Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Eighty-Six: Anti-Venom

Anti-Venom

First Aired: April 3rd, 2016

Synopsis: Spider-Man and Venom have been working together to take out potential recruits for Doctor Octopus' new Sinister Six. The two of them are currently fighting Beetle and having a difficult time, but Patrioteer shows up and helps defeat him. The friendship between Patrioteer and Spider-Man makes Venom jealous. Beetle tries deleting a file but Patrioteer gets it, and they figure that they can decrypt it at SHIELD. Meanwhile, Doctor Octopus is trying to modify a sample of symbiote that he has, and to assist him Arnim Zola gives him a scientist assistant, Michael Morbius. Back at SHIELD, Spider-Man shows Harry around and approves of him joining SHIELD Academy, but Norman Osborn, as the Iron Patriot, appears and disapproves. Spider-Man convinces him that he'll be responsible for Harry's safety and Norman reluctantly agrees. The file extracted from Beetle then gives the heroes what appears to be Doctor Octopus' location and they head there.

Spider-Man, Agent Venom, and Patrioteer fight their way through some HYDRA thugs to Doctor Octopus' secret lab, where he's just finished modifying the symbiote. He reveals that he's designed it to take out Venom, and Harry freezes up since he was taken over by Venom in the past. Ock is inspired by this and gets it to infect Harry, turning him into Anti-Venom. The subsequent fight breaks through to the surface, with Flash's symbiote being badly damaged as a result of Anti-Venom's touch. Iron Patriot shows up and holds off Anti-Venom while Spider-Man chases down Morbius, who reveals that there's an inhibitor that can stop Anti-Venom. Spider-Man retrieves it from Ock's lab and uses it on Anti-Venom. Spider-Man and Iron Patriot fly Venom and Patrioteer back to SHIELD, where they're placed into medical equipment to recover, but it may be some time before they're both healthy.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• While Iron Patriot is fighting Anti-Venom, Doctor Octopus appears and is smug about what he's done, to which Norman cries, "Octavius! It's always you!" That simple statement is kind of a good summary of this series, honestly.

Review: I commented last episode that it looks like we're getting some character development for Spider-Man's teammates for now, so with Flash being jealous of Spider-Man's friendship with Patrioteer, I fully expected this episode to go the same way - at the end of the episode, he realises that Spider-Man's allowed to have friends other than him. It was a nice surprise, then, that this episode went in a completely different direction - Flash's jealousy leads to him being more gung-ho and proactive in protecting Spider-Man when it initially looks as though Doctor Octopus has modified the symbiote to help take out Spider-Man, and that in turn leads to him being badly injured by Anti-Venom. It's a good example of how to do a fatal flaw.

Overall, in fact, the episode is pretty well paced and plotted. I think the biggest concern that I have is that for all that Spider-Man's excited to have Harry join SHIELD, he doesn't show any sign of wanting to trust him with his identity. It makes their friendship feel a bit one-sided as a result - Peter knows Harry's identity, which gives him something of an advantage in their interactions. Is it something he's got any intention of revealing? Most of SHIELD know, as does Aunt May, and he seems pretty fine with that, so it's a bit odd that he draws the line at Harry. I guess he could still be paranoid that Norman will return to being the Green Goblin at some point, but even that argument doesn't really work given that the Green Goblin did end up discovering his identity anyway.

Anyway, other than that criticism, the episode is pretty good, as mentioned. The fight is fairly snappy, Norman's appearances are both unexpected but also completely logical, and, well...Anti-Venom just has an awesome design. Morbius being introduced presumably means that he'll get some vampire powers in the near future, and taking Harry and Flash out of the picture for now helps to streamline the cast a bit. This is a good episode, and I wish more of the show was up to this level of quality.