Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Twelve: Spider-Man on Ice

Spider-Man on Ice

First Aired: October 14th, 2017

Synopsis: On the street, Peter Parker runs into a guy named Macklin who puts something in his backpack. Due to Peter bumping into him he's then caught by the police, who reveal that he robbed a jewellery store. Peter then meets up with Harry who's finished a cryogenics gauntlet, and when Peter discovers the diamond Macklin put in his backpack, they use it to enhance the gauntlet. Macklin then appears and steals the gauntlet, then goes to his boss, Hammerhead. He explains that he gave the police the slip but wants to be a supervillain now, rather than just at thug. Spider-Man shows up and fights the newly-christened Blizzard, but gets frozen. Blizzard flees, and Harry Osborn arrives and helps defrost Spider-Man. He then makes plans to make a heating version of the gauntlet and explains to Spider-Man that the gauntlet has GPS tracking in it. Spider-Man then goes after Blizzard but realises that he needs to prepare better to handle the cold that Blizzard can generate.

Peter goes to Osborn Academy since Horizon is buried under snow and gets a thermal suit that Harry's made. Harry also reveals that he's finished the heating gauntlet, which is more or less a flaming sword. Peter objects to it being weaponised, and Harry reluctantly agrees not to use it but is annoyed. Peter also makes some modifications to his webbing, making it thermal. He then goes and fights Blizzard as Spider-Man once more, this time doing much better. Blizzard makes a gigantic suit of ice to fight Spider-Man but Harry shows up, ready to stop the man who stole his technology. Harry's taken out but Spider-Man uses the sword to cut Blizzard out of his suit and webs away the gauntlet, stopping him for good. In the aftermath Harry says that he's annoyed about his projects never getting used, but Peter convinces him that his time will come. Peter then tries returning the diamond only to discover that it's not real and is for display purposes only, so keeps it for himself.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Spider-Man jokingly suggests that Macklin's supervillain alias should be Mr. Zero. This is the name that DC's Mr. Freeze initially went by when he initially appeared. Between that and the whole diamond-powering-freeze-ray thing, it's possible that it's an intentional homage.

Review: Like a few episodes of this series, this one has some good ideas but doesn't execute them all that well. The biggest issue is Blizzard - I get that he's not meant to be the next big villain, he's just a guy who's in over his head and is too confident for his own good, but it doesn't really work. The things he can do with the cryogenic gauntlet are all whatever the plot needs - now he's ice-sliding, now he's creating snow to fall into, now he's creating a goddamn mecha (!) out of ice to pilot. It's all fairly inconsistent, and there's also a plot hole in that for all the emphasis put on how cold Spider-Man is getting, there's never an explanation for why Blizzard doesn't need to protect himself from his own cold.

I'm also not quite sure what Blizzard's plan is - he creates ice and snow all around the city, yes, but what's it all in aid of? Is he running a protection racket? Is he trying to show off his powers as an intimidation tactic? Either of these would make sense, yet I can't help but feel that the writers probably didn't intend either of them to be the answer to the question. Moving away from Blizzard, I'm also not impressed by the pacing of the episode - it feels like it ends a little too early, and we have to awkwardly hang around with Harry and then take a trip to the jewellery store. Peter says that he's keeping the fake diamond because unimpressive things can surprise you, or something like that, and it feels like it's trying to reinforce a theme that hasn't really been present in the episode.

Something I did like in the episode is Harry Osborn. Again, we're seeing his frustrations, his anger, his resentment and feelings of being brushed aside by everyone. The episode doesn't emphasise it, but in spite of him calling Peter to help make the thermal gauntlet (which soon becomes the sword), he does all of the work himself. He's being seeded as a future villain brilliantly, and I'm really keen to see him finish the journey in the future. Harry's easily the biggest redeeming factor of the episode, although I don't think that I'd say it's worth seeing just for him.