Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Seven: Symbiotic Relationship

Symbiotic Relationship

First Aired: September 16th, 2017

Synopsis: Spider-Man stops a bunch of crimes with his new suit, finding his performance is above and beyond what he can normally do. While stopping some AIM troopers he sees Vulture flying around and tries to stop him, but discovers that Norman Osborn has pulled some strings to get Vulture out of jail so that he can be a faculty member of Osborn Academy. Vulture, AKA Adrian Toomes, soon tells Norman Osborn that Horizon High will likely be presenting the V-252 at the upcoming Stark Expo, and is asked to steal it. Toomes is reluctant, but Alistair Smythe volunteers to do so using the Vulture suit. He breaks into Horizon High but Spider-Man is able to get a tracer on him while saving Max Modell. Max notes that during the fight Spider-Man goes overboard in stopping Vulture. Spider-Man goes to Osborn Academy after the tracer, but discovers that Adrian Toomes has been there all night. When Spider-Man gets aggressive at this, Harry uses a sonic weapon on him, which causes the V-252 to lash out.

Spider-Man returns home, but Norman and Alistair realise upon seeing the security footage that Spider-Man is wearing the V-252. At home Peter tries removing the V-252 but it sticks to him and he soon realises that he might not be able to get it off him. He struggles to remove it, and his fight with the symbiote brings him into the city. Vulture appears and takes him to Osborn Academy, where Norman Osborn requests the V-252 - or as he's identified it, a symbiote. Spider-Man refuses and is attacked by both Alistair and Adrian in their Vulture suits, and he realises how aggressive he's getting. He agrees that Norman can help remove the symbiote, but the moment that's been done and it's contained he flees with it. At Horizon, he returns the V-252 as Peter Parker, and admits to Max that he took it himself. Max is disappointed with Peter, and says that although Peter can partake in the Stark Expo, none of what he contributes will go towards his grade.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• I'm sure I've mentioned this before in other symbiote episodes, but in the comics the symbiote didn't make Peter aggressive, it just made him tired since it would puppeteer his body and fight crime while he slept. There's a neat little nod to this in this episode; a few characters note that Peter looks incredibly tired.

Review: Unless you're Ultimate Spider-Man with its weird symbiote-created-from-Spider-Man's-blood nonsense, you've got to do a part in the symbiote arc where Spider-Man realises the problems with the symbiote and struggles to remove it. This hits all of the regular beats, but also manages to contribute to the overall story of the show neatly - Norman wants the symbiote for himself, and the symbiote itself is important for the upcoming Stark Expo. It's a neat way to stop things from feeling like we've seen this all before.

One thing that I'm not so hot on is the ending - Peter returning the symbiote to Max and admitting what he's done is admirable...except that he didn't intentionally steal the symbiote; it attached itself to him. You could argue that he should have tried to return it earlier, but it's not like he could have at that time. Max's reaction sort of feels unjustly deserved as a result, but then the show recognises it and says that Peter can still attend the Stark Expo, even though if he had really done what he says he had - stolen the symbiote to do his own testing on it - he should have received a much more serious punishment. It's a weird bit of narrative dissonance; I wish that Spidey had just anonymously returned the symbiote. We could then have had the characters wonder what happened, and possibly set up an investigation subplot.

Still, I think this episode works pretty well overall. Alistair being more actively villainous is great, and I like the bit where Spider-Man attacks Vulture only to discover that he hasn't committed any crimes and thus he just attacked an innocent civilian. It honestly feels fairly Silver Age, where the heroes knows that the villain is, y'know, a villain, but can't do anything about it. Pretty decent stuff.