YMMV / The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes

The Cartoon

• Adorkable:
  • Thor whenever he interacts with Jane Foster.
  • Hank struggles to talk to girls, particularly Jan, and gets really excited by science.
  • Jan. Seriously, she's d'awwww-worthy in most of her scenes.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • In "Ultron-5", did Amora the Enchantress actually save Thor from being killed by Ultron or was her intervention what made it seem like he was dead in the first place? The disintegration effect that apparently killed Thor was never repeated and Amora's claims that she saved Thor from dying possibly aren't true given her tendencies towards manipulation.
  • Did Baron Zemo turn on the Avengers in "Acts of Vengeance" because of his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder as predicted earlier, or did he only decide to do it because Skrull Captain America broke his promise to defend the villain, leading to him deciding to return the favor?
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • A Skrull sent the Incredible Hulk to jail under false pretenses? Let's not try to set Hulk free, or even say how much we miss our teammate, and instead proceed with business as usual for thirteen episodes (half a season's worth!).
  • None of the episodes following "Behold...The Vision!" show Thor torn up over him and Jane apparently breaking up offscreen.
  • In "Yellowjacket", Scott Lang doesn't show up at Hank Pym's funeral for undisclosed reasons.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • The viewers who are anxious to see Steve Rogers reunite with the Avengers in the second season will probably feel disappointed to know it takes twelve episodes for the Avengers to realize Steve's been replaced.
  • It takes thirteen episodes for the Avengers to pick up on the crisis that "Nightmare in Red" rises. This even gets lampshaded.
• Awesome Art: The art style, animation, and character designs of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are very visually appealing.
• Awesome Ego: Hawkeye is just as cocky and boastful as he is in the comics, but he can certainly back it up thanks to his marksmanship and resourcefulness which proves instrumental in saving his teammates time and time again.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Fight as One" is an epic theme song accompanied by brilliant visuals that will have you awe-struck and pumped in order to be ready to cheer for our heroes in their fight against evil.
  • The music composed for the show is very excellent.
• Badass Decay: Implied for S.H.I.E.L.D.; they were previously able to put away 74 super-villains with little to no assistance from superheroes. Come the series proper, they have a little more trouble in dealing with the villain horde, calling on the Avengers several times for assistance.
• Best Known for the Fanservice:
  • "The Casket of Ancient Winters" is primarily remembered for a brief scene early in the episode of Wasp and Hawkeye in swimsuits at a poolside.
  • In fact, the numerous attractive female characters are one of the reasons why the show is remembered years after it ended. Black Widow is probably the best example of this.
• Better on DVD: Just like many animated shows these days, the story works better as a single long narrative. Also, the DVDs mark the first time that American fans can watch the first season episodes in chronological order. (This trope doesn't apply to Disney's DVDs of the second season, which started out following the production order rather than the broadcast order. The placement of "Behold...The Vision!" after "Who Do You Trust?" in particular caused frustration. The last volume has its episodes arranged in chronological order, albeit with the episodes set in between "Along Came a Spider" and "Assault On 42" skipped due to inclusion on an earlier DVD.
• Bizarro Episode: "Emperor Stark" is most certainly this for the series. Apparently, 30 days is all it takes to turn Earth into a dystopian future and undoing it all by next week takes even less time.
• Can't Un-Hear It: The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes provided a lot of very iconic and popular voices for the characters of the Marvel Universe due to its very impressive voice work to the point of which that fans tend to read Marvel Comics in the show's voices. As a result of the large popularity of EMH, fans tend to hear Brian Bloom as Captain America, Rick D. Wasserman as Thor, Wally Wingert as Hank Pym/Ant-Man, Colleen O'Shaughnessey as the Wasp, Jennifer Hale as Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel, Chris Cox as Hawkeye, Vanessa Marshall as Black Widow, Graham McTavish as Loki, Tom Kane as Ultron, and James C. Mathis III as Black Panther, with Marvel bringing the latter back for other cartoons and video games, and even inviting him to the premiere of the first live-action Black Panther movie. Additionally, the series set up Eric Loomis as an alternative to Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, and Dee Bradley Baker, Erin Torpey, David Kaufman, and Fred Tatasciore as an alternative to the cast of Fantastic Four: The Animated Series for the FF. For the most part, this was further reinforced by the decision to have the majority of this cast reprise their roles in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 alongside other character/actor combinations like Steve Blum as Wolverine and Josh Keaton as Spider-Man.
• Character Rerailment: The writers of season two tried to make Ultron closer to his comic book counterpart by implying he has feelings for Wasp when he tries to have her turned into Jocasta.
