[6.8/10] I like the idea of this one -- that Gwen misses having her Spider powers and feels left out, especially with the other members of her peer group all being wall-crawlers now. I also like the notion that she has talents, like being able to figure out how to track the blood gem using her phone, that make her useful regardless of whether she can spin a web. And I even like the way the show depicts her joy at having them back, the excitement for her of swinging through the city again (even if Anya tsks tsks at the lack of seriousness of it).
But man, we get the point quickly, and then the show breezes through the dramatization of that theme. Just when Gwen is lamenting her lack of powers, she conveniently gets them. Then, it builds to a big sacrifice where she’s willing to give them up to take away Scorpion’s powers as well and thereby keep the city safe (which would have been a cool little arc). But instead, the show plays take-backsies and she just has powers again now anyway.
That undermines the basics of the story the episode is trying to tell, and you can see the show struggling repeatedly in this one with the technobabble explanations required for everything. There’s some good ideas at play, but the execution of them is ham-handed and, by the end of the episode, lacks conviction.
Still, there’s some fun stuff. The contrast between Miles’s “lessons” and the his trying out banter versus Anya’s more serious take on superheroing is fun. And Scorpion and Tinkerer jawing about whose name goes first is enjoyable, even if the battle with giant and/or mecha versions of them become static pretty quickly.
Overall, this is an episode founded on a cool idea for a Gwen character story, but which doesn't really know how to put that idea into practice beyond the level of “it’s fine.”
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2019-09-10T04:52:19Z
[6.8/10] I like the idea of this one -- that Gwen misses having her Spider powers and feels left out, especially with the other members of her peer group all being wall-crawlers now. I also like the notion that she has talents, like being able to figure out how to track the blood gem using her phone, that make her useful regardless of whether she can spin a web. And I even like the way the show depicts her joy at having them back, the excitement for her of swinging through the city again (even if Anya tsks tsks at the lack of seriousness of it).
But man, we get the point quickly, and then the show breezes through the dramatization of that theme. Just when Gwen is lamenting her lack of powers, she conveniently gets them. Then, it builds to a big sacrifice where she’s willing to give them up to take away Scorpion’s powers as well and thereby keep the city safe (which would have been a cool little arc). But instead, the show plays take-backsies and she just has powers again now anyway.
That undermines the basics of the story the episode is trying to tell, and you can see the show struggling repeatedly in this one with the technobabble explanations required for everything. There’s some good ideas at play, but the execution of them is ham-handed and, by the end of the episode, lacks conviction.
Still, there’s some fun stuff. The contrast between Miles’s “lessons” and the his trying out banter versus Anya’s more serious take on superheroing is fun. And Scorpion and Tinkerer jawing about whose name goes first is enjoyable, even if the battle with giant and/or mecha versions of them become static pretty quickly.
Overall, this is an episode founded on a cool idea for a Gwen character story, but which doesn't really know how to put that idea into practice beyond the level of “it’s fine.”