Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Forty-Eight: Goblin War, Part One

Goblin War, Part One

First Aired: November 10th, 2019

Synopsis: Doctor Octopus insists to Spider-Man that the Goblin Nation doesn't exist and is a smokescreen, but Spider-Man soon runs into a person dressed in goblin gear, who Ock can't detect through his gear. After the goblin gets away Peter calls Harry, and they work out that the specs for the gear could have been taken from Harry's old work at Horizon. Peter sneaks in with Miles' help and finds that Alistair Smythe, who's gotten Peter's place at Horizon and his old lab, has accessed the files on the server. Peter later follows Alistair, but is led into a building full of spider-slayers. Spider-Girl and Ghost Spider show up and help fight them, but afterwards tell Spider-Man that they think that Peter Parker is the new goblin, since he snuck into Horizon and has been acting weird lately. The next day Peter meets with Harry, who's flown back to America, but Harry's disgusted that Peter is working with Doctor Octopus and storms off. Peter then gets a call from Ghost Spider and Spider-Girl, who have found the new goblin.

With Spider-Man's help the new goblin is defeated, but under the mask nobody recognises him. He declares that they're a nation then more people in identical equipment fly in. Spider-Man and the others shoot webbing at the goblins, which lets Ock detect them so that he can attack them with his robots. They manage to defeat and unmask all of the goblins and discover that Alistair is one of them, but the goblins say that he's just a new recruit. The spiders head off and leave Ock's robots to guard the goblins, but all of the robots go offline as the goblins hail the Goblin King. Ock rushes out with binoculars and spots a more high-tech goblin flying away. The next day Peter meets up with Harry, who thinks that Norman might still be alive. They head off together, ditch Doctor Octopus in a cafe.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When Peter tells Ock about Gwen and Anya's theory that he's the new goblin, Ock jokingly says that they might be right, as "split personalities is a side effect as a result of repeated mind swapping". It wasn't the result of mind swapping, but in House of M, the Green Goblin there really was Peter Parker, who was feeling guilty for being so successful and subconsciously had to sabotage himself.

Review: I'm not super hot on the idea of the Goblin Nation, as the idea of the Green Goblin or Hobgoblin works much better for me when it's an individual, but the execution of this episode does prove that the concept has some legs. All of the spiders start out thinking that there's only one person they have to worry about, only to discover that it's more like an underground movement. How do you stop an idea? (Actually, what the hell are the principles of the Goblin Nation?) The reveal that Alistair Smythe isn't even anyone important in the grand scheme of things works well, utilising the character well and emphasising that this new threat is bigger than at least some of the past villains.

The worst part of the episode, by far, is Anya and Gwen's insistence that Peter might be the new goblin. Or, rather, that's fine and I can see how they leap to that conclusion - the issue is how Peter goes about handling their distrust. Personally, if I were him I'd reveal my identity to them to clear things up - he already trusts Harry, Miles, Anna Maria, and Doctor Octopus with it, and I'd argue that he's closer to Anya and Gwen than the latter two. Even if he doesn't feel comfortable doing that, he could try and open a conversation with them, to let them know that he understands why they're annoyed but he'd like an opportunity to explain himself. Instead, when he runs into them as Peter he tries to act as though everything's normal, trusting them to simply come around. Quite frankly, it's terrible behaviour.

While this episode is just the start of the arc, I'm enjoying it so far. We've got the mystery of who the Goblin King is (let's be real, it's probably Norman), and how the goblins are invisible to Ock's robots to deal with. The episode also has some good humour - whenever the goblins start dramatically talking about how they'll rise up, Spider-Man just dismisses them, and there's also a good fake-out opening scene where Spider-Man finds some quirky cat burglars whom he initially thinks are the Goblin Nation. I'm on board with this so far.