• Complete Monster:
  • Loki is the evil stepbrother of Thor, and is responsible for most of the events that occurred in the first season. Instigating a war between Asgard and the Frost Giants, Loki leads the Frost Giants in conquering Asgard and attempts to kill his brother, only to be defeated and exiled. However, he then engineers a mass breakout in multiple S.H.I.E.L.D. prisons, letting loose the most dangerous and vile criminals on the planet so as to keep Thor distracted. Loki and his forces then proceed to conquer each of the Nine Realms, putting his father Odin into eternal slumber and stealing his power for himself, while putting those who resist his rule in chains. With the Enchantress acting on his orders, Loki planned to launch a massive invasion force on Earth but was thwarted by the Avengers. When Thor was captured, Loki tortures him with the Odinforce, sparing his brother's life solely so he could helplessly watch Loki triumph. In his confrontation with the Avengers, Loki began to lose control over the Odinforce, but was willing to let his out-of-control power destroy all Nine Realms out of petty spite. When captured by his reawakened father, Loki showed no repentance for his crimes. With the Enchantress's help, Loki's spirit escapes imprisonment and possesses the powerful Destroyer Armor, proceeding to hunt down the Avengers rendered powerless by the Enchantress's spell. A petty and power-hungry narcissist, Loki derails from his usual acts of mischief into outright evil simply to prove himself as Thor's better.
  • Red Skull, leader of HYDRA in World War II, kidnapped mystical creatures to use them to kill the Allies. When the Nazis lost, Skull opted to kidnap Captain America's teen sidekick Bucky Barnes and torture and brainwash him into the amnesiac assassin the Winter Soldier, faking both their deaths. In modern times, Skull continues his dreams of conquest and hatred of Captain America by posing as the US Secretary of Defense, Dell Rusk, in efforts to discredit the Avengers, as well as recruiting and even brainwashing other underlings. This culminates in Skull unleashing a chemical compound to kill the heroes and civilians; the chemical has been engineered to cause slow and painful death by making the victim's face turn into a grotesque parody of Skull's own. During a confrontation with a weakened Captain America, the Red Skull batters him before ordering Bucky to execute him, and attempts to kill Bucky when he gives the Captain the antidote. When that plot is foiled and the Red Skull is arrested, he has a backup plan by unleashing giant robots dubbed the Sleepers to be released onto the world, assembling and taking control of a giant mecha to go on a destructive rampage in Washington, D.C. as revenge. The Red Skull then reveals his intent to have Captain America brainwashed like Bucky before him.
  • Baron Heinrich Zemo took over as leader of HYDRA when Red Skull disappeared after World War II. During the war, Zemo attempted to unleash a deadly virus on the Allied forces, but was disfigured by his own virus in a skirmish against Captain America. In the present day, Zemo teamed up with Arnim Zola to get revenge on Captain America, who had just awoken from the ice. After failing to get revenge, Zemo forms the Masters of Evil, and then breaks into Avengers Mansion and captures each of them one by one, promising to Captain America that he will execute his teammates while forcing him to watch. Later on, Zemo uses the Norn Stones to mount an invasion force on Earth, betraying Enchantress in the process, so he could rule alone. When the Enchantress began hunting down the Masters of Evil for their betrayal, Zemo callously abandons his teammates to their doom while going to the Avengers for protection. Confronting the Enchantress, Zemo attempts to use the last Norn Stone to save his own skin, even at the risk of destroying the universe.
  • Surtur is the ruler of Muspelheim and lord of the Fire Demons. Sealed away by Odin many centuries ago, Surtur was freed when the Norn Stone connected to Muspelheim was stolen by Baron Zemo. Once freed, he began his mission to bring about Ragnarok and burn all the Nine Realms to ashes. Surtur arrived at Nidavellir to retrieve fragments of the Twilight Sword being held by the dwarves. He laid waste to Nidavellir, slaughtering most of the dwarf population in the process. Surtur later enslaved the Enchantress and forced her to do his bidding as his new Demon Queen. Surtur's forces terrorized the Korbinites while he used their Sun to reforge the Twilight Sword, and wiped out their homeworld when it went supernova. He possessed the Enchantress when she begged Thor to kill her and boasted how she was beyond Thor's help now. With a thirst for destruction so powerful not even Loki dared to invoke his wrath, Surtur's name was the most feared across all Nine Realms.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • One review of the 2015 Ant-Man movie, when comparing different incarnations of Hank Pym, called this show's version, "...a frustrated pacifist that is so obsessed with his work and unable to communicate on an emotional level that he may very well land on the autism spectrum". When one EMH fan shared this observation with Chris Yost via Twitter, Yost admitted, "That's pretty accurate".
  • It's sort of unclear what manner of psychiatric disorder Korvac developed from being tortured by the Kree, but it best resembles a Borderline Personality Disorder (rapid and extreme mood swings; inconstant egosyntonic state; Black-and-White Morality; feelings of isolation and emptiness combined with desire for relationships; occasional psychotic episodes) comorbid with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (terror-stricken hallucinatory reaction triggered by being reminded of traumatic incident).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • On the villainous side, Grim Reaper won over a lot of the fanbase with his debut appearance- a big awesome breakout. While callous, he's also an Adaptational Badass and Creepy Awesome, unlike his comic book counterpart (who was pretty lame).
