Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Fifty-Five: Agent Venom

Agent Venom

First Aired: September 7th, 2014

Synopsis: Spider-Man is swinging around when he sees a symbiote on an electronic billboard, and is soon attacked by a Venom-empowered Scorpion. As they fight they're interrupted by Flash Thompson, wearing a homemade costume and calling himself the Scarlet Spider. Spider-Man is able to remove the symbiote from Scorpion and defeat him, but tells Flash that he isn't a superhero and needs to leave. Flash isn't happy with this, but unbeknownst to all a small piece of the symbiote Spider-Man missed attaches itself to Flash's shoe. At the same time, Beetle watches the whole thing. The next day at school Flash is friendly with Peter, saying that he's training to be a superhero, but then Beetle bursts in with orders from Taskmaster to retrieve the symbiote. Peter changes to Spider-Man, but Flash wants to help his idol and so the symbiote from the previous night covers his body completely, turning him into the new Venom. The two work together to stop Beetle, but while Spider-Man's trying to convince Flash to remove the symbiote, Beetle escapes.

Flash goes after Beetle and is able to defeat him, but Spider-Man finds Flash interrogating Beetle for information. When Flash still refuses to remove the symbiote the two of them fight, but the fight is interrupted by Taskmaster himself. While Spider-Man fights Taskmaster Flash takes on the recovered Beetle and absorbs parts of his armour into the symbiote. He starts losing control of the symbiote when Beetle unleashes sonic attacks, but manages to get it under control. He and Spider-Man then work together and manage to get Taskmaster to flee, and Spider-Man's finally able to convince Flash to take off the symbiote and that he shouldn't be a superhero. However, when Flash tries to do so the symbiote won't leave, and at SHIELD it's confirmed that it's bonded to him completely. Spider-Man convinces Nick Fury that Flash shouldn't be locked up, and also discovers that other teenage superheroes have been inspired by him becoming an Avenger. He suggests that SHIELD recruits these other heroes so that others, such as Taskmaster, don't get to them first, and Fury reluctantly agrees.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• The Scarlet Spider was, of course, the identity used in the comics by Ben Reilly, Peter Parker's clone.
• I can only assume that Scorpion having some symbiote at the start of the episode is a reference to the period in the comics where he was the third Venom. It...wasn't really a great time to be a Scorpion or Venom fan.
  
• In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, Fury says that Coulson, "left on his special classified mission," so I guess he's probably left the series, or at least the season. A pity; this version of Coulson was never as good as the Agents of SHIELD version (Agents of SHIELD was great, guys!) but he had a lot of potential, and more than a few good gags.
• The other teenage heroes Nick Fury shows to Spider-Man appear to be Cloak and Dagger, Squirrel Girl, Ka-Zar, Speedball, Gravity, Echo, and Triton. A few of these aren't teen superheroes in the comics, but hey, let's save judgement for after we see them in action.
• After Spider-Man's able to convince Fury to recruit the other teenage superheroes, the latter refers to them as new warriors, an obvious reference to the team of the same name, made up entirely of teens. They've never really been as big as you'd think an all-teen team would be, but the New Warriors are seriously awesome, guys. (Except for the lineup with Sam Alexander on it, because Sam Alexander's on it).
  

Review: As much as I think this show needs some serious overhauls to its general writing quality, every now and then it still manages to surprise me. I was fully prepared for this to be a rehash of Back in Black - mysterious Venom appears, Spider-Man fights him - but it actually manages to not only integrate the plot of how the new Venom gets the symbiote into the story elegantly, but also propel the series forwards in general. Setting up new teenage superheroes to be trained by SHIELD is great in that it not only gives us a few episodes' worth of Spidey recruiting them, but it also should hopefully give us some new characters to play with. There's also the possibility that some of them will be recruited by Taskmaster - I'd love to see him corrupting and manipulating a group that's essentially the evil version of Spider-Man's team. Plus one of the superheroes is Squirrel Girl! Fucking Squirrel Girl, guys! If you don't love her then you officially don't understand the concept of fun.

You know what else makes this episode great? Unlike many, many episodes of this show, it manages to be character-driven. Flash wants to be a superhero badly, and that quixotic goal is what leads to him being in place to receive the symbiote, what leads to him becoming the new Venom, and also causes a fight between him and Spidey. It's all simple but logical at the same time, and the episode flows beautifully as a result. I'm not opposed to plot-driven stories, but the problem is that in this series that often means bizarre leaps in logic and events happening without reason. On a smaller note, focusing on one of Spider-Man's supporting cast (let's be real, this episode is Flash's story) also meant we got to see Harry and Mary Jane for the first time in a while which was much appreciated.

Finally, there's one last thing this episode did to help make it as good as it is, something that I didn't expect to see in this series, ever: the fights are actually good. Spider-Man dances around acrobatically, Taskmaster blocks some webbing with his shield then slices the girder he and Spidey are standing on, and there's this fantastic bit where Spider-Man pulls a shipping crate onto Flash which the latter then punches his way out of. It's absolutely awesome, and genuinely exciting and engaging. I don't have my hopes up that the series can maintain this level of quality, but I hope to be proved wrong, because this episode was really really good.