Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Eighty-Three: Lizards

Lizards

First Aired: March 13th, 2016

Synopsis: The helicarrier's getting rebuilt, and while it is, Curt Connors is the head of SHIELD. Spider-Man and his spider-themed allies take part in a training course set up by agents Leopold Fitz and Jemma Simmons and try interrogating the other students at SHIELD Academy, hoping to find the spy that Vulture mentioned was among them, but fail to discern any information. After the training course is done a robot glitches and attacks Spider-Man, which everyone suspects is due to sabotage. When Spider-Man and Amadeus Cho go to question FitzSimmons about the robot they claim that it's not a suspicious glitch, but they can't examine it since Rhino destroyed its CPU in the fight. They also mention that Connors is the person who helped calibrate it, and Spider-Man's allies get suspicious of him, in spite of Spider-Man's claims that Connors is innocent. Venom is sent to guard Doctor Octopus in the cells alongside Rhino, while the rest of the team go to see Connors, who they find transforming into the Lizard. His bite turns out to be infectious and most of the others are transformed into lizards.

Spider-Man and Amadeus Cho head to Nick Fury's office since there's cure for the Lizard in there, but after making it past booby traps they find that there's only one vial. The two of them fight past more lizards and find FitzSimmons hiding in the vents. They use the vents to get to their lab where they plan to synthesise the cure and make more of it, but Lizard Cloak teleports in and in the fight the scientists are bitten and the synthesiser is destroyed. As Amadeus succumbs to the lizards, too, Spider-Man sees an aerosol disperser which can transmit the cure through the facility, but is attacked by the original Lizard. Spider-Man has confidence in his friend and gets through to him, giving him the chance to activate the cure. Connors starts to explain why he turned into the Lizard but there's an SOS from Venom. The team head down to the cells to find Octopus, Venom, and Rhino flying away on a jet, and Connors confirms that Rhino is the one who injected him with the serum to make him the Lizard. Spider-Man declares that they'll go after them and get Venom back, no matter what.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Spider-Man mentions that "Nova and Nick Fury are apparently out on some secret mission," even though we saw Nova flying Nick Fury away for medical attention back in HYDRA Attacks, Part One. For comparison, we also got a handwave in Agent Venom that Agent Coulson had "left on his special classified mission", so I guess there's a good chance that "secret mission" is SHIELD talk for "get out of the show, we don't want you any more".
• Speaking of Coulson, the agents here - Leopold Fitz and Jemma Simmons - originated in the Agents of SHIELD television show as part of his team there. I've mentioned before that I quite liked Agents of SHIELD; FitzSimmons were consistently enjoyable throughout it.
• In explaining how Doctor Octopus is captured, Spider-Man mentions that "When Doc and HYDRA teamed up and attacked SHIELD..." but that isn't when Ock was captured - it was last episode when he attacked the Osborns.
• When discussing the possibility of Curt Connors being a spy, Amadeus says "Let's not forget - Connors was also once the Lizard!" Connors becoming the Lizard and eventually returning to being human happened literally an entire season before Amadeus showed up, and while I guess he might have read some reports, it's still kind of weird to me that he just has this knowledge.
• Aside from most of the heroes getting transformed into lizards, Squirrel Girl's squirrels also get transformed. Flash refers to one of them as Mr. Liebermann, which I assume is a reference to Stan Lee - for those who are unaware, Stan Lee's birth name was Stanley Lieber.
• When Spider-Man and Amadeus Cho are in FitzSimmons' lab, the Iron Spider armour runs out of power and removes itself from Amadeus. A little iffy, since it exposes him to being bitten by the Lizards, but I can buy that the measure was put in so that someone wouldn't get trapped in the suit. But then, after everyone's cured, Amadeus just reactivates it and puts it back on! What the hell, show?!

Review: This fucking show, man. The setup last episode of there being a spy within SHIELD is genuinely intriguing, and could be a genuinely good subplot to sprinkle throughout a few episodes - give us a hint here and there as to who it is, and draw it out. Furthermore, we've gotten Doctor Octopus locked up again for...this must be the fifth or sixth time by now, surely? How about letting him stay in jail for a lengthy period of time, so it actually feels as though the heroes are achieving something? Instead, this episode screams, "Bored now!" and immediately reveals who the spy is and frees Ock. Thanks, writers.

It's not even as if the spy stuff is done well - everyone except for Spidey leaps to Connors as being the spy so easily that it obviously won't be him. So, who does that leave us with? It's been mentioned that Rhino destroyed the malfunctioning robot's CPU, he's traditionally a bad guy in the comics, and the show's gone out of its way to move him near Ock's cell, so of course it's going to be him. There's no tension there whatsoever, and the show's so eager to set up Connors as a red herring that this reveal doesn't even make sense - how did Rhino inject Connors with the Lizard serum then leave without anyone seeing him, given the heroes walked in on Connors moments after he was injected? If Connors was the spy, why would he willingly turn into the Lizard, given that he can't control the Lizard (contrary to what Paul Jenkins thinks)? But the show thinks it's being clever, so here we are, having to deal with this shit.

Ignoring the spy stuff blowing its load too early, the rest of the episode doesn't have many merits. It's the same issue I mentioned in The Lizard King - one person transforming into a lizard-monster is a horror story, dozens is a goofy B-movie. There's never any real sense that the lizards will spread the contagion (side note, why is the Lizard's bite suddenly infectious?), so the stakes feel low. There are a handful of small things I could point to that work in this episode, but there's so much bad stuff here that they're not even worth bringing up. Screw this episode.