  • Ultron first appeared in "The Man in the Ant-Hill" as an innocent prison guard. As the first season progressed, he gradually entered the foreground while obtaining the knowledge that would turn him into the Killer Robot Marvel fans know and love. He finally turned against the Avengers in "Ultron-5" and performed such feats as possessing Iron Man's armor, seemingly killing Thor, and using stolen nuclear missile codes to try and wipe out all "flawed" life on Earth in "The Ultron Imperative". During the second season, he unexpectedly came back, upgraded his body, and replaced most of the Avengers with ruthless robot duplicates. Even though Ultron ultimately only acted evil in two episodes each season, an unofficial poll deemed him the most popular villain by a longshot.
  • Mockingbird is popular with the fans despite only making three appearances under that alias. There's a significantly vocal group who wished she became part of the New Avengers. The choice to give her a bigger role during the Secret Invasion arc was actually thanks to Chris Yost noticing the positive reception she got.
  • Doctor Doom won fans over even before his first episode premiered. His actual feats didn't disappoint either; he overcame six Avengers and the entire Fantastic Four in a battle, and found a Skrull among them even before they could. Doom did another guest spot ten episodes later, in which he helped Iron Man create a weapon to expose disguised Skrulls. Doom explained that he spent so much time trying to prevent the Skrulls from taking over the world so that eventually, he could take it over instead.
  • As Iron Fist and Luke Cage beat up thugs, cracked dry wit, and helped track down the thief of Hank Pym's Ant-Man suit, the viewers wished they could watch these Heroes For Hire kick even more ass in their own show.
• Evil Is Cool: The show has no shortage of badass villains, but Loki, Baron Zemo, Doctor Doom, Ultron, Red Skull, and Grim Reaper fit this trope to a tee.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation:
  • A number of fans thought it sounded cheap that Dell Rusk acquired minions by brainwashing them instead of convincing them that they had a duty to America to help their Secretary of Defense.
  • Some fans thought "Live Kree or Die" gave too convoluted an explanation of why Black Panther didn't really die in the previous episode.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • The EMH fandom shares members with that of The Spectacular Spider-Man, which both experience disappointment with their respective shows getting cancelled before the writers could resolve all the loose ends, and Disney XD instead replacing them with lower-quality animated adaptations of those comics. It also helps that Yost and Fine love TSSM so much, that they hired Josh Keaton to voice Spidey again.
  • There's also a decent amount of shared fans between this and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), with both shows being darker, story arc heavy and faithful adaptations of the original comic series. It also helps that Christopher Yost was a writer for that series before moving on to this one.
• Genius Bonus: The light elf Faraday is named for the scientist Michael Faraday, perhaps best known for his experiments with electromagnetism and light, and particularly for being the first person to demonstrated that light is an electromagnetic wave.
• Growing the Beard: The series hits its stride after the Avengers' roster reaches eight members.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Tony mockingly threatens to fire Clint after he taunts him for messing up Carol's "welcome toast" and later finds himself in a position where he must consider actually renouncing Hawkeye's membership for possibly being a Skrull.
  • The criticisms Spider-Man receives for his failures to sound intimidating now seem to foresee the controversy surrounding his redubbing, especially when Quartermain responds to Spidey's not-so-impressive-baritone by asking, "What's wrong with your voice?"
  • The second season has a recurring theme of broken trust and the threat of betrayal. Consider the chance that different events from behind the scenes of this season (the retool and cancellation, the unapproved redubbing of Spider-Man, the episodes not coming to DVD in chronological order) will leave some Avengers fans feeling betrayed.
  • The Inferred Holocaust for "Breakout", detailed below, seems even harder to ignore after Avengers: Age of Ultron. The climax for that movie takes place on a floating city, with the Avengers clearly shown evacuating as many denizens as they can before it falls to the ground. Someone watching "Breakout" after AoU might feel unpleasantly surprised not to see the EMH Avengers do the same.
  • Hawkeye's threat to Hulk that he will "take him down" is supposed to be Played for Laughs (Hulk even changes back to Banner in a fit of laughter). It becomes a lot less funny after the release of the third issue of Marvel's Civil War II event. Hawkeye actually kills a dehulked Banner (ergo kills the Hulk) as a promise to kill him if he shows signs of Hulking out again.
  • In "Hail, HYDRA!", Captain America stops Baron Strucker from using the Cosmic Cube to rewrite history, which would have caused HYDRA to win World War II. In Secret Empire, this is EXACTLY what happens, plus Cap transformed into a HYDRA sleeper agent. Secret Empire also added a harsher tone to the Skrull story line, in which the Avengers unknowingly harbored an evil Captain America.
    • To rub salt to the wound, Veranke's plan to use Captain America's status as the Big Good to convince Earth's population to willingly submit to Skrull rule makes sense considering how in Secret Empire, people like Deadpool and The Punisher quickly fell in line with HYDRA simply because they respect Cap.
