Having seen the final set of episodes, its mind boggling that Marvel have thrown away a critically successful show that has swiftly and adequately introduced new audiences to:
- The Avengers. The foll roster, not just the cut down movie lot, but like, the core Avengers, all of them up to Vision but not including mutants such as the Scarlet Witch. Going even further with the New Avengers ep to go from Classic era to a snapshot of the current one.
- The Fantastic Four. Intertwined into all things Marvel, these were used sparingly and in the right way. Made me miss the old 90's cartoon a lot. Doom here is the best he has ever been portrayed out of comics, pure swag.
- Spider-Man. More enjoyable than his own cartoon in this show. If they'd kept the Keaton dub, would have tipped this 2nd series from fluctuating quality to god tier, just like that.
- Heroes For Hire. Luke Cage, Iron Fist, characters you'd not really expect to make it into the animated realm. They didnt do much with them, but hell, here they are established.
- Guardians of the Galaxy + Beta Ray Bill. Even Cosmic Marvel fans have to admit you have to really drill down into comics to hear of these guys, despite the quality. But here they are.
- Asgard - First season at least went deep into Asgard stuff, further than the Thor movie, and its unfortunate the Surtur plotline wasnt wrapped up.
- S.W.O.R.D and Ms Marvel. Nothing has really taken such care to put these elements of the MU so front and center. If Ms Marvel shows up in the movies, I half feel its because of how kickass she was on this show.
- Red Hulk, Winter Soldier. Don't think anyone expected the show to tackle this sorta stuff so soon, especially Red Hulk. Thats really current stuff.
Really, the whole thing felt like another season would have set-up maybe the X-Men and the magic side of Marvel with Dr Strange and Ghost Rider as the main potential guest stars. Then you have a FULL HOUSE. Thats never been achieved. Even DCU stuff would struggle to get near that level of interconnectedness, especially sprung from just one show.
Then you have a cartoon acting as a nexus to every single Marvel property and branch out into SO MANY other animated series or features all set in the same universe, i.e: $$$$MONEY$$$$. Instead, if theyre rebooting to match the movies, they limit their pool of characters to 'realism' set stuff, which isnt the point of Saturday morning styled cartoons.
Theyre insane. Throwing away Spectacular Spider-Man may have been a necessity, I'm still confused by what the fuck happened to Wolverine and the X-Men,but throwing this away as well is sheer fucking hubris. LOEB'D.
Oh watching the last few was so enjoyable, but so infuriating. I like the way the writers found a way to make the last words spoken on the show a real dagger in the heart. Yes this probably is how history and critical reception will remember the animated Avengers for a very long time.
Didn't MODOK create it back in season 1? Then it questions how was the cube being made in MODOK's timeline when it was around during WW2.
We got a two-parter despite all the doomsaying before (even if I wished the final episode would have been the two-parter here), and we got a nice big threat for the final episode.