Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Forty-Six: Game Over

Game Over

First Aired: September 29th, 2013

Synopsis: Spider-Man and his team are fighting LMDs as part of a training session, but they start acting more deadly as the fight goes on. Nick Fury comes in and stops them, and reveals that it was a test by the mutant terrorist Arcade, who can control technology. He reveals that Arcade is also trying to hack nuclear missiles and that they only have twenty-four hours to stop him, and that an arriving Captain America has been called into help. Captain America attacks Fury, who turns out to be another LMD. The real Nick Fury sends Cap to the country of Madripoor, and Spider-Man decides to stow away on Cap's plane. Arcade ends up hacking the plane, forcing them to evacuate it. In Madripoor they go to a building where LMD ninjas are fighting Wolverine. He attacks Captain America, but it turns out to be a test as to whether Cap is an LMD or not. Wolverine reveals that Arcade is in that building, but LMD duplicates of the trio show up to fight them, while some hologram technology changes the room into a faux boxing ring.

The team defeat their duplicates while Arcade taunts them, and he next sends some Hulk LMDs against the team. Realising that they're wasting their time, they jump down a hole and arrive in a hologram of a bombed-out city. Spider-Man notes that Arcade's treating everything like a video game and that they need to play by his rules, but Wolverine and Captain America don't listen. Wolverine is taken out by a Sentinel so Captain America and Spider-Man move to the next "level". They fight more robots there, eventually joined by Wolverine, and since they're losing Spider-Man retrieves the Sentinel, which he reprograms somehow, and uses it to win. The next "level" has Arcade fighting the team in a giant robot, but once again they're able to defeat it. Finding the real Arcade in the next room, Spider-Man is surprised to find that he's a whingey, sore loser. In the aftermath, Wolverine, Captain America, and Nick Fury all praise Spider-Man for some reason.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• So, what's Spider-Man's reason for stowing away on Cap's plane? As he puts it, "Fury ordered me off this mission, but I just couldn't help myself." Top-notch writing here, people.
• When Spider-Man and Captain America have to bail from the latter's plane, Spider-Man activates some underarm webbing, a part of his costume in the comics for a long time. I can't remember whether I've said this before but I really like the underarm webbing; you get used to it pretty quickly and it really does add something to his costume.
• Wolverine mentions that Captain America's shield is, like in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, made of vibranium, as opposed to the unique alloy from the comics.

Review: This episode is close to being passable, but enough things annoy me about it that I can't give it praise. For a start, I'm not fan of the idea of Arcade as a mutant terrorist, nor of the idea that he has the power to control technology. To me Arcade is a bored assassin who throws people in elaborate amusement parks to kill them, and if they survive he doesn't even mind since it means he's having fun. This version has a sense of playfulness, which works, and I think the video game theme kind of works, but I'm not big on the other changes. Is there any reason he couldn't have captured the heroic trio of this episode and thrown them in Murderworld, rather than wanting to take control of nukes for fun?

Then there's Spider-Man. His reason for joining with Captain America is nonsensical and selfish, and in spite of the episode praising him at the end, there's nothing in it he does that I wouldn't trust Captain America and Wolverine to be able to do. At one point, when Cap calmly tells him not to start a fight with Wolverine, he has the gall to splutter and be shocked, as if Cap's told him to absorb enemy fire or something. For some other bad writing bits - why does the LMD Nick Fury save Spider-Man and his team from their training session turned deadly? Why does he tell the team about a mission they're not even going on? You can claim that it's Arcade's sense of fun and wrangle an explanation all you want, but we all know the real reason is that it's bad writing.

Something that did work quite well was Captain America and Wolverine. The entire time they're professional and trust each other completely (well, once Wolverine's confirmed that Cap isn't a robot). They've got a bit of an odd relationship, but I do like it. If you cut out Spider-Man and cut down on how much of the episode is them fighting robots, you could have something enjoyable thanks to those two, but as it is we're left with something that's not really that great.