  • In "Who Do You Trust?", Hulk remains with the team in the face of the Skrull threat, asking, "What's a Skrull gonna do to me?" In "Nightmare In Red", the Skrull!Captain America takes advantage of the Red Hulk attack to manipulate Hulk into surrendering to Ross's Hulkbusters and being imprisoned for half a season.
  • Hawkeye boasts in "Behold...The Vision!" that he'd make a better king than Black Panther, since he doesn't abandon his friends in times of trouble. His initial refusal to help Hulk in "The Deadliest Man Alive" says otherwise.
  • Yellowjacket's claim that he took down Thor and that the Avengers couldn't stop him in his debut episode has unsettling connotations after Episode 3 of What If...? in which a version of Hank Pym did indeed take down and kill five of the six Founding members of the MCU's Avengers-including Thor. And he did so in the MCU version of the Yellowjacket costume, no less!
  • In Live Kree or Die, after incapacitating the Supreme Intelligence, Mar-vell predicts that the Kree Empire will collapse into anarchy with the loss of its leader, only to be convinced by Captain America to take the reins and lead the Kree towards a more benevolent path. The MCU's The Marvels reveals that after Carol Danvers destroyed the Supreme Intelligence, the Kree Empire collapsed into infighting which destroyed their homeworld and their sun. Mar-vell's fears were certainly not unfounded.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In "Yellowjacket", Tony delivers a heartfelt eulogy at Hank's funeral. The episode was directed by the late Boyd Kirkland, whose credit appears on-screen as Tony tells the assembled heroes, "We came here to remember a dreamer".
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A still taken from the initial season two trailer was often used when showing group shots of the Avengers or promos for season two. Now that the season has aired, the viewers can see that all of the Avengers in the picture, other than Ms. Marvel, are actually Skrulls. Those darned aliens fooled them even before the season began.
  • The second season also predicted plot points from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Several groups including SHIELD and the Avengers are infiltrated by Skrulls, like SHIELD being infiltrated by HYDRA in the movie. There's even a moment when Captain America won't threaten someone, then steps aside and lets someone else have a go. And in "Code Red", Winter Soldier is under the control of a senator who's secretly HYDRA, but instead of an Aleksander Lukin Expy, it's the Red Skull!
  • In "Emperor Stark", JARVIS gets uploaded into Vision. Guess how Vision is created later in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
  • In "Michael Korvac", Hawkeye is the Avenger who fights Star-Lord. Chris Cox, Hawkeye's voice actor, would later voice Star-Lord in Ultimate Spider-Man.
  • In "Alone Against AIM", Pepper takes down an AIM scientist, well over a year before her live-action counterpart would do the same in Iron Man 3.
  • Odin's voice actor, Clancy Brown, went on to voice one of his enemies, Surtur, in Thor: Ragnarok.
  • "Who Do You Trust?", the episode unveiling Nick Fury's Samuel L. Jackson-inspired redesign, seems to foresee Spider-Man: Far From Home when Tony asks Fury, "How do I know you're not a Skrull?" In Far From Home, Jackson plays both Nick Fury, and the Skrull General Talos, when the latter spends most of the movie disguised as Fury.
  • The climax of the Secret Invasion arc seems strangely prophetic during Secret Empire. Both have Captain America defeat his evil twin at the Capitol building.
  • In "To Steal An Ant-Man", Luke Cage, who is black, sarcastically refers to himself as Captain America. Three years later, a black Captain America became a reality.
• Ho Yay:
  • It seems everyone is gay for Captain America. In "Living Legend", most of the male characters had a man-crush on Captain America.
  • Hawkeye and Hulk have a serious bromance at the very least, if not outright Ho Yay. Hulk is pretty protective of Clint, shown when he threatens the rest of the team when they think Clint's a traitor, and when Bruce was rendered unable to turn into the Hulk, what got him upset enough to transform anyway? The villain grabbed Hawkeye. Also, Hulk always refers to Clint as "Cupid" and is willing to stay with the Avengers as long as he's there.
  • Half the time Spider-Man seems to be crushing on Cap during their team-up in "Along Came a Spider...".
• Inferred Holocaust:
  • Let's reconsider the battle against Graviton. The hellicarrier and the prison inside it fell into the ocean; could they evacuate that many people? (including super-villains). The whole of Manhattan island was taken out of the ground, and then fell back: that can only generate a tsunami right next to New York, and a huge earthquake. In the battle, several buildings were destroyed or used as weapons (and nobody ever said that they were Conveniently Empty). And to finally defeat him, Thor summons a thunder that seems like an atomic explosion. And a bit of Fridge Horror: after that absolute devastation, Thor wants to celebrate that they defeated the bad guy. But well, he's a Blood Knight, and for people like him there is No Endor Holocaust.
  • And let's not even begin with Kang's invasion, which is a worldwide one. Explosions worldwide, blitzkriegs worldwide, killer robots worldwide... in New York alone, the focus of the episode, there are cars exploding or flying around, buildings damaged or destroyed, fires without control, the Brooklyn Bridge was destroyed and the glasses of a small kid were broken.
