Annihilus brings the pain in “Assault on 42”. We finally get a glimpse of what the Negative Zone is really like in this episode. There is really little story present unfortunately but we do get some great action. It’s the good guys and the (some of)bad guys versus a seemingly mindless and endless horde of alien bugs. While everyone in the episode is portrayed perfectly there is one glaring exception that being the episodes big bad Annihilus. He has no lines and he doesn’t eve show up until midway through. Any actual information we get on him is received psychically by the Leader and even these bits are miniscule.
We do get the return of Captain Mar-Vell although it is a rather small part. He does get some of thee cooler moments in the giant end battle to make up for it. The biggest thing that surprised me was that none of the villains tried to double cross the heroes. We are lead to believe the Leader will at one point but this ends abruptly when he helps turn the tide of the final fight. Strangely enough the fate of several people are left ambiguous as they are either taken away by the aliens or simply appear to drift off in to the Zone during the fight. Among them are several S.H.I.E.L.D agents, the Warden of 42 and Nuclear Man. I guess it doesn’t matter in the long run but still it was odd.
Anyway to rap this up the episode was big on fights and small on exposition. I personally think the concept of this episode could have been fleshed out way further, if handled correctly easily a two part story. It could have also introduced some other characters who have had experience with the Zone. Also I would have loved the Fantastic 4 to have been front and center. There was potential here that was quite untapped that is all i’m getting at.
Final Score 3 out of 5
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