Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Forty-Two: A Troubled Mind

A Troubled Mind

First Aired: September 29th, 2019

Synopsis: Miles goes to Ms. Marvel about how Spider-Man's been acting differently recently. At the same time, Spider-Man fights an AIM agent and tags him with a spider-tracer, hoping to discover why AIM is currently gathering mento-projectors. At the same time, within Horizon's network, Peter tries to find a way to contact the outside world and discovers a backup of Doctor Octopus' brain with his memories. Later, Spider-Man is approached by the Avengers, who want to scan him and find out the reason for his change in behaviour. He objects and fights them, but they manage to defeat him. When he wakes up they've scanned him and found that he's who he should be, but they're still suspicious. Doctor Octopus, the person inside Spider-Man's body, points out that rather than fighting him they should help him fight AIM, and they agree. When they find AIM, however, they discover that they've created a mental organism designed only for chaos, or MODOC. Peter, meanwhile, sees a memory of Ock's of his father abusing him. 

The Avengers fight MODOC but have difficulty against him. Spider-Man manages to take an AIM device which gives him mental powers and uses it to defeat MODOC, and the Avengers realise that they were just being used as bait. Iron Man, at least, admits that Spider-Man was successful. Peter, meanwhile, witnesses a memory of Ock using his intellect to screw over a bully as a child, and wonders whether he could have turned out the same way if it weren't for Uncle Ben. He then manages to view the memory of Doctor Octopus transferring his mind out of his body and gets the computer to run the same function on him. Later, Miles finds Doctor Octopus' tentacles alive, but they type out on a keyboard that they're Peter, trapped within the arms.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When Iron Man previously appeared, it was hinted that he'd worked out that Peter and Spider-Man were one at the same. Here it's explicitly confirmed, with him simply blurting out that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, just as the Avengers expected.
• As any proud member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society knows, the acronym for MODOK is usually Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing, not Chaos. But kids aren't allowed to know about death, I guess.

Review: Now this is the sort of content I like to see from my Superior Spider-Man arc. Miles going to Ms. Marvel after the events of the previous episode makes absolute sense, and the Avengers listening and checking on Spider-Man isn't put off or delayed in any way. They're ultimately looking in the wrong place - they think that Spider-Man might have been replaced by a shapeshifter of some sort - but it's good to see them being proactive and trying to solve the mystery of why Spider-Man's changed. Their team-up to stop AIM and MODOC is satisfying, and Spider-Man simply using them as cannon fodder is, of course, entirely in Doctor Octopus' book of strategies.

I'm not super keen on Spider-Man temporarily gaining mental powers to defeat MODOC, to be honest - it feels a bit silly to see Spider-Man shooting green energy out of his head, and AIM conveniently having such a device nearby is very plot-convenient. I'm also not pleased that the episode has Ock in costume as Spider-Man the entire time - after last episode dramatically ended with him quitting Horizon, it'd be good to see some fallout from that and how he explains it to Peter's supporting cast.

Still, the real payoff to this episode is the ending - Peter's escaped the network and has found a way to communicate to Miles what's going on. I'm really excited by this, and I really hope that this doesn't turn out to be a fakeout, with Miles thinking that this is a trap by Ock or whatever. It's a good, logical way for the arc to continue, and it's exciting to see how Peter's going to return to his body. Keep it up, show.