[7.4/10] Not bad! I was all ready to roll my eyes at this one given the love triangle business it seemed to be setting up, but I actually appreciated the way this one approached the romantic stuff. For one thing, there wasn’t an actual love triangle between Deborah/Flash/Felicia, just a moment of recognition for Flash that Felicia hanging on him hurt Deborah and made her jealous the same way that Toomes’s second-in-command flirting with Deborah did to him. The way he jumps into action to try to save Deborah and express his feelings for her is surprisingly admirable, and the way he rags on Parkers but admires Spider-Man makes for an ironic contrast.
I also liked Peter’s bit with M.J. and Harry here. It wasn’t overdone, and I appreciate the notion that M.J. wants Peter there when she’s reintroduced to her father, since he knows what it’s like to be without his parents. It’s a sign that the two are confidantes, and while Harry’s basically the Baxter here, it feels at least a little deeper than that.
The stuff with Vulture was a little more hit or miss. In particular, his hatred of the Osbornes is established in a really rushed fashion, but the other side of the coin is that his razor sharp wings and life-force sucking de-aging gloves are nicely comic book-y and out there. And the flying baddie makes for some cool action sequences with Spidey. There’s a lot of exposition and flashbacks and coincidences at play (like Spidey recognizing the neural neutralizer), but also some solid Spider-Man wisecracks.
Overall, this one wasn’t a homerun, but its batting average was higher than many S2 episodes.
Shout by yb_magnetBlockedParent2024-04-18T16:13:26Z
It was refreshing to see some Peter Parker after it was all spiderman in the previous episodes.