Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Seventy-Four: Nightmare on Christmas

Nightmare on Christmas

First Aired: December 3rd, 2014

Synopsis: Shocker robs a bank on Christmas Eve and is stopped by Spider-Man, but in the process damages Spider-Man's communicator. When Spider-Man returns to SHIELD Academy he finds all of his teammates, minus a sleeping Squirrel Girl, missing, and leaps to the conclusion that everyone ditched him on Christmas Eve. He goes back outside and falls from a roof, seemingly to his death, but wakes up and finds himself fighting the Enforcers. They soon drive away with an Oscorp truck, and Spider-Man is belittled by J. Jonah Jameson for letting it happen. Spider-Man recalls that this happened a few Christmases ago and goes after the Enforcers and successfully stops them. However, the truck goes over a bridge and into the water. Once again Spider-Man wakes up, this time to Shocker robbing the bank from the start of the episode. He stops Shocker once again but continues to receive no gratitude from civilians, so he throws his costume in the bin and declares that he's Spider-Man no more.

Spider-Man next falls into the sewers, and this time when he wakes up he finds himself in a futuristic apartment with a hologram of Aunt May. It's the future and having quit being Spider-Man he's now a successful businessman with the lifestyle of Tony Stark. Hawkeye and Nova burst into the apartment, attacked by Oscorp's spider-powered super soldiers, and Hawkeye says that the Goblin King wouldn't have taken over if Peter hadn't quit being Spider-Man. Hawkeye and Nova are captured and although Peter likes his current lifestyle, he suits up and goes after them. He discovers that the Goblin King defeated the other superheroes, but beats him up and defeats him. Afterwards Nightmare appears and reveals that the entire series of events has been him trying to show Spider-Man how much better his life could be if he quit being a superhero, but Spider-Man gives him a dramatic speech and beats him up. He wakes up to Nova slapping him awake and is worried that it's too late to pick up his gift from Aunt May, but Nova reveals that it's already been taken care of and that there was a change of plans, but they couldn't contact Spidey. Peter and his original teammates go to Aunt May's for Christmas, and Peter gives her a fancy clock. In turn, Aunt May gives Peter a big hat.

Sam Alexander is Actually the Worst:

• When Spider-Man wakes up to Nova slapping him awake, he asks, "Why are you hitting me? And why are you asking if I'm okay at the same time you're hitting me?", to which Nova replies, a smug smirk on his face, "I don't know; seemed like the right thing to do at the time?"

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When Spider-Man sees the Enforcers there's a brief shot of him swinging towards them that homages the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #10.
• During the scenes set on the past Christmas, the entire thing is animated in a different art style, and at one point Spider-Man comments that his web swinging seems to have taken him through the same streets repeatedly. The whole thing is sort of going for a homage to Spider-Man 1967, but to be honest, it doesn't really commit hard enough.
• When the characters are all exchanging presents at the end, some of Spider-Man's teammates mix their gifts up, resulting in Luke getting a tiara for Ava, which he tries on and is pleased with. Luke Cage's original costume infamously has a headband which a lot of people interpret as a tiara, although to my eyes it actually works really well with the rest of the outfit.

Review: If this episode had come earlier in the series - hell, if it had come earlier in my decision to watch and review Spider-Man cartoons - I'd probably say that its message is pretty decent and that I like it. Unfortunately for it, by this stage I've seen Spider-Man thinking of giving up plenty of times, so it's hardly anything that new. Hell, even in this series, how many times in previous seasons did Spider-Man get exasperated at his teammates, only to declare at the end of the episode that they're worth the drama? This episode repeats that exact same plot, between Spidey thinking that his friends ditched him and then spending Christmas with them.

One of the more annoying aspects of the episode is that Spider-Man's got devil and angel versions of himself appearing at various points and trying to persuade him to partake in one action or another - the show's mostly phased out these more cartoony aspects by now, and having them show up has them proving to be just as annoying as ever. The devil one turns out to be Nightmare in the end, but them being relevant doesn't really make their behaviour less annoying. The episode also never really sticks to its premise and makes us think that Spider-Man's really serious about quitting - he can barely go two minutes without running off to be a hero, and so the Spider-Man No More homage doesn't really feel earned.

Overall then, where does that leave us? The past/present/future Christmas scenes feel like things we've all seen before, although I'll admit that I'm unaware of any Christmas Carol adaptations or homages that had a hologram of Aunt May showing up. The episode never really sticks to its guns, and the message we get is one we already knew: Peter's a hero, and he always will be even when it doesn't make him happy. None of it really feels like it justifies the Christmas stuff, and it doesn't feel like anything new. Skip this one, gang; there's nothing here that you haven't seen before.