Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Twenty-Four: The Hobgoblin, Part One

The Hobgoblin, Part One

First Aired: February 18th, 2018

Synopsis: Peter tries talking to Harry and resolving things between them but Harry is still annoyed. Peter has to leave to investigate some loud noise as Spider-Man, and he finds Doctor Octopus capturing Max Modell, alongside the Sinister Five. They're successful in getting away with Max despite Spidey's best efforts. Harry, meanwhile, is experimenting to try and undo the damage dealt to Norman by Spider-Man's blood, and tests his cure on himself to see whether it will bond to his DNA. Spider-Man continues chasing after Doctor Octopus, but is waylaid by Vulture, Steel Spider, and Rhino. He defeats all of them, and although he loses Doctor Octopus in the process, he guesses that Ock is at his old base that he used when they briefly were a team. Doctor Octopus is in there, but when Spider-Man tells him to let Max go he complies suspiciously easily and then reveals that Max was just a way to draw Spider-Man's attention and let the Sinister Five wear him down. He then puts a mind control disc on Spider-Man, making his team the Sinister Six.

The Sinister Six cause chaos around the city which is caught on the news. A weak Norman sees it and implores Harry to stop Spider-Man. Harry suits up as the Hobgoblin and goes after the Sinister Six. He's winning quite handily when Spider-Man knocks him off a building, but seeing his friend in danger lets Spider-Man break through the mind control. He and Harry team up to fight the remaining villains, but Ock throws Harry's glider into him, injuring him badly. Spider-Man gets the upper hand, though, when he frees the Steel Spider and Vulture from Ock's mind control, and while they chase after him Spider-Man goes to Harry. He takes him back to Oscorp, but once he's left Norman tells Harry that he's annoyed that he didn't take out Spider-Man as he told him to. Harry explains that Spider-Man was mind-controlled and thus once it wore off he didn't need to be defeated, but Norman claims that Spider-Man was faking it and that Doctor Octopus was just his fall guy. He insists that Harry defeat Spider-Man properly next time.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Norman gives Harry the moniker of Hobgoblin after saying that, "A great man once said 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds'." This is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson about inflexibility in critical thinking. I'm not sure if the writers intended it or whether they just wanted to find a justification for naming Harry the Hobgoblin here, but it's a delicious bit of irony that Norman is inflexible in his own thinking and thinks that Spider-Man must be a menace, in spite of his admiration of the quote.
• Two things occur in this episode which appear to be inspired by the Ultimate Universe. Firstly, Doctor Octopus makes Spider-Man a member of the Sinister Six, which was an aim of his in the comics; secondly, the Hobgoblin is Harry Osborn rather than Roderick Kingsley or Jason Macendale.

Review: We're heading into the season finale now, and while I think that a good chunk of this is a bit lacklustre (more on that in a bit), just like the Spider-Island arc, the character drama here is excellent. Harry understandably is still annoyed at Peter and isn't a fan of him being Spider-Man. It'd be easy for him to become unsympathetic, especially given that Peter tries to reach out and reconnect with him, but something about the portrayal of it all really works. The best bit by far of the episode - possibly even the season - has to be him going after Peter as the Hobgoblin, and admitting that he still wants Peter and him to be friends. Damn. I'm not crying, you're crying. (No, seriously, I'm not crying; I'm quite emotionally dead inside). Following up this heartwarming and affirming moment with Norman insisting that Harry's wrong feels like a real gut punch, and I'm eager to see where next episode goes with it.

Unfortunately, in spite of how good this character work is, other parts of the plot are less well-executed. A good chunk of the episode is Spider-Man fighting Vulture, Rhino, and the Steel Spider, and while the fights are fairly dynamic and well-animated, it definitely feels like it's killing time. Doctor Octopus declares that he and the Sinister Six are the new rulers of the city, which isn't that consistent with his previous motivations, and he just has the Sinister Six going around and generally being nuisances. Harry also goes to test his cure for Norman on himself, since it's risky, but I swear that in the next scene with them Norman is somehow cured even though Harry hasn't used it on him yet. Whatever's going on here, it's not communicated well. Also, while I'm talking about Norman - has anyone else noticed that we still have no idea why he was trying to release bombs at the Statue of Liberty back in Spider-Island, Part One?

In spite of those numerous flaws, though, I did like this one. Harry's an absolute badass as the Hobgoblin, and he's the one getting the bulk of the character development here - it's really more his story than Peter's. We've got an intriguing setup for next episode, and a lot of fights that, while they do drag down the episode a bit, are at least entertaining in the actions happening within them. It gives me a lot of faith that the next episode can stick the landing and deliver something really satisfying to finish off the first season of this show.