Spectacular Spider-Man Episode 3 Review: Natural Selection

Patrick continues his SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN reviews with episode three NATUARAL SELECTION.

WARNING SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This week’s episode opens with Spidey foiling an attempted robbery, where one of the robbers is actually robbing from one of his Great-Aunts Bakery. Spidey quickly dispatches and defeats the baddies and manages to get a few snaps of him doing it too. As he is getting home inside his curfew he is delighted with life, he says himself: “I’m making all the right moves.” Unfortunately as ever Spidey is wrong. As he comes home and settles down to sleep, he sees that the pictures he took and desperately need to win a contest and badly needed funds at home, are useless. Strike one for Peter.

The episode then shifts to Curt Connors and him injecting a now electrified lizard serum into his arm. In a flash we see his eye change and we know we are in for a rough ride.

Curt Connors' arc is handled superbly

The writers dealt with the Connors storyline very well. We have seen in the last two episodes his experimentation with his serum and his failings. Therefore when it works the joy from him and his family is understandable and well-voiced acted all round. The writers all strike the right balance with Curt’s wife. She is obviously happy but she also scolds Curt for trying such a risky procedure on himself.

Eddie is given an interesting arc.

As each episode is only 20 minutes long the action moves fast and Connors deteriorates very fast. This is also explained as the rapid change in Connors’ cells and it isn’t fobbed off and forgotten. It’s interesting how the writers push Eddie Brock to the front and we see his character develop.  Eddie as we saw from the last episode is a very protective and jumps into action again to protect Peter and Gwen. It’s interesting to see his interaction with Spidey need the end too. Again Eddie’s first instinct is to protect Spider-Man and not himself.

The episode is resolved by Spidey giving Connors a gene cleanser which removes all lizard DNA from his body. It’s nice that the idea was initially Peter’s in the lab earlier in the episode. Here it points to Peter’s intelligence, a major character trait and also highlights Spidey’s ability to think on his feet. It was also nice to see that he does the same with the when he pulls The Lizard into the Polar Bear pit to slow The Lizard down allowing him to administer the antidote. The intelligence that Peter has is in the forefront of all the episodes so far and it’s nice to see that the character is shown to be brains and not just brawn like some heroes tend to be.

This episode again manages to balance the action right and it’s great to see how the animators adapt Spidey’s fighting technique to his different adversaries. This episode is no exception and the subway sequence is a particular stand out.

The Lizard was an interesting challenge for Spidey

The end of the episode shows that Peter managed to get pictures of Spidey in action against The Lizard. However this lands him in trouble with Mrs. Connors and Eddie and he loses his internship. It’s worth noting the sense of betrayal that Eddie especially feels. It’s looks as though Eddie will get a good story arc in the future. It’s to the writers credit that they feel confident to build story arcs for B characters this early in the series. Peter’s reaction to being fired is excellent. We see a teenager at the end who wants to help people but who finds that he can’t do right for doing wrong. The writers are clever enough to show us that Peter is after all a teenager and that he will make mistakes, they are also clever enough to see that Peter will question his decision to be Spider-Man. It works well and it was nice to see a nod to Uncle Ben and his influence on Peter at the end. The fact that Peter consider to use a gene cleanser on himself shows the struggle he has gone through in the episode and you can tell that this will have a big impact in the future.

Peter is left questioning himself at the end.

This episode had quite the arc that saw Peter go from “making all the right moves”, to questioning his motives behind being Spider-Man. This third episode has highlighted the maturity of the writing staff and they have managed to produce a well crafted, three dimensional character as the focal point for their series. As the series continues it grows in confidence and that stems from getting aspects of all the Spidey characters right. I have to say that this episode is probably the best of what I have seen so far.

Verdict: 4/5

With great action, storyline and some priceless moments this episode had it all. There were nice sequences with Peter struggling with the nuances of having a secret identity (being pelting with water balloon by Flash, almost calling Eddie “bro”) and we begin to see how right the writers have gotten the character of Peter/ Spidey. The transformation of Connors into the Lizard is really well animated on top of the fact that the episode arc gets it just right with regard to the character. The reason the episode loses a mark is that I am sure there are other great episodes down the line so 4 is as high as I can give it at this early stage.