[7.0/10] I’ve mentioned before that it’s hard for me not to process Virgil Hawkins through the lens of Miles Morales and Spider-Man in general. Spidey was not the first wise-cracking teen to randomly get superpowers in a big city, but he left a big footprint on that archetype, and the recent success of Into the Spider-Verse only deepened it. So seeing Virgil get sent to a special science-oriented magnet school at the same time he ends up being chased around by what may as well be the spider-slayers brings that all firmly to mind.
Still, that’s not a bad thing. This episode is fairly basic and has to run through some of the usual plot beats. The Norman Osborn-like Mr. Alva is still a thorn in Static’s side (or vice versa). The student teachers who seem to be jerks are, in fact, jerky villains themselves. And Virgil even meets a new crush at his magnet school, Daisy, who ends up back at Dakota City High with him by the end of the episode.
There’s not much to it, but it works well enough. The evil student teacher jerks, who it turns out are Alva’s pets, are the ones building the big robotic vehicles trying to take out Static. We learn that Alva wants to dissect static to figure out the biological secrets of his powers. Static himself strikes back, not only defeating the bots but putting Alva in the crosshairs of his own surrogate creations (a clever strategy). And Daisy even pitches in by shutting off the robots, which the jerky student-teachers (including one voiced by Patton Oswalt, who’s legally obligated to appear in every television show I watch) are operating from inside the school.
On the whole, it’s a pretty paint-by-numbers episode, reminiscent of both past and future superhero stories, but paints them fairly well in the end, so still qualifies as solid for yours truly.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-06-16T18:11:34Z
[7.0/10] I’ve mentioned before that it’s hard for me not to process Virgil Hawkins through the lens of Miles Morales and Spider-Man in general. Spidey was not the first wise-cracking teen to randomly get superpowers in a big city, but he left a big footprint on that archetype, and the recent success of Into the Spider-Verse only deepened it. So seeing Virgil get sent to a special science-oriented magnet school at the same time he ends up being chased around by what may as well be the spider-slayers brings that all firmly to mind.
Still, that’s not a bad thing. This episode is fairly basic and has to run through some of the usual plot beats. The Norman Osborn-like Mr. Alva is still a thorn in Static’s side (or vice versa). The student teachers who seem to be jerks are, in fact, jerky villains themselves. And Virgil even meets a new crush at his magnet school, Daisy, who ends up back at Dakota City High with him by the end of the episode.
There’s not much to it, but it works well enough. The evil student teacher jerks, who it turns out are Alva’s pets, are the ones building the big robotic vehicles trying to take out Static. We learn that Alva wants to dissect static to figure out the biological secrets of his powers. Static himself strikes back, not only defeating the bots but putting Alva in the crosshairs of his own surrogate creations (a clever strategy). And Daisy even pitches in by shutting off the robots, which the jerky student-teachers (including one voiced by Patton Oswalt, who’s legally obligated to appear in every television show I watch) are operating from inside the school.
On the whole, it’s a pretty paint-by-numbers episode, reminiscent of both past and future superhero stories, but paints them fairly well in the end, so still qualifies as solid for yours truly.