TV Review: "Avengers: Ultron Revolution" Ep. 1 & 2 - Is This As Good As It's Gonna Get?

After the success of the first Avengers movie in 2012, Marvel was quick to capitalize. They cancelled their acclaimed current Avengers animated show "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes" and replaced it with a show more in line with the movie, "Avengers Assemble", featuring the same roster plus new member Falcon. However, fans were uneasy about this new Avengers series, considering that at the same time, Marvel was producing "Ultimate Spider-Man", a show that at the time was criticized for it's immature characters and Family Guy-esque cutaway gags. In addition, Marvel was also getting ready to launch "Hulk and the Agents of SMASH", featuring Hulk leading a team of other gamma powered heroes, living together and having confessionals ala the Real World. That was a show that I had absolutely zero interest and has since been cancelled. As for "Avengers Assemble", while it still had similar problems like the other two shows, it was something I could still take seriously and was the best of the three shows and had some shining moments, but was still not as good as "Earth's Mightiest Heroes".
Jumping to present day, it appeared that a creative shift had happened in the Marvel Animation Department. "Ultimate Spider-Man" has greatly improved starting in season three and the current season four has been consistently good so far. "Guardians of the Galaxy" debuted (and I wrote up a review of its series premiere) and succeeded where "Avengers Assemble" didn't by retaining the spirit of the film and its characters.
Which brings us to season three of "Avengers Assemble", which is using the tagline "Ultron Revolution". At the end of the second season, Tony was working on an Avengers expansion plan to take the team global, similar to Jonathan Hickman's run on the comic series, after the current members had some down time. Now this has a lot of potential and considering how good the Spider-Man and Guardians shows have been, surely the Avengers can improve with such a concept right? Well, prepare to be disappointed.

In the season premiere, "Adapting to Change", we open on Captain America fighting the Masters of Evil. Now those who played the "Marvel: Ultimate Alliance" game may recognize that name as a large group of villains led by Dr. Doom, similar to the Legion of Doom from Superfriends. While "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" did a more comic accurate version of the team, the Masters of Evil we see here are C list villains Goliath, Beetle, and Screaming Mimi (I know, dumb name. But in the comics, she becomes the hero Songbird). But Cap is having trouble and calls in his Avengers teammates to successfully defeat them, and even Tony is kind of embarrassed that Cap called them in for this.
It's during this battle that we notice that some characters have undergone some design changes. Captain America, Black Widow, and Hulk now look similar to their appearances in "Avengers: Age of Ultron". And while I'm getting ahead of myself, when Ultron returns later on, he gets the same treatment. I actually liked that they did this, but I would have done it for the other members too. Tony's been rocking an Iron Man armor similar to the somewhat bulky MK III and IV since the beginning of the series while his armor in the movies has become sleeker and sleeker. It would have been nice for on the show get something like the Bleeding Edge. And then there's Falcon, who is still sporting his Gatchaman/G-Force look (anyone remember that show on Cartoon Network in the 90's?). I think it would have been cooler to see him in a suit similar to what he wore in "Age of Ultron" and "Ant-Man." He could still have energy wings that can be fired at enemies in lieu of guns.

After defeating the so-called Masters of Evil, the team convenes at Avengers Tower, where we learn through exposition that because things have been so quiet since defeating Thanos, they decided to hold off on the expansion plans and that Ant-Man has gone solo again. So much for that build up at the end of last season, huh? And Ant-Man had to leave too? Why?! Oh and not only that, but Tony has also replaced JARVIS with the FRIDAY AI that some will remember from "Age of Ultron". Question: WHY?! In "Age of Ultron", JARVIS had become the Vision, meaning Tony needed a new AI assistant with him, ala FRIDAY. In the show, it just happens. I know Vision is supposed to appear later in the season and will most likely be JARVIS, but right now these are unanswered questions. It's at this point it just seemed they were doing whatever they could to make this season feel like "Age of Ultron" to capitalize on that much like the first two seasons of this show did for the first movie.

