Can I preface this by saying, how great is Disney+? With all the great content they’re putting out, they’re also posting a lot of great old tv shows and cartoons that I either loved and get to re-watch or shows that I didn’t have a chance to watch when they first aired and am now getting to.
Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was one such show.
Avenger’s premiered in 2010. Far from when I was a youth, but I loved it all the same. I never got to watch its original run either. I believe I ended up catching it on Hulu. I think it was into its second season at that point, but I don’t know. Much like a lot of comic history, the timeline is murky.
Avenger’s: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes came out before the blockbuster movie, The Avengers, but I think that it was capitalizing on the success of the early solo Marvel films by putting out a team cartoon before the movie inevitably arrived.
Likes
Really what’s not to like about this cartoon? It was great all around. I figure I better give you some specific points though.
First off the initial team build up. From what I understand the show was put out as mini episodes on Disney’s channel Disney XD. Later combined the mini episodes into full episodes. What was great about it though was that they took each Avenger that was going to make up the initial team (More would be added as time went by) and made them the focal point of each mini episode. Each showcase took about half an episode, so there were two mini episodes per full episode. There was one on Iron Man, Thor, Ant-man, etc. In that short time though each character got a bit of tender loving care. Most of the time it wasn’t an origin, but it was a little bit of the story that will show how they got to the plot of the episode where the Avenger’s finally assemble. I thought it was fantastic storytelling that eventually led to the formation of the team being more satisfying.
The long form storytelling. I love when shows will plant seeds through the previous episodes that will eventually lead to plots of later episodes. You can add a bit here and a bit there so that later on you don’t have to have a big long explanation (or a rushed one) as to why this villain is now attacking the team. Avengers was great for that. I’d have moments, like seeing Ultron, when you know he’s going to do something bad later and you couldn’t wait for it. Avengers gave you that, but then would sprinkle in things between that lead up to that moment, so it wasn’t just happening out of nowhere.
There were also multi-episode story arcs as well. One off episodes are great, but sometimes it’s better to take your time to really tell a great story.
Dislikes
I don’t have much to say about anything I didn’t like about Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. But I created the section so I better come up with something.
Really my only dislike about the show was the abrupt ending. The show kinda just ended. I believe that at that point, with The Avengers film having come out and with Avenger cameos in Ultimate Spider-Man, Disney wanted to expand that shared universe. Which in itself is a great idea. The show was cancelled and replaced with Avengers Assemble. Although I didn’t think Avengers Assemble was bad, I don’t think the storytelling was on par with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. I might be biased though and I may give it a rewatch to hopefully change my opinion. Also the fact that they introduced Spider-man, voiced by the same actor as Ultimate Spider-Man, really put Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in the same universe. I kinda felt like a cancellation to relaunch it was unnecessary.
But I’m not in charge.
Conclusion
If you haven’t guessed already, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes was one of my favorites. Everything from the storytelling, the character choices, all of it.
When I thought about rewatching it I was a little worried that my expectations were a little high. That what I remember of the show had been glorified and that the rewatch wouldn’t meet the expectations that I’d set for myself.
I’m happy to say I was wrong.
Everything I remember was still there and I thoroughly enjoyed it as much the second time as I did the first time. It was as much the little things that were done in the character choices as much as the big things like the plots that were set up.
Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is a rewatchable show that I can see myself sitting down again to go through. If you haven’t seen it and have the ability to, I suggest you check it out.
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