Hunter, and while they do Mary Jane slips out of her bonds and escapes...but it's all a psychic illusion, and she's still trapped. Spider-Man manages to reach Kraven, who is confused when Spider-Man says that they fought several hours ago. Spider-Man starts hanging Kraven with his webbing when he notices the construction site damaged by Pterodax nearby is undamaged. When Kraven confirms that they haven't fought for a while, Spider-Man delivers him to the police, who also confirm that the other foes Spider-Man fought recently are still missing or in jail. Since Mary Jane is missing and Peter vaguely recalls the warehouse where the Gaines twins were, he uses Indy to help him find it, discovering in the process that it's owned by one Frank Elson, the old man who spoke to him in the graveyard. Spider-Man heads for the warehouse, and the Gaines twins call him up and threaten Mary Jane unless Spider-Man goes and kills Kraven. He stalls for long enough to get into the warehouse, not knowing that Indy is also heading there to see why he was so keen on discovering where it was.

Spider-Man frees Mary Jane and then heads to the roof, after the twins, but they use their psychic powers to trick him into pushing Indy off the roof, which puts her in a coma. Spider-Man is villified by the media, and so he goes after Frank Elson to find out where the Gaines twins are. He's easily able to take out Roland with a sedative, but Roxanne comes after him with a truck full of propane. After a scuffle she ends up driving it into a generator, causing a large explosion which destroys the warehouse the fight was in. The next day, Mary Jane tries to comfort Peter, but he's not in the mood. With the city still angry at Spider-Man, he puts his Spider-Man costume into a suitcase and fills it with bricks, then throws it into the river.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Presumably because this is a two-part episode, we get a "Previously On" segment at the start of the episode, unique to it.
• Spider-Man claims that he fought Kraven six hours ago...but in the illusion, we saw that Mary Jane was buried in a graveyard, and I'm pretty sure it takes more than six hours to do that. The psychic powers making him not connect the dots is an explanation, but, eh, I feel like the whole thing could have been done a bit more smoothly.
• At one point, Peter's running down an alley, there's a shimmer around his body, and then he's in his Spider-Man costume. It's probably meant to indicate that he changed really quickly, but it annoys me nevertheless.
• Pretty unexpectedly, it's mentioned that the power plant Spider-Man fought Kraven the Hunter in is owned by Stark Industries. Hooray for expanding into the broader Marvel Universe!

Review: Last episode ultimately did manage to win me over after I thought about it for a bit, but while I wouldn't really call this episode bad, it doesn't really live up to the promises set by the previous one. Now, I wouldn't want to watch a solid nineteen-ish minutes of a psychically-addled Spider-Man and have him snap out of it only towards the very end, but I'd love to see a bit more of him on his misguided mission - for all intents and purposes, he snaps out of it right at the start of the episode, and we don't really get much out of it (and what we do see - I'm thinking of the web noose - is brutal and unique). 

Speaking of, for all of the buildup last episode that went towards building Kraven up as both a motivation and an antagonist, the Gaines twins don't really care about him that much in this episode. At one point they mention that with the city against Spider-Man, they can concentrate on crime, before offhandedly mentioning "oh yeah and I guess we can get revenge on Kraven." When they tell Spidey that regardless of him being tricked or not, he still has to kill Kraven, that could be an excellent opportunity to both focus on what their real goal is, and to force Spidey to get creative, but it's squandered immediately.

There's also...most of the things surrounding Indy. It's a fridging, which is never nice, but then they're also too afraid to go all of the way and just decide to make it that it's a coma, because we can't have that nice Spider-Man killing anyone, can we? (Except for when he has). It almost feels like the purpose of this - beyond making Spider-Man angst and giving him a reason to retire - is so that Indy can be removed to make room for Peter and Mary Jane to get together, because goodness knows she's infinitely more likable and charismatic than this version of MJ.

I realise that I'm being overly negative about this episode, which isn't quite fair. Spider-Man's fight against Kraven is wonderfully unrestrained, and while I don't feel that the Gaines twins are as strong as villains as they were last episode, when they're good, they're good. Indy's not-death did take me by surprise, so I'll give the episode that, and while the explosion which kills Roxanne - and presumably Roland - is a little convenient to keep Spidey's identity from getting out there, it's a loose end wrapped up, I guess. Like with more than a few episodes that I've watched, there's a good plot in here, but it just hasn't been executed as well as it could have been.

Next time: with the one (at time of writing) fully-CGI Spider-Man cartoon 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.