Spectacular Spider-Man Episode Twenty-Six: Final Curtain

Final Curtain

First Aired: November 18th, 2009

Synopsis: Spider-Man is fighting the Green Goblin's gang in an attempt to find out where he is, but they don't know. After returning home he gets a call from Gwen, asking him to come over to hers, where he finds Harry. Although Peter initially assumes that Harry is the Green Goblin, Harry says that although he's been tempted, he hasn't taken any Globulin Green for a while, and that he was recently captured by the Goblin. Peter starts to wonder whether maybe his original suspicions were correct, and Norman Osborn is the Green Goblin. After Harry leaves, Peter admits the truth to Gwen - he's not sure how he got together with Liz, and he actually likes her. She admits that the feeling's mutual, but that they should break up with their current partners before anything else. Peter then heads to the Osborns' as Spider-Man, and on confronting Norman about the secret passage he saw the latter exit, it's explained that it's just a wine cellar. Norman also points out that he was seen at Oscorp at the same time that Green Goblin attacked it. A moment later bombs explode on the balcony, and Spider-Man's attacked by the Green Goblin, who leaves after a brief fight. Norman realises that whoever the Green Goblin is, it must be someone with access to Globulin Green, and as it was a secret project, that only leave Donald Menken as a suspect. Unfortunately, Menken's disappeared.

At school, Peter breaks up with Liz, but she makes a scene and insists that she's breaking up with Peter. Later, Spider-Man shows up at the Osborns', where Norman's just discovered Menken's location. Spider-Man heads there, and to Norman's surprise, Harry insists that they follow him in a helicopter, which Norman apparently insisted he get a license for. When Spider-Man attacks Menken, he's attacked by the Green Goblin, and finds that traps and the Goblin's gang are all over the city to make life harder for him. He manages to get through them, and unmasks the Goblin, who turns out to be Norman Osborn. Harry "Helicopter" Osborn sees this, and realises that the Norman beside him is an imposter - namely, Chameleon, who parachutes out of the helicopter. Norman explains that when he and the Goblin were previously seen at Oscorp, it was actually Chameleon, performing industrial sabotage, and that it was completely unplanned but it worked out fine for him. He recently hired Chameleon to pretend to be him to further throw Spider-Man off. When Harry had a limp which the Goblin had suffered in battle, that had been a combination of Norman faking the limp and spraining an unconscious Harry's leg so as to throw suspicion off him. Spider-Man jams a pumpkin bomb in the Goblin Glider, and it goes out of control, sending Norman into a water tower full of other bombs, which go off and seemingly kill him. Later, Harry is saddened by Norman's death but uses this to guilt Gwen into staying with him. Elsewhere, at an airport, a disguised Norman Osborn boards a plane.

Subplots:

• Does it count as a subplot if, barring the very unlikely chance that the show gets revived, nothing's ever going to come of it? Curt Connors, Martha, and Billy all move to Florida. They don't tell Peter or Gwen why, but it's obviously because of Miles Warren.
  

Miscellaneous Notes:

• I don't really know where else to put this, but in case you missed it, HARRY OSBORN CAN FLY A HELICOPTER! More than that, he also intentionally skids the legs of it against the windows of the apartment Donald Menken is in. Harry Osborn doesn't just fly helicopters, he also performs fucking dangerous stunts in them. Fuck. I'm so tempted to only refer to him as Helicopter from here on, but there's no way that that won't be confusing to anyone who doesn't read this post.
• When the Green Goblin initially attacks Spider-Man at the Osborns' penthouse, there's a point where, his face covered with webbing, he fires his lasers blindly in Spider-Man's direction...then after Spider-Man's dodged them, he's suddenly disappeared. Huh?
• The person who finds out where Donald Menken is is referred to as Gargan - no doubt this universe's version of Mac Gargan, who was canonically a private investigator before becoming an underutilised villain.
• So...Chameleon-disguised-as-Norman is surprised by Harry having ordered a helicopter to come over to their penthouse. Why, then, does he have a parachute on when he jumps out of it? Does Chameleon always wear a parachute in case this happens?

Review: Alright, let's get the bad and mediocre out of the way quickly, because there's a lot of good here and a lot that I want to talk about. As mentioned above, there's a point where the Green Goblin disappears in the middle of the fight with no explanation other than to keep the plot moving. Extrapolating from that, it doesn't make a lot of sense for him to send Spider-Man to Menken, only to reveal that Menken isn't the Green Goblin, and the reappearance of the Green Goblin's gang, after having not been seen for over a season nor seeded in the past few episodes, feels a bit abrupt. There's also not a lot of Spider-Man's supporting cast here - I don't think Aunt May's done anything relevant for a long while, and there's not really any aftermath from the school play after all of the build up.

Now let's get to the good stuff: holy crap, what a fucking perfect twist. Norman Osborn is the best Green Goblin - and the best Spider-Man villain, in my opinion - and so while the twist with Harry was a good one, and the red herring that Menken might be the Goblin was equally good, there's something so satisfying about seeing Norman come out on top as the one true Goblin. He's manipulative as heck and truly does come across as a master schemer. Best of all, the show played fairly with us - Norman revealing that he faked a limp and sprained Harry's leg makes perfect sense, and the Chameleon first appeared in the episode directly after we saw Norman and the Goblin run into each other, so it was clearly planned from the start. If you want to do a good Green Goblin mystery (looking at you, Spider-Man Unlimited), this is how you do it - present hints that look genuinely valid, but with a bit of doubt behind them. Also, if you could make Harry a helicopter pilot while you're at it that would also be great.

I've spent all this time talking about the twist, but can you blame me? Right from the start the episode establishes that its purpose is to bring an end to the mystery of who the Green Goblin really is, and boy does it deliver. The episode manages to keep up a swift pace throughout, and the fights with the Goblin really can't be described as anything other than spectacular. The show's been leading up to this for a while, and it absolutely pulls off everything it aimed to do.

Next time: with this absolutely fantastic 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.