Spider-Island, Part Four
First Aired: February 11th, 2018
Synopsis: People all over Manhattan are turning into giant spiders. Peter heads home to check on May, who soon turns into a spider, before running off in one direction alongside her mutated neighbours. Elsewhere, Anya is trying to cure Gwen, who manages to escape her containment and damage lab equipment in the process. Anya finds herself starting to transform and risks trying one of her cures on herself. Peter and Harry, meanwhile, notice that the spiders are heading to Oscorp, presumably because the mutated Norman Osborn is their leader and controlling them. Anya shows up, still with spider powers but not mutated, and says that she has a small amount of the cure left. Harry wants to use it on Norman, thinking that he'll be able to control the spiders even after he's transformed, and Peter and Anya reluctantly agree that it's the best plan they've got. The heroes all manage to get inside Oscorp, and after the mutated Norman runs away from them, they're able to get after him and inject him with the cure.
Norman doesn't transform back, and as the characters wonder what's going on the Jackal appears and reveals that he's behind it all. He's monologuing when a still mostly-mutated Norman appears and attacks him. They manage to get some breathing room, and Norman is annoyed over how ineffectual the cure is. Peter works out that if they mix Anya's cure with Spider-Man's DNA then they can make a cure, but the Jackal reappears. He manages to badly injure Norman before Peter knocks him out of a window, but Norman is dying. Peter admits to Harry that he's Spider-Man and changes into his costume, then injects Norman with his blood, which transforms him back to human. The Jackal reappears and is able to capture Spider-Man as Anya and Harry escape, before revealing that both Spider-Man and a captured Miles are going to be killed so that their blood can't be used to create a cure.
Review: Arguably the weakest point of the original Spider-Island comic book arc was when people started transforming into giant spiders - it's the sort of plot point that only really works in comics, but it's also kind of stupid. I'd similarly say that it's fairly weak here - it's not really that fun watching Peter and the gang fight the spiders over and over again, and it's hard to feel like there are potentially millions of them out there when we see maybe thirty or forty in the episode, tops.
The highlight of the episode is definitely Peter revealing his identity to Harry - he's got a good reason to, and it's good to see that Peter is willing to make something of a personal sacrifice which is really more done for Harry's sake than Norman's. The execution of the scene is excellent - the lighting completely changes as Peter thinks about his relationship with Harry, and at first I thought that it was Peter envisioning what would happen before it turned out to be what was literally happening. Maybe I wasn't meant to think that, but it was a surprise to me and really helped elevate the scene as a result.
In spite of that, though, this episode isn't that thrilling. Once the Jackal comes into the picture there's more of that nonsense about the spider army which I'm pretty over, and before he shows up the episode is mostly the characters punching spider monsters. Anya gets a good role here, which I'm pleased with, and as always there are a few small character moments which really work - Norman complaining to Harry about how ineffectual the cure is stands out - but I'm glad that next episode will be the last part of Spider-Island. It's worn out its welcome by now.
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