The second season of Spider-Man has the subtitle Neogenic Nightmare throughout all of its episodes’ titles. It is slightly longer compared to the first season, with fourteen episodes in total. The season has a strong opening with a two part arc on the Insidious Six. It showcases the standard of the second season as not only does it increase the amount of action but the witty dialogue has also improved in quality. Seeing the six villains team up together to try and break down Spider-Man, as well as Spider-Man using their haphazard team up process to his advantage, made it much more interesting than most of season one’s solo attempts.
The Neogenic Nightmare subtitle is not only a throwaway title as it is heavily featured as the theme for the whole season. Neogenics created the Lizard and Spider-Man, and will continue to cause more problems in the future. Early on, there is constant foreshadowing of future problems for Peter Parker as he experiencing the loss of his abilities at random times. This naturally means life or death since if he loses his ability while swinging around the city, he’ll fall to his death, likewise when he loses his grip while crawling on a high rise building.
The end result is a focused season centered on a theme which makes it feel consistent. Spider-Man is desperate to find a cure for his ability loss and ends up being a significant plot point. It is frequently mentioned during the whole season and eventually comes to a boiling point. The fact that it is a buildup in the background of several episodes makes it come gradually, instead of out of nowhere.
The other highlight of the season is how it incorporates the appearances of several other Marvel characters. It had already hinted at this possibility in the first season and it is accomplished now. Their appearances feel natural within the story arc of the episode and are an awesome addition. Plenty of characters appear from the X-Men to the Punisher to Blade, it’s quite surprising actually on who actually shows up. They aren’t just quick cameo roles either, there is some effort made to reference their backstories and justify their personalities.
While several villains return to make an appearance, there are introductions of several other villains we haven’t seen yet. You would hope that they are not one-shot characters and will appear for more than one episode. The thing is, these villains are really strong and as a result, it feels like they easily defeat Spider-Man. However, this forces Spider-Man to use his ingenuity and knowledge of science in order to defeat these villains, some of which have supernatural powers. Not all villains are portrayed in a negative light either. Some of them are depicted as having sympathetic reasons for finding themselves in the position that they’re in. This doesn’t completely justify their actions but it goes a long way in not having them as one-dimensional evil characters.
The love life of Peter Parker is another focus and he remains in limbo in this area. It’s a constant cycle as he’ll gain some ground by managing to land dates with Felicity and Mary Jane, but never actually makes it to them thanks to his Spider-Man job. It’s sad and frustrating to see how being Spider-Man can affect his normal life so much. It isn’t helped when Spider-Man keeps getting framed by others as the bad guy. It is annoying how everyone is so quick to blame him, despite all his assistance in the past.
The writing has improved with arcs spanning multiple episodes now being the norm. These longer arcs are interesting and help flesh out the characters. At the same time, they aren’t long enough to go to any real depths. Many of them get resolved easily and quickly which can be disappointing when the lead up was quite decent. 3D CG is still used when the camera pans around during Spider-Man’s web swinging. There are some nicer usages of it during several scenes, mainly the ones where it isn’t a CG of multiple buildings but rather panning out the surrounds of the character so it isn’t all awkward. This season has a lot more action and Spider-Man is animated more naturally with his nimble acrobatics. There was still some cost cutting measures taken such as reuse of animation, especially in flashbacks.
Overall, the second season of Spider-Man notably improves the quality of its animation and writing. The season opening is a nice taste to set the standards and it manages to keep it up all the way to the season finale. The change to having foreshadowing and arcs that span multiple episodes help make the season a lot more consistent and less disjointed, resulting in a more enjoyable watch.
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