Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Forty-Five: Brand New Day

Brand New Day

First Aired: October 20th, 2019

Synopsis: Peter is happy to be back in his own body, and hears about a clash between the supervillains Mr. Negative and Molten Man. He goes out and defeats them as Spider-Man and hears from Chief Watanabe that they'll be sent to the Cellar, a prison for supervillains. Peter then heads to school but discovers that Doctor Octopus made him quit Horizon and that everyone hates him. Midtown High is closed for repairs so Peter goes to see Doctor Octopus' comatose body. Anna Maria is also there and she thinks that Ock was ultimately a good person, and suggests Peter talk to someone else in the superhero community about what happened. Peter tries calling Ms. Marvel and gets no reply, so he heads to Avengers Tower, where he finds evidence of several supervillains having attacked it. Spider-Man tries calling Ms. Marvel again and this time she answers in the middle of a fight, but when Spider-Man goes to try and help her he finds her missing.

Spider-Man meets Black Widow who says that the Avengers are being targeted, but all of the villains attacking them are supposedly in the Cellar. The two of them are then attacked and Black Widow is teleported away, but not before Spider-Man gets a tracer on her. Spider-Man goes to Yuri to tell her his theory that there's been a breakout at the Cellar, but she calls the warden, Augustus Roman, and he shows footage of all of the villains, still in their cells. Spider-Man heads home and puts together a new suit and equipment designed to take on the villains, then goes after the tracer he put on Black Widow. He's attacked by Regent, a man in an armoured suit who turns out to have all of the powers of the villains. As they fight Regent teleports Spider-Man away, and Spider-Man finds himself awakening in a mysterious dimension where the unconscious Avengers are.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• For those not in the know, Brand New Day was the name of the era of Amazing Spider-Man after Peter and Mary Jane broke up sold their marriage to the devil. While a lot of people were super critical of it, I actually think that a lot of it was really really good, and even the parts that weren't were often just fine as opposed to being genuinely bad.
• Molten Man is given a massive redesign here - rather than a golden man on fire, as he's normally depicted, he's appears to be made out of magma and larger than a human being could be.

Review: Look, I'll defend most of Dan Slott's Amazing Spider-Man run, and by most of, I of course mean the parts that don't involve Regent (plus some other arcs and ideas). Regent has to be one of the suckiest supervillains in all of comics - "whoah, what if this guy had the powers of all the villains??!" It's like a five-year old trying to be cool, and it's not helped by the fact that his personality and motivations are incredibly boring too. To top it all off, he's just not a good villain for Spider-Man - he could maybe, maybe work as a villain for Iron Man or the Hulk, one of Marvel's heavy hitters, but instead for some reason it was decided that he should debut in the pages of Spider-Man.

So, yeah, I'm not super thrilled by this episode. It spends so long building up to Regent that even if you know nothing about him, you'll still be bored. The episode keeps finding ways to have the supposed super villains conveniently out of sight when they attack that it's obvious that something's going on, and August Roman is given enough prominence that he's obviously Regent's real identity. And for some reason it's implied that he's dating Yuri Watanabe? Eww.

The highlights of this episode are the fights against Molten Man and Mr. Negative, and of course, Peter discovering some of what Doctor Octopus was responsible for. If we'd focused on more ideas like those, and had a bit of a breather after the Superior Spider-Man arc, this episode would have been perfect. But no, instead there was an apparent need to rush into another big villain, so big that he can take on the Avengers and win, you guys. The pacing isn't great on the series overall, is what I'm saying.