Review: Marvel’s Spider-Man “Generations”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Dr. Connors has completely taken over Horizon High, with strict deadlines, dress codes, and robot hall monitors roaming the hall, plus it’s clear he’s using the students to make some supervillain project, likely making use of the Jackal’s research. Peter and Gwen go try finding Jackal, Gwen’s uncle, in a secret lab near the bay while Anya and Miles grill Connors’ assistant, Maria, who is also Anya’s step-sister. Pater and Gwen fight a bunch of Goblin Shark Men and eventually face the Jackal himself, while Anya and Miles find that Connors has swiped the Venom Seed and that Maria is actually The Chameleon, a villain who can disguise himself as anyone. Also, Swarm is randomly there AND he’s Miles’ dad! But the kicker is that Normon Osborn is actually the one behind all of this, having survived the first season finale and having cultivated power since then in order to use the symbiote research to become the DARK GOBLIN.

Eventually everyone gets to face off with somebody, but Harry to shows up to help stop Norman. Connors and Swarm get away, Chameleon and Jackal are apprehended, and while Norman mutates further to try and fight Peter and Harry, all the Spiders show up to stop him and drain him of the symbiote (though he does end up recovering from his original injuries). With him admitting to setting Max up on tape, Max is set back up at Horizon High and everything goes back to normal. The End. Wait, there’s one more episode, right?

OUR TAKE

Well, that wraps up just about everything with the Horizon High-Curt Connors plotline, with everything basically resolved that was initially set up at the start. There’s some that’s left to be used later, like Miles’ dad being Swarm (which comes right out of nowhere) and Connors out there being a lizard again, but I doubt we’ll be taking care of that in the last episode. Oh wait, we ARE taking care of Connors? Great. Then again, what do I know, as there were so many things in this that I could not possibly have predicted, mainly because they were barely set up and thrown into the plot pretty haphazardly. It seems like they suddenly wanted everyone to have a family member to fight to make a theme of the new beating the old, which wasn’t really something prevalent in the previous four episodes, and even then they cheat to make it happen, with Anya’s step-sister Maria (who she introduces AS her step-sister, which is kinda weird to draw attention to) showing up out of nowhere only to NOT be the real Maria anyway. Why even force this theme if you’re not going to commit to it?

The Jackal stuff at least had prior set up to it, and the Norman reveal TECHNICALLY had set up too, but it still felt pretty random and sudden. And I really shouldn’t have watched the commercial that spoiled his return. And while Harry has sorta been around this season, it’s still pretty out of nowhere to bring him back just for this. I don’t know if it’s how the story is written or that they’ve released these episodes every one to two months, but it is VERY hard to keep track of how often characters have been showing up or if they should be that sporadic in their appearances. But hey, they FINALLY worked the symbiote into the plot tangentially, thereby making this season’s subtitle TECHNICALLY more often relevant that not! And really, isn’t that all we can ask of it at the end of the day? Well, no, not even close, but it’s something. And if there’s one thing I can say about this season overall, it’s that it is something. Yet despite how final this episode seems to be, we still have one more to go, one actually titled “Maximum Venom”…but it seems like Venom’s inclusion is more of a subplot. Ain’t that just the way.