Episode #40 Behold ... The Vision!
Review:
Vision here was pretty awesome. Much better than any of his previous animated appearances; in the mid-90s he only had cameos (on Fantastic Four), in the late 90s he was a boring robot who never did anything exciting and who's story-arc was never resolved (on Avengers: United They Stand) and I remember he was present in the Next Avengers animated movie, but I don't remember him doing anything worthwhile there, so the competition wasn't really that impressive in the first place. But here, in just one episode he proves to be more interesting than all of the above put together. Sure he lost the battle and had to abort his mission, but he proved to be more than a match for the Avengers for almost the entire episode. I really liked the teaser to this episode too; pretty cool seeing the Weapon X facility on this show. As a bonus we get to hear the Professor, voiced by Tom Kane (who of course also voices Ultron and does a great job, as always). I'm not really familiar with Vision's voice actor, Peter Jessop - he seems to be a pretty well-known voice actor in video games, and I'm not that much of a "gamer" - but here he did a good job voicing the character. I'm looking forward to seeing more of him on the show.
Captain America, Thor and Hawkeye travel to Wakanda where the Black Panther has offered to help repair Cap's original, mighty shield. That's when they're attacked by the Vision, continuing the mission Ultron sent him on; he has already obtained Adamantium, now he requires Vibranium and apparently also Cap's shield, to learn how to bond these two elements. This leads to some pretty awesome fight scenes: the Avengers and the Wakanda soldiers versus the Vision. The machine seems unstoppable and proves to be stronger than the heroes. The Black Panther is the first one to actually injure the robot (he's also the one who learns the Vision isn't human in the first place), and ultimately manage to destroy part of their enemy, which coupled with the attacks of the other Avengers was enough to make the Vision abort the mission - the probability of success was 0,35% at that point, according to his calculations. I was a little surprised Thor wasn't strong enough to defeat the robot in this episode; I was thinking the God of Thunder wouldn't be defeated that easily. Overall, this was a great episode filled with some good action scenes.
Obviously the show doesn't rely only on fights and has some great character moments spread throughout the episodes. For example this time we get to see Jan and Jane Foster spending a quiet evening at the Avengers Mansion watching a horror movie and talking about Thor. Sure it all ends when the Vision attacks, defeats Wasp and destroys part of the building, but it was a nice moment while it lasted - similar to how we had the Avengers out of costumes and eating pizza in a diner earlier on the show ("Who Do You Trust?"). It just makes these characters seem more human. There are also some pretty amusing scenes with Hawkeye, holding a grudge against Black Panther for quitting the team during the Skrull invasion, and refusing to re-join the team. He even challenges T'Challa to a fight, thinking he could defeat him and become king of Wakanda in his place! Hawkeye was great this episode. And I'm glad they worked out things in the end, with T'Challa agreeing to come back to the team. I'm pretty sure they're going to need as many allies as possible for their next adventures.
Maybe now that Ultron has returned we'll get to see his creator, Hank Pym on the show again. We haven't seen him in a while and I was hoping he'd appear during the Skrull story-arc; we know he's not Ant-Man anymore, bu he's had a couple of other aliases in the comics and it would be neat to see him again on the team. There was a little foreshadowing about his possible next super-hero identity back in "To Steal an Ant-Man", so I'm hoping he'll return soon. Come to think about it, we haven't seen the new Ant-Man (Scott Lang) since that episode either; I wonder if the other Avengers even know about him. But right now they have to deal with Ultron, who has become invincible after bonding Adamantium to his robot body. Looking forward to their next battle with Ultron and Vision, and the latter eventually changing sides and possibly joining the Avengers.
Original Airdate - July 29th, 2012
Now that the threat of alien invasion is over, Captain America does his best to restore hope to the world by rallying what is left of the Avengers. Together, the remaining members travel to Wakanda to repair Cap's shield, only to find a mysterious caped figure who plans to take the shield for himself.
Written by Michael Ryan
Directed by Roy Burdine
Review by RoyalRubble
Media by Marvel Animation Age
This was another great episode. The Vision is introduced, but more importantly we get to see Ultron again on the show. He was one of my favorite villains during the first season so I was hoping he'd return at some point. It's never explained here how exactly he came back, and while there's still time for that in the next episodes I think it's safe to guess he just downloaded himself inside another robot body as a back-up, like he did a couple of times during his story-arc back in the previous season. Either way, it was cool seeing him again so I don't really mind.
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