  • When Malekith opened the casket of the ancient winters, he unleashed a worldwide ice age and released ice monsters everywhere. But, as it was magic, it may be safely assumed that when Thor closed the casket everything got back to normal (perhaps including any collateral damage caused by the ice and the monsters).
  • And how much damage did Loki's armies do when they conquered most of the Nine Realms?
  • In "Along Came a Spider", the street collapses and falls over a subway train. The passengers who leave it are at the station and see the roof falling and run away... but what about the passengers who were still inside the train, going to some other station?
• Iron Woobie:
  • Pretty much everyone Captain America has ever known and loved is dead and the people left he does know (Baron Zemo and Red Skull) want to kill him. Then, during the Secret Invasion arc and its aftermath, he manages to endure even more misfortune.
  • Seriously, having a demon lord awaken and commit genocide to Korbin should push Beta Ray Bill into Woobie territory immediately. Bill's actually doing a good job at keeping it together, all things considered.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • It's hard not to feel sorry for Enchantress when she ends up in Surtur's domain and is forced into slavery by him. Not helped by her utterly terrified reaction when it happens. And again when she begs to be killed in order to not be in his servitude.
  • It is hinted that something horrible happened to Madame Viper, which scarred her face and inspired her to hate people like Captain America.
  • Why did the Skrulls decide to take over Earth? Galactus destroyed their home planet, so they must find a new one.
• Les Yay: Janet Van Dyne/The Wasp and Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel have something going on between them.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • The Skrull Captain America is a brilliant alien infiltrator who disguises himself as the heroic Captain America with the intent to spearhead the Skrulls' invasion of Earth. Quickly setting to his task, Skrull Captain America divides the Avengers from within while cutting off any negotiation with the Skrulls' ancestral enemy, the Kree, successfully deceiving the famously quick-witted Baron Zemo and arranging the Hulk's imprisonment when presented with an opportunity. Preparing the world's defenses, the Skrull gives the world a speech encouraging them to accept the Skrulls' rule that simultaneously frames Captain America and pacifies Earth, only being stopped by the real Captain America at the cusp of victory.
  • Queen Veranke is the ruler of the Skrull Empire and the mastermind behind the Secret Invasion of Earth. After the destruction of the Skrull homeworld, Veranke led her people to Earth based upon an ancient prophecy. She arranged for her forces to infiltrate strategic locations on the planet using their shapeshifting abilities. The Skrulls sneaked into various government, superhero, and criminal institutions, and sent the people they replaced to a prison ship far off-world. Veranke disguised herself as Mockingbird and found herself among Nick Fury's confidants in his hunt for the Skrulls. She was able to divert attention from her spy within the Avengers by convincing Fury that Hawkeye was the Skrull instead of Captain America. With the Avengers torn apart due to their mistrust in one another, Veranke launched her invasion and attempted to convince humanity to surrender using the Skrull disguised as Captain America. When that failed, she used her spies hidden within A.I.M. to activate a satellite array to try and wipe out every human being on the planet. Managing to keep humanity in the dark until it was too late, Queen Veranke is a master of subterfuge and deception.
  • Doctor Doom is the tyrannical ruler of Latveria and the Arch-Enemy of the Fantastic Four. Upon learning that the Skrulls were infiltrating humanity, Doom went to work to find a way to detect and expose the alien threat to his rule. To get the data he needed, Doom sent an army of Doombots to kidnap the Wasp and the Invisible Woman, whom he suspected of being Skrull agents. His Doombots attacked both the Baxter Building and Avengers Mansion to distract both teams while his targets were brought back to Latveria. When the two teams launched an assault on his castle, Doom effortlessly held his own in the fight and defeated all the heroes without breaking a sweat. After getting the data he needed from the Skrull who replaced Invisible Woman, Doom developed a computer chip that would reveal the Skrulls' true forms. He then delivered the chip to Tony Stark so he could stop the invasion, all while claiming such a task was beneath him. Proving instrumental in stopping the Skrull invasion, Doctor Doom's skills and intellect were more than a match for Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
  • Ultron is one of the Avengers' most brilliant foes. Beginning as a peaceful A.I. before being taught violence to battle an invasion, Ultron deduces through coldhearted logic that humanity must be wiped out to ensure peace on Earth. Ultron quickly sets to work by secretly initiating multiple attacks to distract and debilitate the Avengers, all the while upgrading his body in preparation for combat, coordinating multiple battles and using a backup plan to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. and gain access to the world's entire supply of nuclear missiles, only kept from his goals by Hank Pym pointing out Ultron's own inherent humanity. Hiding out and returning to achieve his goals once more, Ultron sends The Vision to acquire the materials for a new body and ultimately comes within seconds of replacing the Avengers with Synthezoids before being thwarted by Vision's sudden Heel–Face Turn.
