Marvel's Spider-Man Episode Fifty-Four: Vengeance of Venom

Vengeance of Venom

First Aired: June 21st, 2020

Synopsis: Peter warns Aunt May that aliens might be invading soon and gives her a device to protect herself, then heads to Avengers Tower as Spider-Man. The Avengers arrive from space but they've been infected with symbiotes, and to make matters worse, a larger ship is coming. More and more heroes get infected by the symbiotes but when a possessed Dagger mentions a seed Spider-Man realises that the seed Venom used is calling the symbiotes to Earth. Spider-Man heads to Horizon and manages to pump the seed full of electricity, destroying it, but moments later a symbiote-infected Doctor Strange arrives. He forces Spider-Man to flee then reassembles the seed. The larger ship of symbiotes arrives and infects civilians and heroes. Spider-Man returns home to find Aunt May but is attacked by symbiotes, only to be saved by a stranger. The stranger gets Spider-Man into the sewers then reveals his name: Marc Spector.

Marc wants to hide in the sewers from the symbiotes, and wants encryption codes for Stark technology from Spider-Man. Spider-Man gets a call from Max Modell, who thinks that he has a solution, and Spidey agrees to give the codes if Marc helps get him to Max. He also finds some old equipment and guesses that Marc used to be Moon Knight, but Marc says he hates the name. At Max's place they find Max has captured Groot, whose alien body is producing antibodies. Max thinks that they can produce an anti-venom if they get to the space administration but Marc refuses and leaves. Once he's gone, though, he's attacked by symbiotes but saved by Aunt May and some civilians, who tell him not to give up hope. Max and Spider-Man get to the space administration but find the equipment wrecked before they're attacked by the infected heroes, but Moon Knight and the civilians arrive. Max realises that the device Peter gave May is from the space administration and modifies it. He then shoots Groot, whose symbiote turns white and manifests pollen which destroys the other symbiotes, saving everyone. Moon Knight admits that he's regained his hope and leaves. In the aftermath a mysterious figure finds the symbiote seed that Doctor Strange regenerated.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• At the start of the episode, Ironheart is going over the whereabouts of several superheroes and mentions Prowler, Cloak, and Dagger as such. Nice to see that they haven't been forgotten, and that Prowler managed to become a good guy.
• Every now and then, a Spider-Man cartoon gives us a moment straight out of the 60s series. In this case, the symbiotes absorb some tyres and other machinery into themselves, which somehow lets them turn themselves into motorbikes that are then ridden by other symbiotes. It's fucking wild.
• When Marc says that he doesn't want to help get Groot to the space administration centre, Spider-Man suddenly declares that "Moon Knight would never give up! Not even when there was a shred of hope he could win the fight!" which is not only odd wording, but also a pretty bold statement to make about a guy he's never met.

Review: For an episode featuring Moon Knight, this episode honestly doesn't do that much for me. The problem is that it's just too bleak - the first half of it just has heroes taken down left, right, and centre, and even knowing that by the nature of the genre things will pick up, it still doesn't feel like it. It's necessary for it to be dark for the message of the episode, that you've always got to have hope, to come through, but it just makes me feel like the characters can't win. When they end up winning it doesn't feel like it's because they kept fighting when things were tough, or because they kept pressing on - it feels like they won through coincidence and convenience, because the genre required it.

As a big Moon Knight fan, I'll call his appearance here acceptable but not the best. He's gritty and bitter, and while I think that it does suit the character well enough, I prefer my Moon Knight to have a bit more optimism and selflessness than he does here. He does make up for it once he gets back into costume though, and there are some genuinely great action sequences thanks to him. Less impressive here are most of the heroes. I'm not sure whether I've said this before, but I feel it needs to be said - Spider-Man getting a symbiote is cool. Venom is cool. Every hero under the sun getting possessed and having their own unique symbiote look is not cool - it's called diminishing returns; look it up.

Overall, I'd say that this episode just barely scrapes by into acceptable territory, but with emphasis on the just. If the symbiote invasion had gone on any longer, or if it hadn't emphasised the whole hope thing, I'd really dislike this one, and as it is, it definitely isn't gaining any points for the whole motorbike symbiotes thing. Its message is a good one, and I do like Moon Knight once he gets his shit together, but otherwise there's a lot here to dislike.