Hello there, true believers! Thanks for swinging by for another installment of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Maximum Venom on Disney XD. After saving the earth from the threat of the symbiote known as Venom, Spidey’s work is far from over! Being a teenage superhero can be hard, especially when your high school is secretly being controlled by your old foes! Pull up a web and enjoy as we give you five thoughts on season 3, episode 5, “Generations.”
1. A dark new direction for Horizon High
Horizon High is under new management. Despite the best efforts of Peter and his friends, Max Modell was removed from Horizon, putting Dr. Curt Connors in charge and making some big changes. Instead of freestyle learning designed to inspire creativity and individuality in the students, Connors creates a more rigid school. Projects are now assigned, there are strict deadlines, and the security bots are now enforcing orderly lines and making secret deliveries to the teacher’s lounge. There are other things as well, things like a dress code and what appeared to be darker lighting in any of the classroom scenes. Overall, the early sequence of “Generations” does a good job of conveying a new tone of the school simply using lighting, the school just felt less fun.
It also doesn’t help that Connors isn’t interested in keeping his students safe. After an accident in Peter’s class, Connors and the security bots rush in to save the things the students were working on. Thankfully, there’s a new faculty member here to help. Maria is Anya’s older step-sister and inspiration to become a scientist. She reprimands Connors and shows that while Horizon is changing, at least they have someone on their side. In any case, “Generations” creates a new tone for the school, which makes them all suspicious.
2. Conspiracies upon conspiracies
Peter and his friends discover two big things in the accident in Peter’s classroom. One is that the security bot deliveries to the teacher’s lounge contain Jackyl serum and the other is that the Jackyl has resumed his old operations. Miles and Anya investigate the teacher’s lounge and Peter and Gwen investigating the Jackyl’s warehouse. In both cases, all is not what it seems, including secret lairs, goblin sharks, and the return of Gwen’s uncle, the Jackyl. Of the two conspiracies in “Generations,” the Peter and Miles stuff was initially more interesting, with some nice little one-liners and fine action, but after Maria gets involved in Miles and Anya’s story, things picked up. Maria decides to help her little sister but things just seem off, resulting in Maria’s betrayal of the team.
Season 3 of Spider-Man: Maximum Venom has gone to 40-minute episodes, which sometimes feels like the show will stall for time and “Generations” felt like they ran into that problem. Scenes just dragged on and it felt like the Jackyl story split up the team unnecessarily. Conspiracies are ok, too many can feel a little tedious.
3. An old foe gets a major upgrade
In the first part of “Generations,” there’s a brief moment where Connors stumbles towards a mysterious chamber explaining that he needed more of “the cure.” While it was clear in “Spider-Man Unmasked” that he was a puppet, it was surprising to see the puppeteer revealed so soon. (The pacing, in general, this season has been all over the place.) The puppeteer in question is Normal Osborn, who used Connors to gain access to the Venom Symbiote, turning him into the “The Dark Goblin.” The design of the Dark Goblin is impressive, a weird synthesis of Venom, Green Goblin, and a little Lizard thrown in as well. Green and black is usually a good color combo for a villain’s costume and Goblin’s look in “Generations” proves that point.
There was also a funny moment in the big reveal of Norman’s master plan that felt pure Spidey, namely Peter making fun of Norman’s preference of long-winded speeches. In any case, the combination of Norman’s intellect with the Symbiotes raw power and Jackyl’s healing abilities has made Dark Goblin quite the formidable foe, but he has another trick up his sleeve, a way to keep the team apart.
Continued below4. Family drama puts Peter at a disadvantage (but he has some tricks up his sleeve)
Norman has realized that Peter’s true strength lies in his team and as a way to level the playing field, splits them up. This means that each member of the Spider-team gets pitted against someone important to them. Gwen has to face her uncle. Anya needs to confront his sister who revealed she has been working for Norman the whole time. Miles gets… the bee man? Each of them leaves Spider-Man to face Dark Venom alone. But he’s not alone, he has a friend to help him, Harry Osborn. Not only is Harry helping his friend, but getting closure on his dad.
While earlier parts of the episode felt like they dragged on, the climax of the episode built on each story is surprising and fun ways. Jackyl wants to turn Gwen into someone like him so we won’t feel alone. Maria is revealed to be Chameleon, using her family against her. (Anya is able to figure this out using personal stories about their relationship.) But in possibly the best reveal of the episode, Miles vs Swarm becomes far more personal than either anticipated. Swarm just wants to keep his neighborhood and son Miles safe from Miles’ Spider-Man. It worked wonders on me, in this case, “Generations,” was more than a clever title. Each of these fights helped to develop all of Peter’s friends a little more and also gave them a chance to shine. It also reminds Peter of his real strength, his friends.
5. A bizarre deus ex machina creates a sloppy finish
The end of “Generations” was a little baffling, Anya realizes that because they all worked on the pod that made Dark Goblin, they can reverse the procedure. While the show lampshades this with Miles cracking a joke about how lazy it is to have kids work on your scheme, it just raised all kinds of questions. This might have worked better is Horizon was a tech startup like in the comics, but here the high school element raises questions. Why would you have a bunch of high schoolers working on your master plan? It just felt like trying to sloppily write your way out of the corner. What makes it worse is that it also overturned Max’s expulsion from the school, Max is back and seemingly status quo is returned. It all feels like a rushed Deux ex, something that has happened before in this season, but here it just felt egregious.
So there you have it, Horizon High is back to normal, but with bigger questions out there. What will happen to Miles and his Dad? Where did Lizard go? Is the Earth safe from Venom? I guess we’ll have to find out together. What did you think of the ending of “Generations?” Sound off below and see you next time!