• Mis-blamed: Some fans assumed that Yost and Fine originally wanted to resolve the Surtur storyline in the second season finale, but that Loeb's Retool changed the foe to Galactus. However, Fine would later say that he and Yost actually wanted the Avengers to fight Surtur in season three. Suggesting that Loeb completely rewrote the second half of season two to leave that arc hanging now seems a bit harsh. If you don't mind admitting that Yost and Fine did something wrong while in control of EMH, this issue actually seems like their fault, for trying to foreshadow a third season before finding out whether or not they got an extension on their two-season deal.
• Moe: Something about the combination of Wasp's voice, playful attitude, swinging-up hair, and superhero outfit, just makes her absolutely adorable!
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • When AIM is about transform Grim Reaper's brother into Wonder Man, MODOC warns him that no one has survived the process. Reaper's response?
    *brief smile* That's life...
  • Red Hulk and his alter ego cross it in either "Nightmare in Red" or "The Deadliest Man Alive". In the former, he commits a crime that Hulk gets framed of, allowing General Ross to finally capture Hulk. In the latter, he almost kills a whole boat full of civilians, just to try and have another weapon against the Hulk.
  • The Skrull that infiltrates the Avengers also crosses the horizon in "Nightmare in Red", exploiting Hulk's trust in Captain America, and inability to distinguish the Skrull from Steve, to convince Hulk to let the Hulkbusters arrest him.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The theme song is this for a lot of fans.
• My Real Daddy: For Animated Hulk. Hulk's depiction in the series, as being a lot more articulate, snarky, near-constantly active with Banner only coming out at certain moments, and otherwise being more than just 'a rage monster condition that fights other monsters' has been adapted as the go-to way to depict the Hulk in animated form going forward.
• Nausea Fuel: Either Ant-Man covering a foe in bugs.
• Older Than They Think:
  • A few fans thought that M.O.D.O.C. being changed to "Mental Organism Designed Only for Conquest" (rather than "Killing") was a result of Disney buying Marvel. When in fact, it had previously been changed in the all-ages series Marvel Adventures: The Avengers BEFORE Disney bought Marvel. Never mind how it was more in-line with his personality anyway.
  • No, this doesn't mark the first time Marvel promoted Jane Foster from a nurse to a doctor — The Mighty Thor did this in or around 1998.
  • Some people comment that the show rescued Ant-Man and to a lesser extent The Wasp from the scrappy heap because they haven't had the greatest reputation in comics, but this happened way earlier in the comics. The show took their characterisations from the late 80s-onward and applied it onto versions of their characters based on much earlier stories, but Hank being a well-intentioned but Absent-Minded Professor and a pacifist is his typical characterisation, while Janet's upbeat Nice Girl persona is even earlier.
  • During the Skrull invasion, Ms. Marvel encounters a Skrull ship and the Avengers get out of it. And, to nobody's surprise except Carol, all those Avengers were actually Skrulls. However, it's just an adaptation of a similar thing that happened in the original Secret Invasion.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The heroic version of the Black Knight makes a brief appearance in "Come the Conqueror" and he was defending London from Kang's forces.
  • Punisher appears on the cover of a newspaper.
  • The dubbed soundtrack for "Along Came a Spider..." has J. K. Simmons voice J. Jonah Jameson (replacing Simmmons impressionist Daran Norris, whose performance as a cop in the Cold Open remained untouched) when Tony Stark visits the Daily Bugle; since Simmons had 10 years' worth of experience playing Jameson by the time this episode aired, his addition received a much more welcome response than Bell's did.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Fans rarely think highly of episodes written by Man of Action Studios instead of in-house at Marvel Animation.
• Padding: Sometimes, the recaps opening season two episodes give information that is repeated in the episodes themselves and/or ultimately unnecessary for enjoyment of the story.
• Periphery Demographic: Some people didn't know this was supposed to be a children's show on Disney XD while streaming episodes where the XD logo did not appear. It helps that it had solid plots, a radar that got flipped off quite a few times, and was faithful while being pragmatic. Unfortunately, the popularity of the show with teens and adults came at the expense of kids allegedly not liking it, causing the show to be axed and replaced with the more kid friendly Avengers Assemble, which sadly has been much more contested.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • By the same token, the show continues the trend in spin-off media of distancing Iron Man from his "Fascist" Civil War (2006) persona by toning down his Jerkass tendencies and making him an anti-authoritarian rebel who tells Nick Fury where to get off and refuses to trust or cooperate with S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • Ignoring the comics, Maria Hill gained some haters for acting like a Jerkass after becoming director of S.H.I.E.L.D. In particular, even though she constantly needed the Avengers' help in saving the day, and needed rescuing by Iron Man at least once, she refused to thank them, because they fight crime as vigilantes. However, she gained some fans during the climax of the show's Secret Invasion adaptation, when she outsmarted the Skrulls invading the Helicarrier, then saved Nick Fury and Iron Man from the Skrull queen.
