The Symbiote Saga, Part Two
First Aired: July 10th, 2016
Synopsis: Spider-Man wakes up in an alley to a call from Mary Jane, who says that Carnage-infested people are trying to break into Oscorp and get to Harry. Shortly afterwards Captain America shows up and says that he's the last Avenger left, right before a Carnage-infested Hulk shows up. They try getting him angrier so that he'll generate more gamma radiation and it'll burn out the symbiote, but it's ineffective. Soon enough, however, Cloak, Dagger, Venom, and Iron Fist show up, attracted to the signal in Spider-Man's communicator, and Iron Fist is able to punch the Carnage symbiote off Hulk. The team make it to Oscorp but as they arrive Anti-Venom bursts out of a window. He touches Carnage symbiotes and instantly destroys them, but is after Venom since he's the source of the symbiotes. Spider-Man gets an idea - if they can lure Anti-Venom to the source of the outbreak, using Venom as bait, he should be able to destroy it and that'll stop all the symbiotes.
Mary Jane shows up and since the Daily Bugle is down, Spider-Man suggests that she go to school to use their media lab to broadcast and help calm civilians. Cloak teleports her there and she does so. On the way to the source of the outbreak Shriek appears, and takes out Iron Fist and Venom. Spider-Man carries Venom to the top of the source, and as planned is followed by Anti-Venom. Anti-Venom is soon more interested in the heart of the symbiote than Venom, but as he approaches it finds that he can't cleanse it on his own. That would kill the host, Harry, so Spider-Man tries talking to him, eventually revealing his identity. Harry momentarily stops and removes the Anti-Venom symbiote, but it won't do anything without a host, so he puts it back on and approaches the heart of the symbiote once again. He's able to destroy it, removing all of the symbiotes across the city, and afterwards talks to Peter and Flash, the latter of whom has his identity revealed to him. Unbeknownst to them, the removed symbiotes start joining into one symbiote.
Review: If I had to choose the biggest issue with this episode, I'd say it's the same one that we've had in the past with things like this (I'm primarily thinking of Venom Bomb, but I feel like there are some other episodes with similar issues) - namely, in spite of what a big threat this is supposed to be, it's hard to feel as though the characters are really in danger. We don't see anything that the Carnage-infested civilians do that makes them so dangerous, and most of the time they're doing what generic thugs would do in any other episode. Even the fight with the Carnage-infested Hulk doesn't feel as though anything special is happening.
The resolution here is a bit off, too - suddenly the symbiotes have a heart (as in a gigantic, literal one) and if Anti-Venom destroys it it'll stop all of them. This comes out of nowhere, and if it feels like it's a convenient way to stop all of them at once, it's because it is. I get that they don't want to have Anti-Venom go around and cleanse everyone individually, but the lack of setup here really hurts, especially given how easy it would be to do - "By the way, the symbiote has a hive mind," or, "I'll bet the original symbiote is still alive and controlling the offspring somehow!" I'm also not quite sure why we need a third episode to cap things off - the way this one has ended feels fairly decisive, and it's kind of dumb that in spite of the way Anti-Venom destroys them, they're conveniently not destroyed enough, solely so that we can have another episode.
Something that does work for me, however, is Peter revealing his identity to Harry. It's long overdue and it's refreshing how well he takes it. Flash pretending not to know Peter when around Harry, before Peter reveals the truth, is also a pretty good bit of humour to help cap off the episode. Still, while I'm glad with the ending, minus the setup for next episode, I'm not too pleased about the journey we've taken to get here. Thanks for the identity sharing, writers, but next time maybe work out a way to do it that doesn't require a gigantic symbiote heart to show up out of nowhere?
No comments:
Post a Comment