![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameIn Grover’s Mill, Kevin attacks Alan Albright, draining the power right out of the kid. NRG arrives just in time to keep Kevin from killing him, but Kevin escapes his attack by melting like Goop. He grabs hold of NRG, absorbing the power from him, but NRG quickly heats up his containment suit, making it way too hot for Kevin to touch. Kevin goes to attack Alan again, but NRG takes the blast of electricity instead, getting KOed alongside Alan. With both of them down for the count, Kevin decides to leave rather than finish them off, promising Ben that he’ll finish it another day. As Ben and Alan recover, Alan explains that he’s not the only one that Kevin’s attacked—in his words, Ben “should see what he did” to Pierce, Helen, Manny, and even Dr. Viktor of all people. Ben realizes that Kevin’s just going to keep attacking and draining people, and the only way to stop him for certain is to kill him.
Naturally, this leads to the same argument between him and Gwen when he asks for her help in tracking down Kevin. She refuses to do so if Ben plans on killing Kevin; she still thinks there’s hope. Ben, however, sees it as a choice between saving Kevin or saving the world, and he has to pick the world. Gwen points out that Kevin came out of this before, but Ben asks if she remembers how bad Kevin was the first time because he’s much worse now. With no compromise possible, the cousins are forced to fight for their opposing beliefs—Gwen with magic and Ben with his aliens. In the end, Ben wins the battle as Way Big, shooting her with a laser from the side of his hands. As he stands over the unconscious Gwen, he points out that the reason why she lost is the same reason that she can’t fight Kevin: because she cares too much to hurt them.
While Ben goes on a mini-rampage, beating the shit out other enemies like the Forever Knights in search of Kevin, Gwen visits Max on Galvan. He’s doing much better, and in the apparent grand tradition of showing damn near every guy in this show in his underwear, we learn he’s a boxer man. To Gwen’s shock, Max agrees with Ben’s choice and argues that she’s the one acting unprofessionally, putting her personal feelings ahead of “what needs to be done.” Still thinking it’s bullshit, Gwen decides that she’s going to find someone who can help her.
This and a set of police reports lead her to a dark alley in the middle of a city, where Darkstar attacks a stray, collarless dog for energy. Gwen protects it, tells him off for a bit, and then admits that she’s not there to fight him. She pulls out her spellbook, blasting Darkstar back when he tries to drain her mana. Instead of shooting him, she casts a spell that restores his original appearance, and all to music that sounds suspiciously like Beauty and the Beast. While she strikes her deal with the devil, Max calls Ben, in a moment oddly like Batman Beyond. Though Max agrees with Ben, he wants to know where the decision came from. It’s a responsible choice: logical, safe, and sensible—but not Ben, the antithesis of just about all three. Ben’s way has always been to find another way; that he believes in second chances, redemption, and his friends, and people do everything they can to prove him right. Max admits that he’d treat Kevin like a “mad dog”—and if you know anything about Old Yeller, you know exactly what he means. But Ben argues that he’s had a lot of growing up to do since “Max Out,” even though lately, he’s lost a lot of his maturity and let his fame go to his head, acting like a colossal “jerk”—something Max refuses to argue with. Ben re-affirms his younger self’s statement in “Forge of Creation” that when it gets serious, so does he. Reassured, Max insists that he just wanted to be sure that Ben had thought this through, and Ben admits that he has. He’s sorry that Kevin will have to die, but the situation is too serious for him to play around anymore. It’s the decision he’s known he’d have to one day make, ever since he was ten.
But for all he sounds completely reasonable, Ben’s not entirely sane as he attacks Vulkanus for information, going full-out Jack Bauer on him. Gwen and Darkstar stop him, and they explain to Ben just why they need Darkstar working with them. Darkstar sees himself and Kevin as mirror images—both having an insatiable hunger for power. The plan is that Darkstar will use a fragment of the Dominus Librium (“Trade-Off”) and drain the energy off Kevin. It actually gets Ben’s hopes up for a second, but they’re going to need a big enough power source. Deciding this is a stupid plan, Ben argues that they’re wasting his time and if Gwen’s determined to keep screwing around trying to cure Kevin instead of stopping him, anyone else he hurts is blood on her hands.
