The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes! “459″ Review

Giant robots, open ended plotline, and introductions abound as the Avengers face the fury of a Kree Nega Bomb.

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes! “459″

In a remote satellite monitoring station, Jan and Hank are met by Carol Danvers and take a look at an object that is falling fast to Earth.  Just when they rule out the object being intelligent, it shifts to destroy the satellite.  It crash lands  near the facility.  Carol, Hank, and Jan go to see what landed.  They are attacked by an invisible enemy.  When Hank uses ants to show what they are facing, a giant, indestructible robot is revealed.  The robot makes its way to the facility where Carol’s partner in the project reveals himself as Captain Mar-Vell of the Kree military.

What Mar-Vell has to say to the Avengers after they take a comatose Danvers to the hospital isn’t so good.  He tells of the Kree’s war against the Skrulls and how the Kree use the sentinels like the one they’ve been fighting to wipe out threatening populations of planets they wish to conquer as strategic strongholds.  To make matters worse, Kree sentinels are impossible to stop.  Mar-Vell makes a plea to his commanding officer to shut down the bomb, but it’s ultimately up to the Avengers to find a way to stop it.  Hank is knocked out, but not before nearly telling Jan that he loves her.  A determined Wasp discovers holes that the team has blasted in the armor’s surface and is able to get inside the robot and shut it down.  Mar-Vell, Thor and Iron Man take the Nega Bomb into space where it explodes keeping the world safe.  At the hospital, Jan apologizes to Hank for the way she treats him.  When he awakes, she tries to get him to repeat what he said before he went into his coma.  However, they are interrupted by an awaken Carol Danvers who is suspiciously floating above her bed.

This is a particularly cool episode in the series.  Not only does it introduce Carol Danvers and Captain Marvel to the series, but it also introduces the whole Kree/Skrull War story.  Even Mar-Vell tells the Avengers that they must be ready for the fallout of stopping the Nega Bomb.  Just as much of the series has done, this episode sets up a potential big event down the line.  I’ve said it before that this series has paid tribute to the comics time and time again, but it also plays out like a comic book.  Things that happen, decisions made, and actions taken are part of a bigger story that will come into play later.  Each episode is interwoven into the others into one big bowl of awesome.

What’s important about this episode isn’t so much about being introduced to Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, or the whole Kree/Skrull War, it’s really more about Jan and Hank and their feelings toward one another.  Ever since they were introduced in the micro-episodes, Jan has been the more adventurous one and Hank had always been strictly about science.  Jan, who is much more open about her feelings toward Hank, is constantly trying to get him to lighten up or make him jealous when she plays around with the idea of doing things with Tony and so on.  Even Carol makes a comment to Jan about her handling of the relationship.  It’s a good character episode for Jan and Hank.  It’s one of those things that was also needed for them because Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk are action characters.  You pretty much know all you need to know about them.  Cap hasn’t yet had his day and even Black Panther and Hawkeye have been featured prominently in character driven stories.  Hank and Jan’s relationship has been heading toward this for a while.

The other aspect I loved about this episode was how very rooted the visuals were in the classic 1950s era sci-fi cinema.  A giant alien robot, an alien disguised as a human, a weapon that endangers the whole planet, and the final showdown taking place where else but a drive-in theater.  It’s a great nod to that era of storytelling beyond the nods to the Avengers’ comic.

Tags: Avengers Comics Books Comic Book TV The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes!