Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Seventy-Six: Contest of Champions, Part Two

Contest of Champions, Part Two

First Aired: October 10th, 2015

Synopsis: Grandmaster says that he's changing the rules of the game to make things more interesting, and reminds the Collector that the winner of each game takes the loser's players. The next game is capture the flag, with whoever finds the flag first winning. Spider-Man is chosen by the Collector and has to fight Sandman, but he's joined by Captain America, Iron Fist, and Red Hulk, and Red Hulk manages to defeat Sandman by getting hot enough to turn Sandman to glass. As the team continue into the city the Grandmaster summons Blastaar and Ymir, but when Spider-Man spots the flag at the docks and starts making his way there, Grandmaster disables the gravity. Captain America is defeated by Ymir, and when the team arrive at the docks Grandmaster changes things again, placing lava everywhere. Spider-Man and his team reach the flag but for some reason have to control it to win, leading to Red Hulk getting defeated by Ymir while Iron Fist takes out Blastaar. Iron Fist is defeated next, but Spider-Man defeats Ymir using electrical cables, which for some reason counts as controlling the flag.

The next game has the more traditional goal of defeating the other team, pitting Spider-Man, Skaar, Luke Cage, and Black Widow up against Absorbing Man, Zzzax, and Doctor Octopus. The Grandmaster soon modifies things so that water starts flooding the city, and everyone has to go to higher ground, before Grandmaster summons civilians that the heroes have to protect, including Aunt May. When Black Widow knocks Absorbing Man into the water the Collector summons sharks, but they prove to be a hindrance to the heroes. Zzzax is defeated by Spider-Man knocking him into the water while his team saves civilians, but as he goes after Aunt May, the final civilian, Doctor Octopus grabs her. She comes to, however, and attacks Doctor Octopus, causing him to drop her and letting Spider-Man save her. Afterwards the Grandmaster changes things again so that meteors start raining down, which immediately take out Luke and Skaar, while Spider-Man defeats Ock. He finds the machine summoning the meteors and damages it, stopping them as Black Widow defeats Absorbing Man. Afterwards Spider-Man and Black Widow are summoned back to the Collector's ship, and Black Widow speculates that in spite of this victory they're being set up to lose, but Spider-Man's confident that they've got this.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• It's almost immediately revealed in this episode that, contrary to what was said last episode, if the Grandmaster wins, the villains will get to rule over New York, as opposed to the world. It's not a change for the better, in my opinion - what would someone like Ymir, Sandman, or Zzzax want with New York? What would any of the villains that would care even do with an entire city of their own? Raise taxes and become rich?
  
• When Grandmaster removes gravity from the city, Iron Fist comments that "Gravity is gone - it's like being on the moon!" Yes, the moon, that place where there very famously isn't any gravity.
• When Collector chooses Spider-Man for his team yet again, the Grandmaster calls him out on it, and the Collector defends his choice by saying that Spider-Man is his favourite. I...I can't even disagree with him; that's exactly what I do when playing any games where Spider-Man's an option.

Review: After a surprisingly good start to this arc, this one drops the ball quite a bit. Suddenly the Grandmaster is changing the game at the drop of a hat, with no explanation other than "I know the rules better than you," which is a lazy handwave. It's even lazier given that there's an easy out for the writers - make it that the loser of a game gets to modify the battlefield up to X times in the next game. Or hell, given that both times the Collector's team of four is up against the Grandmaster's team of three, say that the Grandmaster chose not to choose a fourth member in exchange for being able to modify the battlefield. Either of those options would help us understand the game and potentially even provide the Collector with some tricks, thus enhancing the story, but instead the writers choose to just say, "Nah, it's too complex" and have the Grandmaster do whatever he wants.

After last episode gave us some out-of-the-box solutions as to how Spider-Man was able to defeat his villains, this one gets a bit lazy too. I can buy the Red Hulk getting hotter and turning Sandman to glass, and even Captain America, Iron Fist, and Red Hulk getting taken out by some random hits, but in the second match of the episode the show starts to get inconsistent. Absorbing Man getting knocked into the water doesn't take him out of the game, but Luke and Skaar getting hit by a meteor and falling from a roof does, before they've even hit the water. Zzzax is suddenly solid enough to be punched into the water, even though he's made of energy. It's all kind of fiddly and doesn't really seem to have been thought out more.

Finally, how can we discuss all these arbitrary rules without bringing up capture the flag? First of all they have to reach the flag, then all of a sudden they have to "control" it, then it turns out that to win Spider-Man has to defeat all of his opponents. Why even bother introducing the flag concept if you wanted the characters to beat each other up? I'd also like to point out that Spider-Man's tactic of, "Team, let's all four of us go after the flag," is absolutely terrible - what he should have said is, "Team, the three of you keep fighting Blastaar and Ymir - I'll go and get the flag while you keep them busy." So yeah, it's safe to say that when the rules are this inconsistent and arbitrary, I lose a lot of interest in what was a pretty promising arc. I'm hoping that next episode things will be a bit tighter and back to the quality of the first part, but it'll still be the middle of the arc - I'm not too confident.