In the TotalZone arcade in New York City (“Kevin 11”), Kevin has pretty much demolished the place, apparently destroying the memories of how he, Ben, and Gwen first met. Whispering to himself, he paces until Gwen appears to confront him. She warns him that Ben is after him and plans to kill him, but she wants to cure him and she needs him to trust her. However, Kevin freaks out, having some kind of mental argument as he fights his instinct to absorb her power. He admits that this is why he’s avoided and spared her—he knew what he would do if given the chance. Unable to control his psychosis any longer, he attacks her with intent to kill. Gwen summons golems from Legerdomain to help, but Kevin drains them dry, giving him access to magical energy, which he blasts at Gwen. Really hammering that “dark reflection” theme home, Kevin calls Gwen “lovely” before draining her power, and Gwen has a very unnerving scream of pain as she pleads with him to stop. He blames her for not saving him, even though she and everyone else tried. In his mind, if he looks like a monster, he might as well act like one as well. Gwen just manages to escape, attacking him with games as she teleports to safety…where Ben and Darkstar are waiting. They fly back to Los Soledad, with Gwen disappointed that she couldn’t get through to Kevin. Ben gets in a potshot about how ridiculous an idea it was, but Darkstar insists that everything is going exactly as planned. Kevin’s gotten a taste of Gwen’s power, and if he really is anything like Darkstar, he’s going to come for more. They get to Los Soledad, where Cooper…
…Hold on a second.
HOLY SHIT. Puberty as been very, very kind to our favorite little geek. In less than a year, he’s gone from small and squishy to as tall and ripped as Kevin. It’s like going from this to this in a few months (and yes, that’s the same guy, Blake Foster of Power Rangers Turbo). Ben doesn’t even recognize him at first. Still, he’s adorkable and blushy around Gwen, so you know it really is him after all. The plan is that Cooper will build a machine that will power and focus the Librium, using all the equipment left behind from Aggregor’s entropy pump (“Ultimate Aggregor”), but it’s going to take time. Ben gives him and Darkstar an hour and he tells Gwen that he’s going to give her a chance, but only because he knows she’ll fail. When that happens, he has to complete what he believes is Paradox’s prophecy that he’ll “do what needs to be done” (“Forge of Creation”).
Kevin attacks Gwen’s house, looking for her, but who should come to the door but Grandpa Max? Back in action, he shoots Kevin with the bazooka from “Grounded,” proceeding to basically look like Batman fighting Darkseid. Unfortunately, Darkseid wins this round and Kevin defeats Max. But someone comes over and has the balls to tell the out-of-control Kevin to leave Max alone, and it’s…a balding middle-aged man. Who just happens to call Kevin “son.” This is Harvey Hackett, Kevin’s stepdad. Finally, we’re faced with the abusive prick who must have totally fucked up Kevin’s life…
…Oh.
So. Rule #1 comes into play: Don’t fully believe anything crazy kidlet Kevin says. Turns out that Harvey wasn’t abusive at all; everything was a fan assumption based on Kevin’s misconceptions. The conflict was entirely in Kevin’s head. So, oops?