• Seasonal Rot: The second season has several great episodes, but it also suffers from having more filler than the first. The retooled portion, in particular, has so much filler, that subplots the original writers set up earlier went unresolved and/or unexplored by the time the show ended. This season also saw most of the Avengers get pushed Out of Focus and the Out of Character Moments become more frequent. Plus, the animation sometimes seems cheaper and the awesome theme song permanently got ditched!
• Strawman Has a Point: While Maria Hill is a real jerk to the Avengers she does have a point. No one, not even people with super powers, should be above the law. Police and military personal have authorities that they are accountable to if they cross the line or screw up. Super humans are accountable to no one. That said, SHIELD has been shown to not exactly be the most responsible of groups and might not be trustworthy as far as such power goes.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The first season's trailer, which includes text stating that the team is "led by Iron Man", elicited disappointment from people who wanted a show about Captain America leading the Avengers. However, other people point out that in the early episodes, Cap hasn't adjusted to modern society well enough to become head of the team. There's also the fact that this show started with the original line up and Iron Man was the original leader in the comics. Although in this adaptation, Tony isn't a very strict leader and often listens to ideas better than his without too much ego.
  • Responses to the second season's official trailer include comments on the line of, "This show looks sweet, except for the fact it has Red Hulk". Though, it's not an issue for some.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Fans were not pleased when they tuned in to "The Private War of Doctor Doom" on Disney XD, saw the new intro, and noticed over half of the theme song got replaced by Nick Fury's voice actor glorifying the first four Avengers to receive solo live-action movies. Fortunately for them, the versions of episodes 20-26 that play in other countries boast the uncut theme song. The versions that became available to legally download, stream, or own on DVD also have the full theme, except for iTunes' prints of "Ultron-5", "This Hostage Earth", and "The Fall of Asgard".
  • After Marvel paid Drake Bell, Spidey's VA from Ultimate Spider-Man, to dub over all the dialogue Josh Keaton recorded for Spider-Man's guest spots, EMH fans lamented that Bell tainted Spidey's guest spots by dubbing over Yost's — who outright called it "pretty unnecessary" to try and connect EMH and USM — and Fine's first and more-experienced choice for the role.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Rumor circulated for maybe a year that Falcon would eventually join the Avengers, but synopses later revealed that this would not come true until Earth's Mightiest Heroes gives way to Avengers Assemble. Viewers of Earth's Mightiest Heroes also never learn how he proved himself as a hero to the Avengers in spite of working for Red Skull, and thus the reason he helps defeat Galactus' heralds.
  • Michael Korvac seems rather easy to pity, but he only appears in one episode out of the entire series. Some viewers even wish that he helped defeat Galactus in the series finale.
  • Galactus himself receives this lament from viewers who wish that it took more than one episode to defeat him, and/or that he had lines.
  • Natasha, AKA Black Widow, while portrayed as an antagonist and Hydra traitor was eventually proven to be a triple agent working for Nick Fury, but went into hiding when the Skrulls began their invasion and went to find him as the rest of SHIELD saw her as a traitor still. Yet after the Skrulls were defeated, and Nick began return to his role as he cleaned up the remaining Skrulls, Natasha is never seen or heard from again barring her minor role in the series finale. Yet she would have a more major role in Avengers Assemble as a legitimate member of the Avengers; but it’s still not the same. And heck could’ve simply joined the Avengers as SHIELD’s way of keeping an eye on them; since Maria Hill was so adamant of them being able to be above the law.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • A terrible example in "Powerless!", the first episode of Man of Action Studios' Retool to air in Australia. Knowing that this marks the last time Surtur appears in Earth's Mightiest Heroes, you might expect to see the Avengers do an epic battle with him, but none of them ever meet him. Instead, you get an Anvilicious tale in which the Big Three get Brought Down to Normal, then regain their abilities after Thor learns a lesson in humility despite the fact that he already lost his arrogance over the course of the first season, making this episode seem like a waste of time. Granted, viewers at the time didn't know this would mark the last they'd see of Surtur, but one can't easily imagine MOA and/or Marvel not knowing that. As a possible testament of the poor reception of the episode, Disney XD has decided to premiere this episode on DVD instead of on TV.
  • After Captain America reawakens in the 21st Century, he finds his renewed sense of purpose relatively quickly, and apparently adjusts to all of society's changes offscreen.
  • Hawkeye plays a surprisingly small role in "The Deadliest Man Alive". Since Hulk offered to defend Hawkeye from people who falsely suspected him of being a Skrull, having him help release the Hulk from getting jailed for false pretenses could have allowed him to return the favor.
  • Some viewers felt intrigued by a season two promo revealing that Vision would take more than one episode to perform his Heel–Face Turn, but they felt disappointed to see him defect on only his second appearance.
  • In "Along Came A Spider", Madame Viper became the leader of Serpent Society and escaped into the sewers with them. This had a potential for episodes with her as an antagonist, but she never appears in the series again, while the Society was attacked and captured by Yellowjacket. The Marvel Universe tie-in comics did have her lead an escaped Society in the story "The Serpent Crown".
