Hello there, true believers! Thanks for swinging by for another installment of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Maximum Venom on Disney XD. After defeating the Goblin Nation (at the cost of an enemy turned friend) Peter Parker prepares for a nice normal semester at Horizon High. Just kidding! It’s business as usual for everyone’s favorite web-slinging superhero. Being a teenage superhero can be hard, especially when your alien foe is back! Pull up a web and enjoy as we give you five thoughts on season 3, episode 1, “Web of Venom.”
1. Old digs, new faces
Peter is back at his old school, Horizon High. (He had previously left while Doc Ock controlled his body, it was a whole thing…) Things are seemingly back to normal, or as normal as things can be at Horizon, with anti-gravity rooms, arc reactors, and room full of defunct technology that is too dangerous to have at a high school. Things seem to be looking up for Peter, except that he forgot to sign up for a week-long college tour, removing his allies about as quickly as they came back.
Peter does meet a new friend in Grady Scaps. It seems the two of them have met before, Grady attended a rival tech high school that was a front for A.I.M., but the two of them seem to hit it off pretty quick. Grady is hesitant about the level at which Horizon students achieve, but Peter works to build his confidence and shows him to the “graveyard” of old projects just to give his new classmate an idea of what others have tried. It’ll be interesting to see how Grady fits into the dynamic. He’s a loveable buffoon with perhaps a bit too much arrogance, perhaps attempting to fill the role left behind by Doc Ock. There’s also a new teacher, Dr. Curt Conners.
It’s nice to have new faces, but hopefully, it’s not at the cost of Peter’s Spider-friends. The dynamic they had by the end of season 2 was a lot of fun and it would be a shame to sacrifice it.
2. Peter’s new confidant has some secrets of his own
At about the halfway point of “Web of Venom,” Peter is once again defending his school when he makes a pretty significant discovery, Max knows his secret. While it’s not revealed how long he’s known, or how he found out, Max offers to help his superheroic student. (Hopefully, it was after the whole Doc Ock thing.) Having Max on Peter’s side offers some interesting possibilities. Max is, after all, a genius with access to lots of useful technology. Plus it helps to solve that whole awkward teenage superhero problem. But there’s a catch and a pretty big one. Max is secretly working with the Venom symbiote.
Peter is initally shocked at the discovery and throws some early initial tension into the episode. While Max assures his student that the new substance is synthetic, the symbiote without the attitude, and it does work. Peter does in fact start working with Max. In the episode’s strangest move, they flip the script with Peter being gung ho and excited about the new symbiote and Max being hesitant. It would have been far more interesting to have their partnership be one more of necessity than willingness and have Peter continue to be skeptical. The partnership works, but it just feels rushed.
3. A technovore gives Peter the chance to showcase some new abilities (while creating some new problems)
While Grady searches for projects in the graveyard, he accidentally activates a little robot that is soon revealed to be a technovore, literally eating other projects and gaining their powers. While it’s not much of a problem in the contained room of semi-useless technology if the machine gets out it would be bad news. Of course, it gets out. In an attempt to help, Max has Peter use the synthetic symbiote to help out. It’s chemical, not technological, and it does work. Not only does it stop the technovore, but it also allows Peter to do cool new things like morph his hands into weapons.
It’s revealed, however, that it’s not Grady’s fault but rather Curt Conners, who suspects that Max is working with the Venom symbiote, and Spidey’s new suit proves his thesis. At no point is it revealed who Conners is working for, but one can assume it’s no one good considering he unleashed dangerous tech into a HIGH SCHOOL! Conners is also able to find Max’s supply of Venom and accidentally unleashes it. By the end of “Web of Venom,” Conners has successfully gotten Max out of the office and seems to have taken over as interim head of the school. It creates some new interesting problems for Spidey.
Continued below4. A murky moral about obsession
As the episode progresses, and Max and Peter’s bond strengthens, Max tries to figure out why Peter hasn’t gone public yet. Many of the other heroes of the world are public, everyone knows that Iron Man is Tony Stark, for instance. He’s curious why Peter doesn’t want the credit for his good works.
After the events of the technovore and a heightened Venom almost destroying the planet, Max realizes that his obsession to figure out how to take advantage of Venom is in many ways a purely emotional one, stemming back to wanting to help a person who sacrificed themself to help Max. Peter understands, his obsession is similar, keeping people safe, including his loved ones by keeping his identity secret. Max decides to stop pushing Peter to reveal his identity.
Here’s the thing, in the moment it works, but the more you think about it the murkier this moral becomes. It’s not clear how these two things line up. Yes, Max is also trying to help people, but keeping an alien symbiote is actively dangerous. Peter has full control over his powers, there’s no way for them to become “unleashed.” The two situations are radically different and the moment feels awkward in retrospect.
5. Meet the new threat, a heightened version of the old threat
Of course, Peter needs to use his new Symbiote suit to fight Venom, who has taken over Conners. The problem is that Venom has the ability to control the synthetic symbiote as well, making him stronger and more aggressive. But instead of fighting, Venom disappears to the site where he crash-landed and where he planted “the seed.” After gaining access to the device, Venom fires a large laser into the sky, but thankfully taking over the synthetic symbiote makes him weak. It also gives Grady a chance to shine, allowing him to figure out the electrical current to disperse the symbiote and remove the threat of Venom.
Just kidding, the laser is actually a beacon for more Venom to come to Earth and destroy it. Who knows what the future will hold for Spidey and his gang, but if the end of “Web of Venom” is to be believed, there’s about to be a lot more symbiote for Peter and his friends to deal with.
And that’s it, folks. It’s nice to be back at Horizon High, even if the team is a little scattered. It’ll be interesting to see how the mysteries reveal themselves, who is Conner working for, what is Venom’s goal, how will Max handle things? What do you think? Sound of below!
