Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Ninety-Nine: The Spider-Slayers, Part One

The Spider-Slayers, Part One

First Aired: October 8th, 2016

Synopsis: Peter and Mary Jane are hanging out when they find someone in a Spider-Man suit in the bushes. His mask won't come off as it appears to be his face, and he shocks Peter when he touches him. Peter changes to Spider-Man and with Mary Jane, goes after the duplicate which has escaped. They find a secret base with a smashed up laboratory. There are notes about something called Project Kaine, but before they can look through them further more Spider-Man duplicates, appearing to be based on Arnim Zola's synthezoids, appear. Mary Jane reveals that she still has the Carnage symbiote and transforms into what she declares is the Ultimate Spider-Woman. She admits that she didn't tell Peter since he kept being Spider-Man a secret from her for so long, and she doesn't want to be a superhero. The fight breaks open the floor below and the duo are attacked by the duplicate which fought them in the park, but it's taken out by a reappearing Scarlet Spider.

Scarlet says that he's here both to try and find out about his past, since Doctor Octopus wiped his memories when he experimented on him, and because he wants revenge on Ock. Some HYDRA thugs told him about this lab, hence why he's here. Mary Jane manages to open a door which leads them to Doctor Octopus at a computer, who unleashes copies of Scarlet Spider on the team. They easily defeat them and him, and Scarlet questions Ock. Ock says that Scarlet was supposed to be HYDRA's spider soldier and that he won't believe his past, but it's on HYDRA Island. Scarlet is convinced to take Doctor Octopus to the sunken HYDRA Island to investigate, against Spider-Man's protests. They leave in a submarine and Spider-Man follows them, while Mary Jane goes to get the rest of Spider-Man's team.

Sam Alexander is Actually the Worst:

• When Spider-Man and Mary Jane come across the spider-duplicate in the park, Spider-Man asks, "Nova? Is that you in there? Another one of your so-called pranks?" The fact that he considers it a possibility speaks volumes about what a pain Nova is.
• Towards the end of the episode, after the Scarlet Spider duplicates are defeated, Spider-Man says that "It's over...unless you're planning to unleash a bunch of synth Novas, because that would be really annoying." Even the show is acknowledging what a pain in the ass Nova is at this stage.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Kaine is, in the comics, the name of a flawed Spider-Man clone who later became the second Scarlet Spider. Ooh, what could that mean for Project Kaine?
  
• How did Scarlet Spider survive, you ask? Spider-Man comments that, "We searched for you for days," to which Scarlet replies, "I didn't want to be found." And that's all the explanation we'll get!
• While heading down to Doctor Octopus' labs, there's a mark on the ground in the shape of one of his tentacles' claws, and the team comment that he must be nearby. This makes sense, but stop and think about it for a moment and you'll realise that they're literally following Doctor Octopus' footprints which immediately makes it goofy.

Review: I guess that this episode works adequately enough, but there's a fair amount of clunk in here. Revealing that Scarlet Spider is alive takes away from his sacrifice back in The New Sinister Six, and there's not really an explanation given for it. I guess that he could have bailed out from HYDRA Island before it crashed into the water, or even conceivably escaped after it sunk, but it feels like we need a little more explanation than we get. The reveal of Project Kaine and all that Ock says about his past feels like they're going to reveal that he's a clone of Peter, like in the comics, and to be honest I'm not keen on it. Scarlet Spider's backstory here is established and works nice and simply - he was a homeless teen who was taken in by Ock and experimented on. Now we're suddenly tacking on all this extra baggage, and it doesn't work as well. Was Scarlet Spider created before the spider soldiers which first showed up in Second Chance Hero, which Ock had been working on with Norman Osborn since the first episode? If it was a HYDRA project all along, how long has Ock been working with HYDRA?

Going back to the plot point of Mary Jane still having the Carnage symbiote is kind of nice in that it's good to see that that hasn't been forgotten, but her suddenly turning into a superhero and fighting alongside Spider-Man is less exciting for me. Your mileage may vary, I guess, but for me part of what works about Mary Jane is that she knows that she isn't part of Spider-Man's world but she'll be there to support Peter anyway. Having her jump in and fight alongside him does help make her proactive, but it feels a bit unnecessary to me. On the plus side, her explicitly stating that she still wants to be a reporter, not a superhero, is a neat character trait.

Other than that, the episode's competent enough, I guess. The various spider duplicates are kind of boring to fight against, and the episode seems to recognise that, as the focus is more on the dialogue between the characters as they fight them than the threat they pose. Mary Jane and Peter have some fun dialogue and they do feel like two people who have known each other for years, which is pretty cool. It's not a bad start to the arc, but I also said that about The Symbiote Saga and Return to the Spider-Verse, so let's not get our hopes up too much here.