AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES S1x021

"HAIL, HYDRA!"
Written by Kevin Burke & Chris Wyatt | Directed by Vinton Heuck

The Plot: Manhattan is hit by an electromagnetic pulse. When the Avengers head out to investigate, they find Black Widow standing on their doorstep. She reveals that she was sent to infiltrate Hydra by Nick Fury, and then explains that Hydra is attacking AIM in search of the Cosmic Cube. Black Widow goes with the team to find Hydra and AIM, battling in airships over the city. Captain America and Hulk go after Hydra while Hakweye, Ant-Man, and Black Widow battle AIM. Meanwhile, Iron Man and the Wasp are conftonted by SHIELD, under the command of Maria Hill.

Strucker shoots down MODOK's ship and confronts him in a burning warehouse, sending a trio of Dreadnoughts to destroy him. Strucker reaches for the Cosmic Cube, but Ant-Man appears to stop him. Elsewhere, SHIELD shoots down Iron Man and are about to take out Wasp when Thor and Black Panther arrive. Hill orders SHIELD to attack the Avengers, but Hydra assaults the Helicarrier. In the warehouse, while Giant-Man is occupied with the Dradnought, Captain America bursts in and attacks Strucker. As the old enemies duel, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Hulk show up.

Strucker is defeated, and he and MODOK are arrested. Hill promises Iron Man that she will see the Avengers brought to heel under SHIELD, while elsewhere, Black Widow bids farewell to Hawkeye and heads out to saerch for Nick Fury.
Continuity Notes: Black Widow says that Nick Fury was the only person who knew about double agent status, and, as suggested above, he has now gone missing. Hill is now the director of SHIELD in his absence.

In a coda at Avengers Mansion, the group discusses the Cosmic Cube. Per Black Widow, it was supposed to warp reality for whoever touched it, but nothing apparently happened when Cap and Strucker were in contact with it. But, as she scene ends, viewers are shown that Cap did indeed alter events: Bucky is revelaed to have survived his death during World War II.

My Thoughts: I had forgotten what a horrible person Maria Hill was when she first appeared in the comics. Created by Brian Michael Bendis, she was introduced as a high-ranking SHIELD agent who became the organization's director when Nick Fury went missing, just as in this episode. And also as in this episode, she was a high-and-mighty obstructionist blowhard who seemed to hate the Avengers. I think all these years of seeing Cobie Smulders portray a kinder, gentler Hill in the Marvel Cinematic Universe wiped those early appearances from my mind.

For whatever reason, I have visceral reactions to these sorts of characters. It used to drive me nuts when every season on 24, a new bureaucrat would be introduced with the sole purpose of making Jack Bauer's job as difficult as possible. Similar things would happen periodically on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, when the admiral-of-the-week would show up and try to impose his or her will on the crew of the Enterprise. It was always incredibly cathartic to see these sorts of characters beaten up and/or killed (on 24) or put in their place with a dramatic speech from Captain Picard (on TNG). Of course, the best outcome was always when the character would realize they had been wrong the entire time and then get killed to boot, but that didn't happen as often for whatever reason.

Anyway -- on top of being an obstructionist A-hole in this episode, Hill is also an idiot. She wants to sideline and arrest the Avengers, and devotes a lot of SHIELD resources to this task, while Hydra and AIM are battling it out in Manhattan! Shouldn't her priority be to safeguard the city, even if that means letting the Avengers do their thing, and then to try to incarcerate them? I'm not sure whether it was the writers' intention, but she comes across as inept, and on a power trip, to boot.

The funny thing is, I generally admire and greatly respect authority figures in real life. But in fiction, anybody who prevents the good guys from doing their thing is insufferable and deserving of a painful demise.

So besides that, I really like this episode. It's wall-to-wall action, but there are some nice character moments, we get a resolution to the long-running Black Widow/Hydra storyline, and the animation looks a step above usual. Plus there's a spectacular moment -- a callback to a brief training sequence at the episode's start where Hawkeye tries to hit an apple from a good distance away, through a bunch of Stark-created energy fields -- where Ant-Man climbs aboard an arrowhead and Hawkeye launches him through several windows, from a number of buildings away, into the warehouse to confront Strucker.

Next week, a two-part Ultron story begins, as we move toward the season finale.