Despite being completely normal in this circus of freaks, Harvey stands right in front of the Tennysons’ house to prevent Kevin from getting to Gwen. Fortunately for him, Ben arrives, going Spidermonkey to fight. And since Ben is the #1 cause of premature death to motor vehicles in Bellwood, the Rustbucket gets trashed in the fight because he thought it would be a good idea to throw Kevin into it. Gwen comes out and yells at Ben for going the “Gem and Gemma vs. Venjix” method of dropping something big on the bad guy, though Ben points out that it was the other way around. But Kevin’s not exactly down for the count, and he uses Terraspin/Galapagus’s powers to throw a tornado at Spidermonkey, sending him all the way across town before he manages to escape to a streetlight and transform back. Gwen runs for it in the meantime, keeping in contact with Ben via the Ultimatrix/badge comm. She manages to hitch a ride on a truck full of flammable stuff, and wouldn’t you know it? Kevin blows it up. Gwen manages to save the driver and tells him to run for it as battle ensues. Gwen is badly beaten, despite her powerful spells, but Ben arrives and goes Echo Echo. Wall of Sound turns out to be the only thing that can hurt Kevin, and he solves the problem by…killing all the Echo Echoes. Brutally. Sidenote: Aren’t they all aspects of Ben’s personality, or was “Duped” a fluke? While Ben is horribly murdered about ten times over, Julie and Ship arrive to rescue Gwen (seriously, writers? Are you trying to make me write more fanfiction?). Gwen’s scared by how brutally Ben attacked Kevin, though Julie points out that she saw it a little more as the other way around and asks if Ben’s going to be okay, since he’s gone the way of Kenny about a million times just now. Gwen, however, insists that this is Ben; of course, he’s okay; and sure enough, he’d hid a final Echo Echo in the trunk.
At Los Soledad, Cooper and Darkstar are completing the device when Kevin chases Ship there. Darkstar takes over while Cooper fires all of the base’s missiles at Kevin. It doesn’t stop him for long, and soon enough, Cooper’s out of ammo. Gwen gets back into her “Kevin bait” position and sends Julie and Ship away, and sure enough Kevin attacks. Cooper tries to help, but he doesn’t do so well, and Ultimate Echo Echo arrives just in time to save his life. He whispers something to Cooper before sending him back to the lab, then sets out to do what needs to be done. He apologizes for what he’s about to do, coldly admitting to Gwen that he lied about doing it her way. He blasts Kevin through a building, and when Kevin manages to recover, he rages about how unfair it is that Ben gets all the fame and love while he’s hated as a freak. Ben admits that he’s sick of his fame and wants his secret identity back, and he fights off Kevin’s attacks before surrounding him with sonic discs. He promises to try to make this quick and painless, unleashing “sonic doom”—a very powerful attack on all sides. Kevin falls to the ground, unconscious, and Ben holds a disc over his head, estimating that one last shot will do it. But before he can take it, Gwen stops him. Ben insists that he has to do what Paradox told him, but Gwen argues that he needs to protect the innocent—including Kevin. Finally talked down, Ben changes back and says that Gwen better be right.
They take Kevin inside and hook him up to the machine, draining the energy into the Librium. And it works. Kevin’s human again. But Darkstar decides to be a complete dick and take the power within the Librium, getting all gold-plated again, including his briefs (what is with your underwear fetish, guys?). However, Ben’s having none of that shit and quips, “Like everybody didn’t see that coming.” He presses a big red button, and Darkstar collapses, forced back to normal as all the energy drains right out of him. Turns out that Ben out-Xanatosed him and had Cooper install the big red button to press in case of inevitable betrayal. The stolen power has gone right back where it came from, since according to the laws of physics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Kevin decides to pay back Darkstar for “Trade-Off” and punches him out, giving him a black eye. And sorry, fangirls, but I like seeing Darkstar get hit. Darkstar unconscious on the floor is apparently the best mood for kisses, so Gwen gives Cooper a peck on the cheek in thanks and then makes out with Kevin, much to Cooper’s discomfort. Don’t worry; I don’t think you’ll have any problem finding a girlfriend, Cooper. The cavalry—Max and a Ship-armored Julie—relax and update the team. Thanks to Ben’s last-second plan, Alan and the others are okay, their energy returned to them. However, because matter also can’t be created or destroyed and the theory of relativity states that energy and matter are transmutable, this means the Andromeda Five are okay too. Ra’ad thanks Ben for saving them, but Ben passes the credit to everybody.
