Review: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Maximum Venom “Maximum Venom”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Aside from a few loose ends, like Curt Conners and Swarm still being on the loose, things in Peter’s life seem to have calmed down since Max Modell was reinstated as the principal at Horizon High. They even begin preparation for a big school dance to celebrate, which Peter decides to invite Mary Jane to. Naturally that peace doesn’t last long, as Venom makes a surprising return, as well as revealing that he has been controlling Max for much of the season, meaning the title “Maximum Venom” has been a pun this entire time. He has manipulated him into inventing a portal to unleash even more symbiotes on Earth, this time with the goal of destroying it. These symbiotes put Venom down as inferior, though that doesn’t stop him from doing their bidding, but the Spider Team and Harry are able to fight them off, even though Horizon High is destroyed in the process. In order to keep the spirit of Horizon High alive, Peter uses some good will he’s gained with Iron Man to create a new tech group with his friends, with their whole futures ahead of them.

OUR TAKE

After a six month release schedule, Maximum Venom finally concludes to put the symbiote storyline, and possible the whole show, to bed. Last episode seemed to wrap most things up pretty conclusively, which made me wonder how they could really tie things up again with this one, as well as pull the focus back to Venom since his name is in the subtitle for the season and his involvement has been pretty spotty. And the result is that now we do technically have half of the episodes of the season focused on Venom, even though that still feels a bit small. I’ll go over this more in the Season Review, but this season has felt like it’s had a considerable identity crisis going on which has pulled its story focus in many directions, not leaving a ton of real identity by the end. Though as far as this episode in particular is concerned, it does try to cram in as much as it can before the credits roll, particularly introducing three more symbiote villains, the Symbiote Sisters as they’re being called, only to kill them off by the end when we barely got to know them here.

We also finally have Mary Jane in a more active roll after basically just being around to listen to Peter’s problems for the majority of her appearances. Felicia Day deserves better, Marvel Animation! Still, it was cool to finally see her amongst the main group of friends, even if she kinda just reminds me that the group dynamic they have is that pretty much everyone is the same character, that being cool smart people, aside from Grady, who is the DORKY smart person. The MAX-imum Venom reveal feels like a bit of a stretch, especially considering this show seems hellbent on Max not being responsible for his own actions by having every single villain in this season explain how they manipulated him in some way, though it is somewhat satisfying to finally see him taking charge and cleaning up the mess with what he can. I do wonder if destroying Horizon High was the best solution to that, though in a meta sense, it does show a turning point in this show’s history. With no confirmed word on a fourth season of Marvel’s Spider-Man, it could also be the best book end for the show we’ll be getting, as Horizon High was where things all started back in the first episode. If this is the end, it’s a sufficient finale, though I’ll wait to hear confirmation on that. In the meantime, let’s look back on this weirdly released season and see what it all added up to, as well as how many more references from the Venom movie I can cram in.