Bring on the Bad Guys, Part Four
- 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.
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