With his head clear, Kevin starts feeling guilty about some of the things he said to Ben while he was completely guano loco, but Ben waves off his apologies. He insists that they’re both jerks, and this is what makes them such good friends. Gwen points out that she’s not a jerk, so Ben says that Kevin should apologize to her, but Kevin starts arguing with him. It turns into a dick-measuring contest of whether an out-of-control Ben or an out-of-control Kevin would be stronger, but they grin when they realize that everything’s back to normal. Gwen asks who’s going to help her explain to her parents why her house is completely trashed, but the two jerks decide to head to Mr. Smoothy, leaving her holding the bag.
Analysis this time will be a bit abbreviated, since I want to take time to analyze the season as a whole, and thus I’ll expand on the themes I discuss here. One of the main themes this episode is, as I said, the dark reflections of the heroes. If you put them in front of a broken mirror, who do you see?
The clearest parallel is Kevin and Darkstar, and they both make it evident in the episode. Darkstar’s entire plan hinges on the fact that he and Kevin are alike, and if he miscalculated, the whole thing would have gone to pot. We’ve known about these similarities since Michael Morningstar’s first appearance in “All That Glitters,” and he continued to expand on it in “Darkstar Rising” and “Trade-Off.” However, the differences have always been more important than the similarities: Kevin has always had a reason behind what he did, and at heart, he was a good man; Darkstar, on the other hand, does what he does because he wants to. This makes him an aggravating character for me, since his motivation is very flat, as well as his character period. He wants power. And that’s it. He’s a bit vain, manipulative, and…well, evil. So few character traits and such weak motivation really only works for recurring villains who are spectacularly good at their jobs (for example, Aggregor, Vilgax, Darkseid in JLU) or spectacularly bad at it (such as Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb and Drakken from Kim Possible). Darkstar’s pretty average at what he does. And he’s become predictable enough that Ben knows to install an emergency shut-off switch in the middle of his machine so when he does betray them, he doesn’t get very far and the episode gets to end. This time, the parallels between characters is more important than the differences between them. Notably, Kevin refers to Gwen as “Lovely Gwen” when he drains her, knowing that he’s putting himself in Darkstar’s place.
But if Kevin’s dark reflection is Darkstar, it doesn’t mean that he’s not a dark reflection for someone else. As he had been when they were kids, Kevin is the image of Ben through a broken mirror. I’ll expand on it more later, but it’s very clear that Ben too is out of control. He spends most of the episode on his own rampage, beating the shit out of assorted enemies, just the way Kevin’s been attacking all of his perceived enemies. He spends all his time dissociating himself from Kevin, telling himself that Kevin is evil and crazy and needs to be put down. Everything’s compartmentalized into the neat little boxes they were in as kids: Kevin’s the bad guy, Ben’s the good guy. The good guy has to beat the bad guy. Only, it’s nowhere near as neat and clean as that. He tells Grandpa Max that he’s come to his decision logically and as an adult, but he’s definitely not acting like an adult, nor like a rational human being. Gwen has to remind him that his job is to protect the innocent, and when she points out that Kevin too, he finally stops attacking and does what really does need to be done: give Kevin a second chance. That’s when he’s able to stop dissociating everything and remember that Kevin is his friend and he loves him.
Yes, I used the L-word. It’s a big thing here.
Gwen also has a moment where we see her dark reflection—Charmcaster. The whole episode, she uses the spellbook she’d stolen from her way back in the original series (please don’t ask me which episode), but it really becomes obvious when she summons the golems to save her. Darkstar is to Kevin as Kevin is to Ben as Charmcaster is to Gwen—the trifecta is complete. However, unlike the boys, Gwen keeps track of her own identity, to some extent. As I said in the review of “Enemy Of My Enemy,” Gwen has more or less shifted into Ben’s former role as hero and savior—basically, the light that guides the way. There will be considerably more analysis on Gwen and her progression in the season summation part.
We also pretty much close the book on Kevin’s past now. We’ve pretty much gotten every question about him answered now: his biological father, his change in sides, his time in the Null Void and how it changed him physically and psychologically, and now about the rest of his family.