Once the meeting's adjourned, Black Widow asks Cap and Falcon to join her on a secret mission to infiltrate an AIM facility. While there, they discover Hawkeye, Tony, and Thor have done the same thing. Oh, Bruce Banner was with them too, and he look A LOT like Mark Ruffalo compared to his first two appearances on the show. And this is another problem I've had with this series. Why is he Hulk all the time? In "Earth's Mightiest Heroes", we introduce Bruce as he was before, on the run and looking for a cure for the Hulk. Once breakouts occur at all the supervillain prisons, Bruce urges the Hulk to help Iron Man, Thor, Wasp, and Ant-Man defeat Graviton. Hulk agrees, but only if he can remain in control while Bruce takes a backseat in their mind. So while he's Hulk for most of the series, we still see Bruce quite a bit. In "Avengers Assemble", he's just Hulk all the time with no explanation. Would it be too much to have both Hulk and Bruce on the show, especially since the movie this show is based on does that too?
So while examining some AIM files, they discover that they acquired a piece of Ultron (even though they clearly should have seen it in a containment cylinder earlier). They wonder how they got such a thing, and I'm wondering the same thing, considering that the last time we saw Ultron on this show, he was THROWN INTO THE SUN!
Once the Avengers are found out, they battle upgraded versions of the Super Adaptoid, an android that can copy the moves and powers of their opponents, similar to the Amazo android that battles the Justice League. Honestly, the Super Adaptoid was overplayed back in season one and watching them battle it again, even if it is upgraded, is still kind of boring because we saw it too much in season one and we all know they figure out a way to outsmart and defeat it.

After the Adaptoids and AIM are defeated, the piece of Ultron they had appears, assimilates the Adaptoid tech and morphs into his movie form, which leads us into part two "The Ultimates". I'm not going into much detail on this episode like the other one. It opens with Ultron battling the Avengers, but getting away, and Tony starts to become obsessive about finding him (even though they never established that he was the one who created Ultron in this series). Ultron then unleashes android versions of the Avengers that he calls Ultimates, who repeatedly say "You are obsolete. You are to be replaced", and that gets old pretty quick. Ultron himself takes over some of Tony's armors, and says he plans to replace all of humanity with android copies. I'm sure it's coincidence, but this is pretty much Ultron's exact plan from the "Ultimates 3" series. If he decides to kill Scarlet Witch because he was in love with her and jealous of her incestuous relationship with Quicksilver, then we have a problem (and yes, that was in an actual comic). Actually there's still some problems. While the circumstances are different, Ultron did almost the exact same things last season. He took over Tony's armors in one episode, and in the final episode of his story arc, he unleashes a techno-virus that infects humans to become his servants.
The Avengers outsmart and defeat the Ultimates (much like they did to the Adaptoids previously), stop Ultron's plan to copy everyone in the world, even though he's still out there, and spout out some stuff about how you can't beat the originals. Blah, blah, blah. The end. And trust me, there's plenty of other problems I have with these episodes that I don't care to mention.

During the initial wave of this current Marvel animation era, I ranked the series "Avengers Assemble" first, "Ultimate Spider-Man" second, and "Hulk and the Agents of SMASH" last. At this point in this new wave, I rank them "Guardians of the Galaxy" first, "Ultimate Spider-Man" still second, and "Avengers: Ultron Revolution" last. I mean seriously, is this as good as this show is gonna get? It's still as mediocre as the first two seasons and the characters are still two dimension and/or immature. The worst part is it didn't have to be. Guardians and season four of "Ultimate Spider-Man" were a sign that things were improving, but these first two episodes of "Ultron Revolution" didn't seem any different from the first two Avengers seasons.
You know what would have improved it? Sure, have it so that Tony's expansion plans are still on hold but something happens that forces him to restart them. Have Ultron capture the Avengers except Tony, and he recruits heroes like Spider-Man, Black Panther, Ant-Man, and Captain Marvel to save his team. Or maybe something similar to the "New Avengers" episode of "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" where after the main team is defeated by Kang, JARVIS initiates Tony's New Avengers protocol to unite Spider-Man, Wolverine, War Machine, Thing, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist to, yes, avenge them. We were expecting something new, but got more of the same.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. I'm hoping this season gets better overtime, and I'm sure it'll still have some shining moments like the previous seasons, but it's not off to a good start.