Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Thirty-One: Dead Man's Party

Dead Man's Party

First Aired: July 16th, 2018

Synopsis: Peter explains to Miles that he's getting decent money from J. Jonah Jameson as a result of his Spider-Man pictures and wants to send Aunt May on a holiday, which gives Miles the idea for Peter to host a party while she's gone. Moments later the Beetle attacks an armoured vehicle which Peter stops as Spider-Man, noting that Beetle is using Oscorp flashbangs as he does so. Shortly afterwards Eddie Brock, who filmed the confrontation, goes to Jonah to sell him footage but Jonah is unimpressed. Peter arrives moments later and Jonah is impressed by his footage, and gives Peter an assignment of Eddie's to investigate the V-252. Eddie is annoyed by Peter always upstaging him and decides to investigate the V-252 anyway, breaking into the space centre where it's currently held, but the V-252 breaks out of its containment and engulfs Eddie, revealing that Peter is Spider-Man to him in the process. The next day, Aunt May leaves for her holiday and Miles convinces Peter to host a party, leading to them plastering invitations for it everywhere.

Barely anyone shows up to the party as Flash Thompson is hosting one of his own, but one of the people who does show up is Max Modell, who's heard about the V-252 going missing. Peter tries making excuses to leave but is unintentionally thwarted by Miles, before hearing a noise in his bedroom. Entering it he finds Eddie there, who talks about how he's never had anything before transforming into Venom. Peter is forced to flee the house and changes into Spider-Man. He fights Venom for a bit but discovers that experiments have been performed on the symbiote, removing its vulnerability to sound. Miles eventually shows up and, having been investigating the Beetle's flashbangs, has some with him, which he uses to drive off Venom. Later, Venom swears to himself that things are only just beginning.

 

Miscellaneous Notes:

• This doesn't really have anything to do with the plot, but I need to share the IMDB summary of this episode at time of writing: "Finally sets up Eddie Brock and his hatred for Peter Parker for stealing his lively hood he breaks into the facility holding the V252 aka Venom the classic spider man nemesis finally getting a proper introduction on the best way possible intimidating Peter in ways no villain in the series has before and giving a justified reason to hate Peter and Spider man prepares to release his vengeance on those he holds most dear in the following episode". Couldn't have put it better myself!
  

Review: With a few minor exceptions, I like this episode. Eddie's hatred of Peter Parker is justified very well here - it's not just J. Jonah Jameson's blatant favourism, it's also Eddie living in a shitty apartment and feeling like he's never had anything in comparison with Peter. As such, I'm glad that he escapes the fight and has plans to continue going after Peter - as I'm sure I've said before, Venom's at his best as an antagonist when he's exploiting his knowledge of Peter's identity and creeping into his civilian life, and this episode gives him the means to do so excellently.

The weakest part of the episode is by far the fight with Venom - it never really feels that dynamic or interesting, and while the symbiote losing some of its weaknesses should make things more tense than ever, it instead just feels like a lazy way to extend the fight. It also isn't helped that the episode keeps cutting back to Peter's party, where Miles is trying to keep everyone inside - the humour of it continuously kills the tension when it's presumably supposed to relieve. It makes for a weak third act to the episode, after the first two thirds did a really great job of setting things up and building up Eddie as an antagonist.

Still, the episode is, overall, pretty good. There's a sweet part where Aunt May reveals that she's known that Peter has bought her a holiday and appreciates it, and also reveals that Miles mentioned Peter throwing a party and that she's okay with it, something that Peter had been stressing about. Max showing up to the party is also quite sweet, and the fight with the Beetle at the start is dynamic in ways that the fight with Venom isn't, and is a nice, fairly inconsequential action sequence that's fairly fun. Overall, the episode could do with some improvement, but does a really good job overall.