AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES S1x007

"BREAKOUT PART 2"
Written by Christopher Yost | Directed by Vinton Heuck

The Plot: Graviton harasses Nick Fury above the East River, but Thor intervenes. The Raft falls back into the river as Wasp rescues Fury. Meanwhile, Iron Man crashes in a cornfield following his escape from the demolished Vault. He summons a new suit of armor to resume his journey. In New York, Thor continues his battle with Graviton, while elsewhere, the Hulk wanders into a diner with Leonard Samson. Seeing Thor's fight on TV, Hulk has an inner debate with Banner, which leads to him leaving for New York after extracting a promise from Banner that he will allow the Hulk to remain the Hulk going forward.

Graviton gains the upper hand on Thor and continues his search for Fury, but the Wasp intercepts him. He dispatches her easily, then Iron Man arrives -- only to be knocked into orbit by Graviton. Ant-Man turns into Giant-Man and joins the fray, but is also unable to make a difference. Graviton attempts to kill Fury, but the SHIELD commander is revealed as a robotic Life Model Decoy, with the real Fury watching from cover. Graviton next goes on after Manhattan, lifting the entire island into the sky. Thor reappears ant attacks again, causing Graviton to lose his concentration. Manhattan returns to Earth, and so does Iron Man.

As Graviton continues his rampage, Thor attacks again. Iron Man joins him, as do Giant-Man and Wasp. But the assembled heroes are still insufficient, until Hulk arrives. The Green Goliath proves stronger that Graviton's power and holds his own long enough for Ant-Man to distract the villain. The heroes team up and finally defeat Graviton. SHIELD immediately shows up to apprehend the Hulk, but the heroes stop them. Iron Man proposes that the group join together as a team, and Wasp christens the group, "the Avengers".

Continuity Notes: The episode's cold open is a flashback to Graviton's origin -- it begins ten years ago on the SHIELD helicarrier, as Fury recruits Dr. Franklin Hall to help SHIELD duplicate the experiments of Abraham Erskine, the man who created Captain America, then skips ahead a bit as we see the overconfident Hall refuse to shut down a machine which malfunctions and endows him with gravity-based powers. We then cut to the present, just before the end of the previous episode, as Graviton escapes imprisonment and asks how long he's been in the Raft. Baron Zemo tells him, "Longer than me, and I've been here six years."

At one point, Fury declares an "Omega Level Emergency", which places all of United States armed forces, including the Hulkbusters, under his command.

It's revealed that Tony Stark and Janet van Dyne know each other from their common social circles.

Per Fury, the escapees from the super-prisons number seventy-four. A moment later, the episode ends on a bit of a cliffhanger as Clay Quartermain reports to Fury that Graviton wasn't the cause of the breakout, leaving Fury to wonder who was behind it.

Do I Know That Voice? Not this week!

My Thoughts: As a follow-up to the "Breakout Part 1", this episode is a bit wanting. It's just one loooong fight scene between Graviton and the Avengers-to-be. Aside from that brief glimpse of Zemo in the cold open, there are no other bad guys to be seen. Of course this is explained as the villains all running for the hills in the aftermath of the breakout, but still -- after the huge setup from the previous installment, it would've been nice to at least see some of those bad guys going underground.

That said, I do like the structure of the episode, presenting Graviton as, literally, an unstoppable force of nature that none of the heroes are able to tackle alone, then showing them teaming up against him in smaller duos or trios, before finally giving is a climax where all five heroes work together to take him down.

And speaking of Graviton -- I can only surmise that Christopher Yost was a fan of THUNDERBOLTS, because up until that series, Graviton was basically a third-tier "aslo-ran" villain, in spite of his awesome power. It was Kurt Busiek (followed by Fabian Nicieza) who showed just what Graviton was truly capable of, turning him into the T-Bolts "big bad" -- their version of a Magneto or a Doctor Doom. I don't know that anyone has done much with him since, but for a few years there, he was one of those "we only use this guy once a year since he's such a big deal" type of villains.

I have a few thoughts about the deal the Hulk and Banner make in this episode, but I'm going to save them for a future installment. For now, suffice it to say that I've always found this series' treatment of Hulk to be a bit off, and it's the only thing about the show that rubs me slightly the wrong way.

Next week, our newly-formed team experiences some growing pains in "Some Assembly Required"!