Review: Ultimate Spider-Man "The Return of the Guardians of the Galaxy"

The last Review of Guardians of the Galaxy Week. Welcome to the finish line. Will we end with a bang or a whimper? ...what do you think?

Plot
There was very little of it, to say the least.

This episode was supposed to be a moment of personal growth for Nova. I say "supposed to," because it's really not. The problem is that we've got both a Guardians team-up and a character building episode for Nova in a show about Spider-Man. These three elements mix together about as well as oil and water and none of these elements are utilized to their fullest potential.

At its core, this episode was about an alien coming down to chase Nova and then being defeated by Nova's new threads. That's it.

Characters 
Spider-Man
Does not belong in this episode. He's only here because his name's in the title. I honestly think that if this episode had actually cut out Spidey and focused on Nova as he is away from the Sandwich Club, this could have been an interesting look deeper into the character. Speaking of him....

Nova
There's the seed of a good episode here. Nova's a jerk. He's childish. But as we've seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy," that's partially to deal with the responsibility of having the galaxy on his shoulders.  This was an opportunity to stop hiding from that responsibility and embrace it. To live up to the responsibility of being the last Nova. Because, you know, great power and stuff.

But in this show, if you're not Spider-Man, you get one episode to have some alleged character growth. If you're lucky like Nova, you get a second one. But once your 21 minutes of fame are up, it's back to being whatever kind of idiot jerk the plot needs you to be.

Absolutely. Terrible. Writing.

Without a tightly written script focusing on Nova's character growth, Spider-Man was right; it's not about Nova, it's about his bucket.

His comic book-matching bucket.

Guardians
Well, let's see.

Star-Lord fought aliens.

Groot pretended to be a tree. Then fought aliens.

Rocket helped steal some phlebotinum. Then fought aliens.

Drax and Gamora got hurt. Then they got better. Then they fought aliens.

Why was this episode hyped as a special pre-Season 3 team-up special if they don't even do anything?

Not only was this an immensely disappointing episode of Ultimate Spider-Man, it was a disappointing way to end my Guardians of the Galaxy Week.

Crashing and burning turned out to be an apt metaphor.

Basically, "Michael Korvac" was great. Then it was all downhill for the Guardians.

Hopefully, their eventual appearance in Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. will be better. ...yeah, that was a really stupid sentence.

See you next time.