The fourth season of the animated series Spider-Man is shortened to only eleven episodes. Each episode has the subtitle of Partners in Danger, which is the theme for this season. This means that team ups are a lot more common for both our heroes and villains alike. It even finds opportunities to continually namedrop it in the dialogue.
Peter, and as an extension, Spider-Man, is still trying to get over the loss of Mary Jane from last season’s finale. It is weighing heavily on his mind and as a result, he is seriously considering giving up as Spider-Man, as he doesn’t want to hurt anymore people. Of course, no Spider-Man means no show and given that he’s tried to give up and failed before, there’s no reason to believe that this time will be any different. Basically, peter just needs some encouragement to remind him of why he became Spider-Man. Yes, people get hurt because of him but there are more people that are saved from injustice thanks to him.
The disappearance of Mary Jane basically puts her out of the picture in order for Spider-Man to become familiar with someone else. Thus it feels as if it is selfish at times for Spider-Man to feel pain and longing in one scene, to then forget and cuddle up to someone else in another. However, he does constantly acknowledge the confusion that this brings to his feelings. He has a lot of complicated relationships, and this is another big focus for most of the season.
There is a surprising evolution of a recurring character that had appeared from the first season up until now. Viewers knowledgeable about Spider-Man would have expected this development, but it was how long it took before the writers took advantage of it that was interesting. Then again, with the partnering theme, it is a natural pair-up for Spider-Man. Thus it had to take some time to set up the events to properly introduce the character. Despite the good thing that’s going on between the characters, like everything else, nothing lasts.
There aren’t as many new villains introduced in this season. It’s mainly recurring villains that we have seen before including several that hadn’t made an appearance in quite a while. It is impressive that the writers fought the temptation to just keep introducing new characters but instead decide to go back to old ones and continue on with their story where it had left off. There are one or two annoying characters that butt into other people’s business. It actually puts those characters, despite their “good” intentions, in a bad light. They’re selfish deep down, not really caring and only want to make themselves feel better by lying that what they’re doing is helping. While not to the scale as the earlier seasons, heaps of people still don’t like Spider-Man or default to him being a villain, even S.H.I.E.L.D. has pegged Spider-Man as an enemy on more than one occasion. Despite the whole partnering theme, we don’t see many other Marvel superheroes showing up.
This season is one of the weakest one as the story arcs aren’t nearly as interesting. This is probably explained by noting that the bulk of the season is original writing that was not based on any issues of the comic. It focuses on sought after technology that we have seen before and while it is a natural extension of those previous arcs, it feels too similar and this familiarity makes it dull. Furthermore, by touching upon past events, it gives it an excuse to repeatedly and frequently reuse the older animation as flashback summaries. There are also several unexplained circumstances that are just waved away which is lazy and anticlimactic.
Overall, the fourth season of Spider-Man is average. The peak was probably the third season and due to its long-running nature, we can see the quality is starting to dip. The story arcs aren’t nearly as interesting, focusing on characters and events that have already been done several times before. There is a surprising twist near the end of the season that was somewhat worthwhile. If you like Spider-Man, then this season gives you more of that but otherwise, it feels as if the writers are running out of ideas.
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