Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Thirty-Six: Bring on the Bad Guys, Part Four

 Bring on the Bad Guys, Part Four

First Aired: August 6th, 2018

Synopsis: Peter finishes his power amplifier for Horizon's open house then heads to Horizon High as Spider-Man, where he's attacked by Electro, a woman in an electricity-generating suit. She ends up taking his power amplifier when he drops it but when she uses it on her suit it turns her into a being of electrical energy. As the fight breaks into Horizon Spider-Man is able to use equipment from the other open house projects to defeat her, but in the process Horizon is damaged badly enough that the open house can no longer be held. Spider-Man vows to find out who put the bounty on his head and stop them, and as such goes to the warehouse where, according to Prowler, the bounty was first put on his head. He finds a Daily Bugle flash drive with footage of him on it, and realises that J. Jonah Jameson must have put the bounty on his head.

 

Spider-Man gets a call from Miles, who says that Spider-Man is currently robbing a bank. Sure enough, there's a report of it, and police chief Yuri Watanabe has put out a warrant for Spider-Man's arrest. Knowing that it's an imposter Spider-Man goes after them, but the imposter gets away before Yuri herself approaches him. As Spider-Man talks to her about how Jonah put the bounty on his head he gets suspicious of her, before Yuri reveals herself to be the Chameleon, and that Jonah definitely wasn't responsible for the bounty. Chameleon runs away into the crowd and ends up at the Daily Bugle where he disguises himself as J. Jonah Jameson. Confronted with two Jonahs, Spider-Man punches one out randomly who luckily happens to be the Chameleon. Chameleon is arrested in the aftermath, but he's contacted by the mysterious person who put the bounty on Spider-Man and says that now that Spider-Man is prepared his plan can finish executing. Spider-Man, meanwhile, returns home under the assumption that Chameleon was behind the bounty and that it's off his head now.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Electro in this series is pretty different to the traditional one - she's a woman, she's a person of colour, and before she gets Spider-Man's power amplifier, she uses a suit to generate electricity and attack using it. I like all of the changes; it doesn't feel like we've lost anything distinctive about what makes Electro who they are.
• As Jonah is impersonated by the Chameleon he's followed by a cameraman, modelled after and voiced by none other than Smilin' Stan Lee.

Review: Out of all of the episodes in this arc, this one is probably the best at gluing its two halves together. The fight with Electro gives us a conclusion to the subplot with Peter's power amplifier and Horizon High's open house, and it gives Peter motivation to properly deal with the bounty on his head, which leads to the second part. Electro does feel a bit more inconsequential, as any fight could have been responsible for wrecking the open house, but she's still integrated into the plot fairly well.

The second half, meanwhile, is pretty good - I'm particularly impressed by the red herring of Jonah being the one to put the bounty on Spider-Man's head, as it feels mostly out of character for him, but not so much that it feels impossible. Chameleon feels like the writers want him to be more dramatic and impressive than he is, given that he's the climax of the arc, but at the end of the day all he does is trick Spider-Man, shoot at him a few times with a stun gun, and temporarily lose Spider-Man. Oh, and he apparently impersonated Captain America to lure Spider-Man to Mysterio, which feels kind of unnecessary. Still, I do like the dramatic irony of Peter thinking that Chameleon was behind everything when he was ultimately just working for someone else.

With all of that in mind, I think that I'd say this averages out to being the most consistent episode in the arc, and probably the best plotted one, although I'm not sure whether I'd say that that makes it the best one overall. It does everything that the conclusion to an arc should, though - it wraps up both the bounty plot and the open house subplot, while still keeping things open for the future to be expanded upon. Not too bad, really.