Return of the Sinister Six
First Aired: November 3rd, 2013
Synopsis: Spider-Man and Iron Patriot are in the sewers chasing after the Lizard, who is wearing a high-tech suit. When Iron Patriot damages the walls of the area they're in Spider-Man has to hold it up, and while Iron Patriot fixes it up Lizard escapes. Spider-Man notices some scrawls on a wall, and deduces that it's a chemical formula. He creates it back on the SHIELD Helicarrier and speculates that it'll cure the Lizard, and that it was written by Connors, still trying to break free of the Lizard's body. Spider-Man and his team hear about a prison breakout, so they head there alongside Iron Patriot, who was also on the helicarrier. They split up at the prison and Spider-Man finds the Sinister Six there, all wearing upgraded suits, and with Beetle having been replaced by Scorpion.
Although Spider-Man struggles against the Sinister Six, his team show up, and follow orders that Iron Patriot give them. While Spider-Man goes after the Lizard his team fight members of the Sinister Six, but aren't able to beat them. They're eventually defeated, while Spider-Man himself tries to hit the Lizard with the formula to cure him but misses. Norman Osborn is injected with goblin serum by Doctor Octopus once again, not wanting Norman to redeem himself, and Norman returns to being the Green Goblin. Spider-Man's able to get the cure into the Lizard and then uses some of Ock's tech gauntlets to defeat the Sinister Six. While he's doing that, however, the Green Goblin escapes with Spider-Man's unconscious team and some more goblin serum he found on Ock. Connors, now cured, recovers and thanks Spider-Man for saving him, but Spider-Man comments that there's still more saving to do.
Review: Okay, yeah so I'm going to get to reviewing the actual content of the episode and stuff but before I do that can we get into the fucking hot mess that is Doctor Octopus's tech upgrades for his team? Scorpion and Electro look fine but jesus christ the others: Doctor Octopus is a giant blob, Kraven the Hunter has a fucking lion face on his chest and grappling hands, the Lizard is apparently blindfolded, and best of all, Rhino has goddamn treads trailing behind him so he can drive around or some shit. I swear I spent half of this episode staring at these ugly designs and trying to fathom how something so bad could be created. I can only assume that Beetle's no longer on the team because he realise how ridiculous the upgrades would make him look.
Anyway, let's get the good out of the way quickly: throughout the episode Norman's constantly shown making bad tactical decisions, which both fits with his personality and subtly shows that he's still got some learning to do. I also liked that Spider-Man's finally able to cure the Lizard, as a nice bookend to the start of the season. Now, onto the bad: why is the Lizard formula just randomly scrawled onto a sewer wall? Does the Lizard hang out there in-between catch-ups with the rest of the Sinister Six? And how was it written there, anyway? In Stan By Me the Lizard supposedly was able to eliminate the Connors part of his brain permanently, so he shouldn't be able to write such a formula. It all adds up to make it a pretty damn clumsy writing device to give Spider-Man the cure for the Lizard.
Norman Osborn becomes the Green Goblin again, yay. You know what would have been cool? If Spider-Man and his team became disillusioned with SHIELD, and Norman (as the Iron Patriot) had offered to take them under his wing. It would give us more time for Norman to redeem himself, the team would have to learn to rely on their powers more than SHIELD gadgets, and it could mean more appearances from Harry, if not Mary Jane too. Just like Spider-Man's team living with him, we've jumped back to the status quo almost immediately after shaking things up a bit, like the show's too scared to mix with its formula. I'm not a fan, and so I can't really say this episode does a lot for me.
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