Welcome back to Boomb Tube, Multiversity’s weekly column detailing the current Cape Cartoons scene. This week, we finally reach the end of Avengers Assemble season 1 with “The Final Countdown”.
Wait! No… no it’s “The Final Showdown”. A Magician Named Gob does not appear this episode. I’m sorry to get anyone excited. Uh, let’s get on with the recap.
Last time on Avengers Assemble, The Cabal made the unfortunate decision of trusting a Nazi. Red Skull, who again is a literal Nazi, betrayed his team, stole the Cosmic Cube Tesseract for himself and, after being imbued with its Cosmic Eract powers proceeded to fly off with Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor, now donning the very imaginative name “Cosmic Skull”. Again, this is the second time that Iron Man has had Nazi Face steal his armor. The first time was in the series premiere so it might be played off as some sort of parelle but seriously, dude should really invest in a steering wheel lock or something.
Anyway, since the scene is now just the remnants of The Cabal and Avengers, things get a bit awkward. Cap tells them to calm down to which they respond with attacks. I mean, don’t get me wrong, confidence is everything but are you absolutely sure you should knock out the people who could help you defeat the actual Nazi you all gave cosmic awareness too? One of you is literally MODOK. Your highest-tier member is also MODOK. You kind of suck. Oh and speaking of which, Dracula’s still alive. Though before I can make any more jokes about sucking, literally everyone blows up.
Final Verdict: 10.1 – All Hail The Cosmic Skull!
Wait… dammit episode still isn’t over. During the title sequence, Tony warped everyone back to Avengers Tower so they could keep bickering. Unfortunately, the lack of a suit means that the shrapnel in Tony’s heart is getting to him again and he needs help. After being carried by Steve (yessssss) and explaining that they need to work with The Cabal to stop Cosmic Skull, Tony plugs into JARVIS so he control the entire tower. First things first, he burns Attuma to death with an Arc Reactor. He said The Avengers needed to work with The Cabal, not The Cabal and A Punchline. Of course, Tony then proceeds to fry Dracula who, while looking like a criminal’s idea of an anime character, is still literally Dracula. I can’t imagine trying to recruit a team for yourself and not choosing the Lord of Shadows. Finally he takes down Hyperion; first by smacking him around which involves Tony flicking his pinky to strike him and then he freezes Hyperion while saying “You don’t want to know what I had to do to do that.”
I… I honestly don’t know what he could have done to be honest… Really, I thought the “ice button” would’ve been enough.
After rounding up The Cabal, save for MODOK who was top-tier enough to escape, The Avengers find that Cosmic Skull is attacking New York as well as enough other cities that The Avengers can split up evenly to tackle him. I mean there’s a great number of superheroes out in this universe that could back them up but we’re stuck with everyone who was in the movies and is also a man. Oh, and to add further salt to the wound that’s just on my skin and my skin alone, Avengers Assemble is calling this plan Operation: Earth’s Mightiest. Oh… those were better times. Thankfully, Cosmic Skull’s bitter over not having Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes anymore by beating up The Avengers Assemble cast in a way that could only really be described as swagnificent. With a smugly calm voice, he blinds Hawkeye, talks about the myth of Icarus while melting Falcon’s wings, opens a portal so Thor’s hammer ends up in a different dimension entirely, quotes that Heath Ledger thing about the unstoppable force and immovable objects while destroying Cap’s shield, and finally mind-controls The Hulk so we can get the fifth or sixth episode in this series where one of the Avengers gets brainwashed.
I don’t want anyone to take this the wrong but, for a Nazi, Red Skull is kind of awesome. Realizing that The Avengers alone cannot live up to Johann Schmidt’s hype, Tony sends in Attuma, Dracula and Hyperion, the last of whom redeems the team with a single line: “Greetings… LOSERS!” Meanwhile, Cap ruins his team with just one. After Hulk breaks out of Skull’s mind control the latter gets confused Cap says the actual following thing: “Even you can’t touch [The Hulk’s] heart! His heart is one hundred percent Avenger!”
Continued belowJust go home, dude.
Anyway, Black Widow calls because she’s finally ready to be in the episode. Also because she’s been interrogating MODOK at AIM headquarters which is apparently a scene we could’ve been watching this whole time. Just… goddammit, AA. I’d say that I need to go to meetings to handle you but that might be a little insensitive. Moving on, Black Widow and MODOK’s deus ex machina leads to Red Skull being knocked out which prompts Dracula to declare that he’ll suck his blood and make the cosmically powered Red Skull a slave to the King of Shadows. With no sense of irony, that would be the coolest Season ever. Instead, Cap pulls off Dracula which ends up saving them when Red Skull explodes. They share a misty-eyed emotional moment. I’m not making that up for once.
Before things can get completely slashfic in here, Red Skull explodes and hey that’s season 1 everybody! Before we can all wrap it up there’s just some loose ends to tie up. MODOK takes over the Cabal because fine and Hawkeye gets his vision back because great. And finally, since Avengers Assemble really wants to be like the movie, where we see Red Skull meeting with his master, the man who apparently guided Red Skull on his way to claiming the Tesseract.
Oh my god, you guys. Season 2’s Big Bad is gonna be Hellboy.
Final Verdict: 4.2 – This episode was just a series of missed opportunities that culminated in a recreation of the Avengers post-credits scene that the show bent over ass-backwards to reach. We’ll talk more about Avengers Assemble more next week but… yeah that was a solidly mediocre episode.
