Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Five: Flight of the Iron Spider

Flight of the Iron Spider

First Aired: April 22nd, 2012

Synopsis: Spider-Man is fighting the Living Laser around New York and is soon joined by his superhero teammates. None of them are able to effectively hurt him, but Iron Man shows up and the Laser flees. Spider-Man starts fanboying over Iron Man, and impresses Iron Man with the idea of following the Laser's photon trail to track him. Iron Man suggests that Spider-Man visit his plant, and later that week, Spider-Man does. After seeing multiple inventions there, including a molecular disruption chamber, Spider-Man is given an Iron Man-esque suit of his own. He shows up late to training on the Helicarrier in the Iron Spider suit, where he proves to be abysmally bad at controlling it. His team get annoyed at him when he insists on using it in stopping villains, and when they confront the Living Laser again and Spider-Man again fails at using the suit, Iron Fist encourages Spider-Man to follow his own path. As the others leave, however, Living Laser takes over the suit, which he can do since he's made of energy.

Living Laser controls the Iron Spider and goes to Iron Man, convincing him to lower his firewalls. The Living Laser then takes over Iron Man's suit and goes to Stark Industries, planning to sell the information he finds there. Spider-Man apologises to his team onboard the Helicarrier, and they say that they'll come with him to Stark Industries, since even though he screwed up they're still a team. While the team fight Living Laser in Iron Man's armour, Spider-Man uses his Iron Spider suit to identify weaknesses of Iron Man's suit, discovering that he can deliver an electric shock to wake up the unconscious Tony Stark within it. He does so, and manages to get the Living Laser out of the armour. He and Spider-Man then work together and trick Living Laser into entering the molecular disruption chamber, which sends the Living Laser to an unknown dimension. In the aftermath, Spider-Man returns to his regular costume, and Nick Fury shows Peter a new Iron Spider suit for him, but one that he can't use until he's older.

Sam Alexander is Actually the Worst:

• When Spider-Man is late to training aboard the Helicarrier, Nova insists that he should be the new team leader, and later says that "All in favour of changing our name to Team Nova, raise your hands!" For their part, the others are a little annoyed that they've had to wait for Spider-Man, but show no serious signs of resentment or belief that Spider-Man's screwed up.
  
• Spider-Man apologises for screwing up things with the Iron Spider suit, and while his team are pretty forgiving, Nova of course bluntly states that "You did blow it! Big time!"

Miscellaneous Notes:

• In the initial fight against the Living Laser, when said villain leaves because of Iron Man's arrival, Spider-Man comments that "I thought he was going to fry us like bacon. What is he, vegan?" I've read and heard many Spider-Man quips over the years, but this one...it might just be the worst.
• When Spider-Man is shown the molecular disruption chamber and is told that it transports things to another dimension, he pictures using it. We see a version of Spider-Ham, and of Spider-Man in the Super Hero Squad Show's universe. Later, when the Living Laser is put into the molecular disruption chamber, he does get transported to the latter universe.
• In the final fight against the Living Laser, Spider-Man says that he's modified the Iron Spider suit, and demonstrates it with repulsor webbing. How on earth is that supposed to work? Sticky repulsors? Repulsors in a webbing pattern?
• When Spider-Man looks up how to administer an electric shock to Iron Man, his suit says that it's "downloading remote activation codes to your CPU now." Shouldn't they be downloaded to the internal storage? Or stored in the RAM, at least?

Review: While this episode still manages to hit a lot of the checkboxes for things that I'm not a fan of in the series, it's not too bad an offender. There's annoying fourth-wall breaks, bad jokes, Spider-Man being a bit dense, and Sam Alexander existing, but a good chunk of the episode focuses on what we're here for, which is super hero action and some character drama. Even Spider-Man being a bit dense - in this episode, it's him insisting on using his suit when he clearly doesn't know how to use it - does feel kind of justified; we've all had those times when we're excited to use a new shiny thing without reading the instruction manual first.

The idea of the Living Laser taking over first the Iron Spider suit, and then the Iron Man suit, is a pretty good one, and Spider-Man just being a stepping stone for the Living Laser to defeat Tony Stark gives the show that shared universe feel. The Living Laser is constantly coloured a nice neon green, which makes for a great visual when he takes over Iron Man's suit and the lights on it change to that same green. Spider-Man's teammates being annoyed with him, but not to the point that it clouds their judgement, was also much appreciated. With one obvious exception, they manage to be pretty mature.

By no means was this episode blowing my mind - I was still annoyed by some of the weaker jokes, and there's not a whole lot that Spider-Man's team contributes to the episode which is uniquely suited to them. But the action was alright, the characters weren't all asshats, and...Spider-Man learned a lesson, I guess? It should be the bare minimum in this show, but it's often not, so hey, I'll take it when it's offered.