The Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 2 Episode 26

Animé and Toons
The Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 2 Episode 26
By Hervé St-Louis
June 28, 2012 - 10:32

The last episode of season 2 of The Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes unites all of the Avengers and several super heroes from the world that have worked with or against the Avengers in the past trying to stop Galactus from consuming the Earth. It will take all the Avengers and their allies have to stop this threat that once consumed the Skrull Empire. Can the Avengers succeed where so many others have failed?

This was a nice conclusion to a very popular series that cleaned up a few looses ends although everything related to the Enchantress has been left unresolved. Galactus who was introduced in during the Skrull storyline returns here and sends four of his heralds to Earth to prepare the planet to be siphoned off and consumed by the giant creature. Not much is said about Galactus’ origin and anything related to his backstory from the Fantastic Four has been changed to highlight the Avengers instead. Here, Galactus’ heralds don’t have much personality and are more elemental creatures representing earth, water, air and fire instead of the distinct individuals introduced in comics with specific backstories and personalities over the years.

Of course, there is no Silver Surfer in this story which I understand as his story is so tied with the Fantastic Four that it would be difficult to adapt all of his history in a 22 minutes episode. The time to introduce new characters has passed and this episode was only about reuniting characters we’ve seen in this season and the first for one last big bang. Of course, there is little time to spotlight all of the guests in such a short story that has to resolve the whole plotline of the Avengers.

The main story here is about Tony Stark asking Captain America about what history will say of the Avengers and whether they really matter. Of course, Galactus is the ultimate threat and Stark gets his answer by the end of the episode. I like how many characters were paired together. For example, all the brains, like Yellow Jacket, Doc Samson and Mr. Fantastic teamed up with Iron Man.

The animation for this episode was decent, considering the number of characters involved. I found the solution of how to deal with Galactus smart and original. Of course it’s much different from the comics, but it works just right. This was the last episode of this very popular series that whose second season wasn’t as good as the first was. There were shorter storylines instead of the all-encompassing one we saw in the first year. The animation also took a serious quality hit. In the end the series was probably the last one that would play freely with the Marvel Universe as older fans remember it from the comic books. The new series premiering soon will use the exact same team introduced in the popular Avengers movie because both Marvel and Disney think viewers will be confused if they are introduced to a team of Avengers with characters that haven’t appeared in this summer blockbuster.

Rating: 8/10