The Symbiote Saga, Part Three
First Aired: July 17th, 2016
Synopsis: Harry, Peter, and Flash are admiring the good work they've done when the remnants of the Carnage symbiote start forming together. Harry runs off to get help while Spider-Man and Flash go after the symbiote, which soon moves towards Midtown High, the only unevacuated place nearby. Spider-Man hits it with his taser webs and it explodes all over the school. Flash and Peter enter the school to look for Mary Jane, and find Stan Lee there. The symbiote attacks them from the wall, forming tiny Carnages which burn Venom when they touch him. Stan escapes via a hidden elevator and the heroes soon run into Morbius, now more vampiric. He's draining Venom's life energy when Harry shows up in the Patrioteer armour and attacks. This causes Morbius to flee, but not before mentioning that he's looking for "the queen". The team are attacked by Carnage-spiders, since the symbiote is apparently evolving, and the heroes flee from them. They soon find Mary Jane, but she turns out to be the Carnage Queen. Morbius reappears and uses a device he prepared earlier to control her.
Spider-Man takes the mind-control device and tries ordering the symbiote to leave Mary Jane, but Morbius says that they're bonded for life. Spider-Man and his allies are then defeated, and awaken in a lab below the school, where Crossbones and some HYDRA goons are. They use Spider-Man's voice to activate some hidden missiles there which can spread the Carnage symbiote across the world, then order Mary Jane to kill Spider-Man. While Crossbones leaves Spider-Man breaks the mind control device, and she takes out Morbius as revenge for controlling her. She's about to attack Harry, Flash, and Peter, but they give her a big speech about what great friends they are and reveal their identities to her, and she's able to fight off the influence of the Carnage symbiote, which explodes for some reason. Flash is then able to use a computer to stop the missiles using his SHIELD training. In the aftermath, Peter apologises to Mary Jane for hiding his identity from her, and she accepts it and says they should hang out more. Unbeknownst to either of them, a tiny bit of the symbiote is still visible in her eye. All the other heroes say that they're glad to know Peter before saying that they'll clean up the city.
Review: In all honesty, I don't know whether I'd call this the worst episode of the show - Doomed was nothing but a pissing contest between Spider-Man and Nova, and Itsy-Bitsy Spider-Man was juvenile nonsense - but it's definitely up there. I mentioned last episode that that would have been a good ending for the arc, and I really wish that it had ended there, because quite frankly, nothing here really makes sense or is written well.
Quickly going through the episode to illustrate my point - the giant blob monster Carnage is stupid and in the wrong genre. How does using taser webs to explode it outside the school cause it to be attached to the walls on the inside of the school? Why does Stan Lee show up egregiously then leave? What's the point of Venom being harmed by the Carnage symbiotes in a manner explicitly compared to Anti-Venom's touch? The tiny versions of Carnage are even stupider than blob monster Carnage. Where did all this symbiote matter come from given when Carnage first appeared it was about the same size as a person?
How does Morbius know that the Carnage queen will be here, and was the plan always for her to be created? The Carnage-spiders, and the later Carnage-wasps, are almost but not quite as stupid as the tiny Carnages. Why does Mary Jane possessed by the Carnage symbiote have such an ugly design, looking like an female OC of whatever Darth Maul's race is called? How did Morbius get the mind control device onto her? Why are these missiles just being mentioned now, at the climax? Why does nobody care about Crossbones just walking off once he's done? Why don't HYDRA unmask Spider-Man while they have him? Harry, Peter, and Flash talking down Mary Jane is cliché and not done very well. Why did the writers think this was acceptable quality?
Again, I don't think that this is the worst episode of the show, but that's only because this show has hit some incredible lows before. By no means does that make this episode salvageable, nor does it mean that I'll excuse the incredibly lazy and inane writing on display here. I may not be the target audience of the show, and the target audience probably thought this was hot shit, but that's no excuse for such horrible writing. This episode is nothing but bad, all the way through.
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