Avengers Assemble, sort-of successor to a much better show, is now in its fifth season! Black Panther’s Quest follows last year’s Secret Wars. We’re sure to have a much more sensible series of events by ridin’ real hard on the the billion-dollar coattails of this years Black Panther which, if you missed, can be explained to you by pretty much any other human on this planet.
1. Assemble
So right away, you can tell that this show looks marginally better than last season. It’s as a pauper upgrading from burlap to a hand-me-down prison uniform. The background artwork looks clean, if not still a little cheap, and the actual principal animation is still a little stilted but, on the whole, looks much better with what looks like a few more frames per second. CG elements are vastly more cohesive with the animation style than last season, but it isn’t utilized much, besides some effects and larger models like the big-ass crab mech.
2. Giant Enemy Crab
Like the beginning to a fun comic arc, there’s a little bit of introduction and banter to plot the course followed by a quick inciting incident. In this case, T’Challa is throwing a tiny party or something at Avengers Tower to introduce fan-favorite sister, Shuri, for the gang and the audience to coo over. Ms. Marvel geeks out over meeting her favorite character from the movie that even cartoon characters have seen while Tony Baloney and T’Challa ham it up, clearly setting the stage for further development.
This really cool high-school party gets interrupted by a giant hologram news report of some pretty sick-looking Atlanteans and a 50ft tall crab mech shooting buses and Uber drivers on the George Washington Bridge. Tiger Shark is here to party with an unexpected riff on an issue of “Fallen Son,” blowing into the Horn of Neptune (Gabriel in 616) and summoning the doofiest Ogdru Hem to whoop the shit out of any character not advancing the plot. Shark dips out to take a call in the sewer on his holo triangle from a very fussy mystery man that the credits tell us is Killmonger. “Don’t fuck this up” or something, Killmonger vaguely threatens Tiger Shark. Panther surfs on Iron Man while following horn energy, then everyone gangs up on TS while he’s getting written up by his manager leading to a hasty exit via breaking the Horn of Neptune and executing a standing jump 60ft up through a Midtown street.
Tone Bone and Panther gotta ham it up some more so they spend the rest of the time rebuilding the horn to stop the giant Creech-lookin’ sea monster from eating their friends. With the help of Shuri, Vibranium and Con Edison, the gang blasts the ancient evil back into the depths of the Hudson, everyone is pretty stoked until T’Challa watches over FaceTime as Tiger Shark kidnaps his sister. TO BE CONTINUED
3. Fresh Pumas
Everyone is looking pretty sharp; Cap is less bulky, Thor is in a bearded Marvel NOW getup, hell, even the Tiger Shark redesign looks like a cool muscle-fishman and less like an over-eager Ring of Honor newcomer. Tony is in a weird conceptual approximation of the Mark-L from Infinity War and T’Challa looks pretty sweet in a sleek and minimal Civil War riff. To quickly link the two characters together visually, as well as narratively, the Panther suit has just about the same functionality as the Iron Man armor: materialized cowl, flippers, breathing apparatus, and similarly stylized HUD (there’s even a side-by-side with Tony’s HUD).
4. Diplomatic Immunity
This episode could have very easily fallen back on any previous “Black Panther” runs and perhaps it still might, but for now it’s pretty fun watching T’Challa interact with Atlanteans on a level of educated diplomacy and also acknowledging the broader scope of politics in the Marvel universe. I wouldn’t be shocked if we find out the true motives of Tiger Shark or the name-dropped Attuma in part 2, but I do hope that it continues to be part of a larger plot thread or at the very least indicative of the writing taking creative leaps rather than leaning so hard into the same content we saw back in February.
5. Mark II
After 76 episodes we say goodbye to Adrian Pasdar as Tony Stark though, in what I’m sure is our collective mourning, we may find solace in Mick Wingert’s very serviceable and eerily accurate impression of Adrian Pasdar impersonating Robert Downey, Jr. While we’re on the topic, I’m excited for James Mathis III, who voices T’Challa,, to have a meaty part, this pretty much being his season. He’s already starting to break out of his stoic shell and open up with a little humor and lighter inflections, can’t wait to hear how he gets to develop with Daisy Lightfoot’s Shuri.
