I’m not entirely sure what happened in season 4 of Spider-Man: The Animated Series, but I started to lose interest a bit during this season. It could be because I’ve essentially binged this series during my rewatch, which can sometimes make episodic shows feel a bit stale, but I also think that there’s something about season 4 that wasn’t quite as strong as the previous seasons. It still definitely has its strengths, but it’s not quite on the same level.
Much like seasons 2 and 3, season 4 has each episode preceded by a title that indicates its overall storyline, which for this season is “Partners in Danger.” The reason for this title is because in this season, Spider-Man gets a partner in the form of Black Cat. This is actually where most of my praise comes for this season. Black Cat is one of my absolute favorite Spider-Man characters, and she’s done so well on this show. I’ve always just loved the dynamic between Spider-Man and Black Cat, and it’s played up really well here. She was a welcome addition to the series, and my main enjoyment of this season came from seeing her and Spider-Man work together.
Where season 4 loses some of its shine is from its more self-contained story arcs. This was the first time with this series where I had to look at an episode guide before writing my review, because I just couldn’t really remember everything that happened this season. This shows as even more of a problem in the fact that season 4 is the shortest season of the series, coming in at only 11 episodes. There are some definite standouts, with the one coming to mind being Harry Osborn becoming the Green Goblin, but some of these episodes just weren’t that interesting.
I’m definitely being really negative towards this season, but at the end of the day I did still like it. It’s just a noticeable decline in quality from the previous seasons, so it ended up feeling a little disappointing. I would still watch this season anytime over some of the older Spider-Man cartoons that I’ve forced myself to get through. It’s more the fact that it’s not as good as the other seasons of this particular series. Not a terrible season by any means, but definitely not as good as the previous ones.
3.5/5
The very crux of your writing while appearing agreeable in the beginning, did not settle very well with me after some time. Somewhere within the sentences you were able to make me a believer unfortunately only for a short while. I still have got a problem with your jumps in logic and one would do nicely to help fill in those breaks. If you can accomplish that, I would certainly end up being amazed.