Ultimate Spider-Man Episode One Hundred and One: The Spider-Slayers, Part Three

The Spider-Slayers, Part Three

First Aired: October 22nd, 2016

Synopsis: Spider-Man and his team return to the Triskelion, but SHIELD Academy still think that Scarlet Spider is a traitor and attack him. There's a big brawl but Scarlet ends up calling off the spider-slayers and things cool down. The slayers get locked into stasis tubes for now but the next day a bunch of people are found unconscious. Everyone's suspicious that the spider-slayers did it, but as their tubes lock from the outside they're cleared for now. Scarlet Spider starts looking more suspicious as the security room is found slashed up, so he voluntarily locks himself up in a stasis tube to assuage fears. Everyone splits up to investigate further but more people are taken out, and when Scarlet's tube is checked it turns out to be empty. They follow a trail of synthezoid fluid to Kaine, the spider-synthezoid previous fought by Mary Jane and Spider-Man, who is now further mutated. They realise that he's responsible for everything and fight him.

 

Scarlet shows up and says that he was freed by Kaine to be feasted on, but managed to escape. He uses a gadget from Connors' lab to try and overload Kaine with energy but is stopped by Venom who thinks it's suspicious. The team then lure Kaine to the room where the spider-slayers are and release them to help fight, but he convinces them to side with him. Miles, Mary Jane, and Amadeus show up, having recovered, and help fight the spider-slayers. The slayers are defeated but Kaine then absorbs them into his body and gains their powers. Kaine then absorbs Scarlet Spider, and Spider-Man tries overloading Kaine again with the gadget, but it doesn't work since he's not a synthezoid. Agent Venom realises that if he'd trusted Scarlet more they wouldn't be in this mess, so he lets himself get absorbed by Kaine while holding the gadget. Kaine overloads and explodes everywhere, and Scarlet and Venom are saved. In the aftermath Venom apologises to Scarlet, and everyone respects Spider-Man for continuously trusting Scarlet. In turn he says it's Scarlet who's really to thank, since he lived up to their expectations.

Sam Alexander is Actually the Worst:

• The moment Spider-Man and his allies return to the Triskelion Nova appears and upon seeing Scarlet Spider declares, "The traitor's back! Get him!" Not only is this dickish given that he wasn't even around when Scarlet was in SHIELD Academy previously, either before or during his betrayal, he's also not taking in the situation at all, and considering that everything's currently calm and that Spider-Man obviously trusts this guy. Yes, other people join in the fight as it erupts, but it's easily Sam's actions that cause the fight to start in the first place.

Review: Well, this may be the last episode in the arc, and I'd definitely call it the weakest, but unlike Return to the Spider-Verse and The Symbiote Saga, it thankfully manages to tell a competent enough story. The entire thing is basically the team learning to trust and forgive Scarlet Spider, and while it is a somewhat necessary story to tell (how bad would it be if we just had a one-liner saying, "The team are still wary but they're mostly fine with him being here"?), it's going through the motions a bit. Scarlet looks guilty, he insists he's not, it turns out he really is innocent, people realise that they should have trusted him more. Pretty standard stuff.

The first half is definitely the more interesting part, as there's a mystery to be solved as to who is responsible for all of this. The show does a pretty decent job of pointing to Scarlet without going over the top, and the reveal that Kaine is responsible is a solid reveal - I hadn't expected him to come back, but it makes complete sense. There is a bit of a question as to why Kaine saw fit to implicitly frame Scarlet (unless it's supposed to be coincidental that his actions led to it?), and the characters themselves point out that Kaine doesn't seem smart enough to do so. The second half is pretty much all-fighting, all the time, and there's nothing much to talk about there, honestly.

I am a bit disappointed that the spider-slayers get disposed of so quickly and without any thoughts for them afterwards, especially given that Ghost Spider, at least, had a personality. Hell, all of them were shown to be capable of making their own choices when they side with Kaine, so it's a little disturbing, really, that these sentient creatures are destroyed and then immediately forgotten about. In an ideal world I'd have loved for them to survive and then run away to a better, more enjoyable show, but we get what we get, and what that is is an episode that does pretty much what's expected of it.