Spider-Man Season Five: Part Three

 

I should not like these last episodes. I really shouldn't. None of this is what I normally what I want to see with Spider-Man, at all. I own the entirety of Tom Taylor's excellent Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man run. Despite my dislike for his... antics... Taylor really wrote the only modern Spidey run I like: Spider-Man on the ground, talking to the locals, being kind, and just... well... being the uncle Ben of the Marvel Universe. That, to me, was always Peter's arc. And on paper all the craziness of Secret Wars and Spider Wars should have completely crashed and burned. It's clearly yet another toy pitch, another sign of corporate nonsense meddling. I. Should. HATE. This.

I really love the ending of this show.

Peter Parker is finally Uncle Ben. They go through some weird hoops to get him there, but at its core these are true Spider-Man stories. I don't say that lightly. I usually hate it when Spidey goes cosmic and I really don't like multiverse stuff at all. And I really love this last third of the season. Secret Wars and Spider Wars are the ending that this show needed. And no, I didn't want them to go on. I liked the cliff hanger ending as a kid and that definitely hasn't changed now.

The first thing that jumps out at me about these episodes is not just how out of his element Spidey is, but how open he is about it. The folks behind the show could have just had Spidey pretend to know what he was doing and had it be genuinely horrible. Fortunately, we had these folks. So Spider-Man was uncomfortable... but he stepped up. And everyone else he had to work with saw that he was choosing to step up and they chose to let him do it. Peter was working with good people, who could see he was changing and let him do it. If this was done today you wouldn't have anything half this noble going on. Even if you got this far with Peter in a modern context (and you probably wouldn't) the others wouldn't let Peter take point. He'd have to prove to a bunch of assholes he was worthy to lead them. For anyone who's going "Marvel characters were always assholes"... no... no they weren't. See. This. Show.

The pacing of these last few episodes is off the freaking charts. This show has always had freaking quick pacing, with season four going absolutely apeshit bonkers with the speed of dialogue. And while I'm not a fan of the incredible speed of the dialogue in season five it's not even in the same ballpark as season four. It's amazing to me how much the show writers get done in such a short amount of time. I could see even one of these episodes taking at least twice the time today... and that's not a compliment. Because this show manages to keep what's going on clear. All the time. I'm not sure how. But they do it.

But my favorite scene, the thing that makes this show, is:

That is how you use a multiverse, people! You don't just use it for cutesy "alternate versions" or "what could have beens". I didn't like it as a kid, I don't like it now. No, you use these alternate scenarios to specifically play off the emotional lives of the characters. You poke and prod at what happened and ask: "How do you respond to the different world?" And the fact that the obnoxious asshole Spidey in this arc is the one who stopped the criminal, thus saving Uncle Ben, is a  truly fascinating idea. "Our" Peter's failure and the loss of his Uncle Ben turned him into the person who would realize that Spider-Carnage would be unable to keep what goodness he had left coming to the fore. By playing through the emotional development of "our" Peter this arc really cements what finally makes him a true hero. The question of the series was answered.

Yes, I think it's done.

And that should answer what I think of the ending of this show, which is eschatological. An eschatological ending is one where you don't see the "true" ending, but given what you know of the characters and the story you know the situation will be resolved, even if you don't quite know how it will be done. You just have faith that it will. I know that this show was ended prematurely, but the ending as it stands is a fantastic eschatological ending! We now know what sort of man Peter has become, we know that with Madame Web's help he will find Mary Jane. And, really, that's really all I wanted. I can picture them being happy quite easily. This show has also given me that. Peter can grow and change. Marvel may not understand this about their property, but the rest of us?

I think we all think Spider-Man deserves some happiness, don't we? I mean, besides Marvel.