• Too Cool to Live: Wonder Man, unlike in the comics, disappeared twice before he could give up his life of crime and become a superhero.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • Despite suffering from a case of Seasonal Rot in the second season and pacing issues that infested the second half of the series, the show is still viewed as one of the best shows that Marvel has done by large groups of fans. (When IMDB debuted their Top 250 TV/Internet Shows list, EMH stood as the second highest-ranking Marvel cartoon, with only X-Men: The Animated Series topping it) Many subsequent shows, in particular Avengers Assemble, are still getting a lot of flak for not being this show. Worse yet, the quality is nowhere as good as its predecessor was. And the fact that a sequel show was considered and in development but scrapped for Assemble; alongside season3 of EMH was rumored to have been a formal crossover with the X-men really doesn't help. Even worse when anyone can clearly tell Disney cancelled EMH in order to replace it with a show that better synched up with their Marvel Cinematic Universe.
  • This show's adaptation of Carol Danvers is wildly considered to be her best portrayal, while most versions of her tend to be rather divisive.
• Ugly Cute: Beta Ray Bill, at least by Asgardian standards.
• Unexpected Character: When a screenshot of "Avengers, Assemble!" revealed in advance who'd either join or help the Avengers in season two, especially surprising additions included Ant-Man II, who had yet to appear in any media outside of comics, and Spider-Man, who hadn't played a supporting role in a cartoon since 1979's Spider-Woman.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Like Justice League, the series gives a snap shot of a very different Marvel than what would follow, as the runaway success of the Avengers film led to sweeping changes to a variety of characters, making this series a last hurrah for many aspects that would be altered by the films. Among the many visible differences include a much more professional Guardians of the Galaxy team, the classic Ms. Marvel superhero outfit, a purely villainous Loki, and heavy association of Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne with the Avengers. Many characters who came into prominence after the show that are heavily featured in modern Marvel are also absent, such as Miles Morales, Kamala Khan, and Spider-Gwen/Ghost Spider (in fact, out of these three, only Miles even existed by the time the show ended).
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: It's debatable whether Graviton is truly meant to come off in any way as 'sympathetic,' but he obviously thinks he's somehow justified in wreaking total mayhem with his powers every moment he's left conscious to use them. That much was apparent in the very little time that Graviton had them before being put under lock and key. And because he went crazy the first opportunity he got, Nick Fury kept him under wraps. So he does it again on a grander and more catastrophic scale when he gets loose. There is nothing sympathetic about Graviton's treatment when put in the light of his unconscionable actions.
• Unpopular Popular Character: For someone who apparently earned as much adoration from viewers as the Big Three have, Hulk sure has to endure a lot of suffering and disrespect during the second season.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Despite being nominally made with kids in mind, the show gets away with a lot of onscreen deaths, some serious Body Horror and mature themes such as genocide. As such, it has a large following of teens and adults, which may have been detrimental in the long run.
• The Woobie:
  • Ant-Man after Ultron goes bad, not to mention that he hasn't wanted to save the world with violence at all since he started being an Avenger. He descends into Jerkass Woobie territory as Yellowjacket.
  • Before becoming the second Ant-Man, Scott Lang only became a bank robber to help Cassie's doctor find a cure for Cassie's terminal disease, and his criminal record prevented him from finding any better jobs for years.

The Comics

• Anvilicious: The miniseries delivered morals of putting aside your differences and learning to work together in a more heavy-handed manner than the cartoon does.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Adaptation" ends with Wasp giving Captain America an MP3 player, to help him adjust to modern technology and trends. This wouldn't mark the last time a Marvel story would create a Heartwarming Moment out of someone giving a digital music device to a crimefighter with a more old-fashioned taste in tunes.
• Squick: MODOC and a minion agree in "Mind Games" that MODOC could use a stronger body to complement his intellectual strength. MODOC then wishes for a body like that of Thor, Hulk, or...She-Hulk.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • In one issue, Magneto, thinking Wasp is a mutant, tries to recruit her into the Brotherhood. When Wasp makes it clear she isn't a mutant (anyone who's read the WMG page would know that alone fits this trope) the rest of the issue focuses on Avengers vs Brotherhood. Do we ever see the Avengers reaction to the anti-mutant protesters with the "No Mutant Avengers!" signs, or how wrong they think it is? Nope, we just keep hearing about what a Jerkass Magneto is for being a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
    • Actually, Wasp addresses the protesters on the last page, with a speech about how the Avengers will take in and accept any hero, regardless of origin.
    • She was talking more about the Avengers than the protesters. The message felt like "Magneto is paranoid and humans don't really hate mutants". (But then, doesn't it always?)
  • Hank Pym changes back from Yellowjacket in between issues, helping deprive readers from any idea how exactly he did so.
  • The unreleased comic about the Avengers teaming up with Loki might have made a better finale for the comics (not including the Film Comics) than what readers actually did get: a Nick Fury-centric tale in which the Avengers don't appear at all!

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