Episode #49 New Avengers
Original Airdate - October 14th, 2012
When Kang the Conqueror traps the Avengers in a temporal void and begins to bring his armies to the 21st century, Iron Man activates the New Avengers protocol and a new team is forged with Spider-Man, War Machine, Wolverine, Iron Fist, Luke Cage and the Thing. The New Avengers must defeat Kang to rescue the Avengers and save the world.
Written by Christopher Yost
Directed by Steve Gordon
Review by RoyalRubble
Media by Marvel Animation Age
Review:
Pretty great episode. It was nice seeing some of the heroes that have guest-starred on the show again trying to work together as the New Avengers after the regular Avengers were apparently defeated by Kang the Conqueror. Spider-Man is in the spotlight this episode, and it works pretty well. I wasn't really expecting him to show up again in an episode after "Along Came a Spider", so this was a pleasant surprise. It was also nice seeing War Machine, Thing, Iron Fist and Luke Cage all in the same episode. Though since the latter two appeared I was kind of hoping we'll see the new Ant-Man (Scott Lang) again as well. Plus, Wolverine officially makes his debut on this series after a small cameo as Logan in "Meet Captain America", and seeing a Super-Skrull with similar traits during the Skrull invasion story-arc.
The only thing I didn't really like this week was how this episode handled Kang. He was one of my favorite villains the Avengers had to face during the previous season and his storyline was pretty awesome. Time travel stories are always tricky to pull off in pretty much any media but I thought this show managed to find good enough explanations for most of the stuff concerning Kang. In this episode, he is basically a generic villain that can travel through time the Avengers have to fight. There's no mention of anything that made his story so interesting back in the first season, like his timeline being disintegrated and him traveling to our present to save his future, nor does he mention anything about Princess Ravonna. The Council of Kangs was a nice idea but they sort of just appeared here without any explanation other than all of them being Kang from different timelines, which makes it kind of confusing. Kang was still presented pretty decent in this episode and was a big enough threat for all the heroes seen here, but I would have liked some more continuity and consistency with what was already established on the show.
Other than that, the episode is fun and a good opportunity to showcase other heroes we haven't seen a lot of on the show. Their interactions were good and there were some cool moments spread throughout the story. I think I liked the Thing the most in this episode; he had some great lines and scenes here: him meeting War Machine and thinking it's an Iron Man from an alternate universe, his comment that the FF have seen weirder stuff than what was happening in the city thanks to Kang, him taking Colossus' place in the classic "fastball special" move with Wolverine. While still far from perfect, I enjoyed the few scenes with Spidey fighting alongside Iron Fist and Luke Cage more than pretty much the entirety of Ultimate Spider-Man (at least so far). Spidey is the one who ultimately saves the day and in the end he is offered an Avengers ID card, which makes him a reserve member. I really wasn't expecting him to join the team but now that he has, I think it's safe to say he'll appear once again by the time the show is over.
All in all, I liked this episode even though it didn't really offer a satisfying conclusion to Kang's story-arc. It was a nice little adventure but I'm hoping the next few final episodes will be even better.
