When Sparks Fly
First Aired: August 29th, 2003
Synopsis: Two teenagers are hanging around an empty warehouse when a giant fan turns on with blue electricity and they're nearly sucked into it before Spider-Man saves them. They tell him that a ghost was behind it but he's understandably sceptical. The next day, Mary Jane and her friend Sally are attending a lecture about electro-negativity when Sally's screen starts displaying creepy messages to her. It prompts her to ask who got the highest score in class, and on Sally asking the lecturer she says it was Max Dillon. Sally is disturbed by this, and when she's studying later that night her TV displays a picture of Max's head and text appears saying that he's getting stronger. Later, the professor is heading home when Electro appears and starts electrocuting her, with a generator assisting. Spider-Man appears and uses his webbing to shut down the generator, which drives Electro off. While Peter, Mary Jane, and Harry watch an ambulance take away the lecturer, Sally shows up rants about how Max has returned, before giving Mary Jane a recording of her study notes, dictated.
Spider-Man goes to the warehouse from the start of the episode and tries talking to Electro, but Electro tells him to stay away from Sally and then leaves. Shortly afterwards, a charred silhouette is found in Sally's room and she's missing. Mary Jane shows Peter and Harry the study notes, which turn out to have a voice recorded backwards. Reversing it, they discover that Electro is lonely and wants to turn Sally into an electrical being like himself, and that the lecturer was a test run. Peter knows that Electro will be in the warehouse since that's the only place with enough power, and shows up as Spider-Man with a high voltage storage container, courtesy of Oscorp. He connects it to Electro, who is currently trying to transform Sally despite her protests, after grounding himself, and Electro is absorbed into the container. Spider-Man throws it into the water whereupon it explodes, seemingly killing Electro for good. Afterwards, Harry admits to Peter that he's starting to have doubts about Spider-Man.
Miscellaneous Notes:
- When Peter explains that backwards audio is a thing to Mary Jane and Harry, Harry talks about how his father had some backwards Beatles records which he used to play. Can anyone picture any version of Norman Osborn being a fan of the Beatles? (Okay, admittedly, maybe Romita-era Norman would be okay with them).
Review: After the pretty poor showing we had from Electro last time, was anyone clamouring for him to come back? It's not like he's had much of a character arc to complete, nor was the tiny electrical spark at the end of his episode a compelling mystery which absolutely had to be solved. The show seems to think he's more interesting and sympathetic as he is, as when it's discovered that he's lonely, everyone sympathises with him, and it feels incredibly close to the show wanting to claim that all of his actions are justified. Needless to say, they're not.
Outside of the Electro stuff, which feels a bit padded, the episode really struggles to fill its time. We get a scene of Harry flirting with a foreign student (while day drinking!) called Francesca; we get a scene of Peter and Indy doing some studying together; we get all of these references to electrical ions wanting to bond in what the show probably thinks is incredibly clever. I guess you could call them character scenes, in that they are scenes with characters present, but they really feel pointless overall.
The best thing that I can say about this episode is that it's good to see Harry get some character development and start to question his own thoughts about Spider-Man, although I can't say that it feels very justified. He lends Spidey the technobabble needed to stop Electro, Spider-Man uses it successfully; therefore Spider-Man maybe didn't kill his father? Yeah...I can't really say that much of this episode lands.
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