Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Ten: Kraven's Amazing Hunt

Kraven's Amazing Hunt

First Aired: September 30th, 2017

Synopsis: Spider-Man and Miles and fighting Scorpion, who runs off and lures them into a hunt by Kraven the Hunter, a reality show host. Unbeknownst to them, he's been hired by Norman Osborn to capture both spiders after his Slayers failed. Kraven turns out to have booby-trapped most of the city in his attempt to capture the heroes, but when Miles is able to use his venom blast to escape a net Spider-Man realises that with Miles being an unknown, it makes him unpredictable to Kraven. Extrapolating from that, he decides to act unpredictably and goes into the sewers, where he normally never goes, but Kraven turns out to have anticipated that and traps them in an energy cage. Spider-Man's able to free them by webbing the cage controls from Kraven, but Kraven is humiliated and comes after them, above ground once more, with heat-seeking darts. Miles is hit by one and it causes him to panic, unexpectedly activating his camouflage powers and turning him invisible.

Spider-Man is able to find Miles while invisible, and gets him to calm down by revealing his identity to him. He tells Miles to go to a hospital to deal with the dart venom then goes after Kraven himself, but after defeating some lions Norman Osborn and Vulture show up. They defeat Kraven and Spider-Man and capture them, Norman's reasoning being that Kraven didn't follow all of his orders. Norman plans to dissect Spider-Man but Miles is able to break in and free him while invisible. While Vulture fights him equipment is damaged which causes the building to start falling apart, causing him and Norman to flee. Spider-Man saves Kraven, who is still restrained, but Kraven disappears. In the aftermath, Miles thanks Peter for trusting his identity with him.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• This version of Kraven the Hunter appears to be inspired by the Ultimate version, who was also a reality show host.

Review: Now that we've given Miles powers and a proper introduction, it's time for him and Spider-Man to work together to stop a proper supervillain! And...it's kind of meh. It's time for yet another version of Kraven the Hunter, and I can't say that this one does much for me - he's a little overdesigned, and he uses a bit too much technology for me. The idea that he's placed traps all around the city to try and capture Spider-Man is laughable - even ignoring how time-consuming and difficult this would be, why didn't Spider-Man or Miles run into them while fighting Scorpion, or beforehand? If he had them deactivated at the time, why didn't he just, you know, activate them, rather than requiring Scorpion to lure them to him?

Miles discovering his camouflage powers is done pretty well, with fear being the initial trigger for them, and it's all nice and organic. It's also a nice excuse for Peter to reveal his identity to him, addressing one of my complaints with the episode just prior to this one. I'm also pleased that he goes and rescues Spider-Man on his own at the end - there's no explanation given for how he knows where Spider-Man is, but it's easy to infer that he saw Spider-Man get captured and followed Norman. It helps to take him out of Spider-Man's shadow a bit, and him using his camouflage abilities to do so is something that really plays to his strengths.

Still, I can't help but feel that this episode is overall more clunky than not. Norman says that he's captured Kraven since he didn't follow the plan, to which Kraven says that he had his honour to consider, but it's not like Kraven stopped hunting Spider-Man at any point. Did I miss a line about how Kraven wasn't going to deliver Spider-Man and Miles to Norman? There's also a bit too much fighting in this episode for me - we don't really get a break to see how Peter or Miles' civilian lives are going, and the closest we have to it - a brief scene where the Horizon gang watch Kraven's show and see Miles being hunted - feels unnecessary. I'm glad that we've got Peter and Miles working together, but the execution of it all isn't that great.