What really happened was that when Kevin was about three or four, his father, Devin, was killed by Ragnarok (“Vendetta”). This actually supports a detail from “Darkstar Rising,” where Kevin said that he’d never known his father; while the detail was retconned came “Vendetta,” it can be seen as a mild one of Kevin’s exaggerations. At three or four, he’s not going to remember much about Devin, who would have been incredibly busy in his job as a Plumber. And apparently not long after Devin’s death, Kevin’s mother decided to remarry. Harvey Hackett insists that he was third in her heart: she never really got over Devin’s death, and he was ahead of Harvey, but it was Kevin she loved the most. By this line of logic, I’m going to assume that this is the whole reason she remarried: to ensure that her four-year-old son would have a father in his life. So it’s understandable where a very young Kevin would have gotten this sense that his dad was being replaced, no matter how Harvey tried to be kind to him. Harvey tried to raise Kevin as his own son, and that only created more friction; in Kevin’s mind, he was Devin’s son, not Harvey’s, and he had no right to usurp that position. So, yeah. That’s really painful. Harvey knows his wife doesn’t love him completely, and his stepson hates him. Ouch.
Kevin’s powers only made matters worse, as indicated by his very first appearance when he insisted that his parents thought he was a freak. The word might even have been used at some point, given how much Kevin uses it to refer to himself throughout his first appearance and this season (not to mention his whole use of the loaded word “monster” in here and season three of Alien Force). Harvey ended up afraid of Kevin, and it wasn’t until Kevin was threatening Gwen that Harvey was able to overcome that fear and stand up to his stepson, attempting to give him the grounding of a lifetime. The whole reason Kevin ended up on the streets of New York was directly related to his powers; he demolished the house, presumably landing everybody out on the streets. Kevin convinced himself that he’d been thrown out, so I’m going to take a leap of logic and assume that he argued with his mom and Harvey, then left on his own after somebody crossed the line—whatever was said, Kevin indicates that his mom had the last word. He took this as a sign that nobody wanted him, and it fucked up his head for the rest of his life. He was horribly mistaken, however, and he failed to see the love all around him. His mother never stopped loving him (as we saw in “Vendetta” and learned in “Darkstar Rising”). She was proud of him for turning his life around and becoming a Plumber, and because of this, Harvey refused to let her see what Kevin had become now. This implies that sometime before “…Nor Iron Bars a Cage,” the Levin-Hacketts were moved to some kind of safehouse, partly so Kevin wouldn’t attack them and partly because Harvey didn’t want his wife’s heart broken again. So…yeah. Kevin owes her the biggest Mother’s Day gift ever. Does Hallmark make a card for “I love you, Mom, sorry I blew up the house”?
I’m trying something new that I want to use with my W.I.T.C.H. reviews—a season summation. While I’ll still do an overarching endpoint analysis, the season summation will examine themes within a particular season, and especially for season one, how it connects and grows from the last series.
And because I’m a total dork, it will all be done with song references and links.
And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves (“Under Pressure,” Queen and David Bowie)
I’ve referred to this season as having a theme of love—the transformative nature of love, the bonds of love, and the vows of love. Every single one of these characters has love inside them, and this is what motivates and changes them. When they turn their backs on it (Kevin and Ben), then they become “monsters.” This is a second theme, carried over from season three of Alien Force, which is more or less the prologue to Ultimate Alien rather than a follow up to the Highbreed plot of seasons one and two. That season brought up the question of “What makes a monster and what makes a man?” Kevin believed that if you no longer looked human, you automatically got your Monster Club Membership Card, and the word was thrown around a lot. However, season three of Alien Force was deeply flawed, never quite knowing what it was supposed to be: lighthearted like Ben 10 classic, or dark and grown up like seasons one and two. Ultimate Alien has a better sense of its own identity and balances everything better. It has really hilarious moments and a very mature story. The characters are forced to act like adults, but you see that they yearn to be kids again. If I had to construct a model for it, I’d say it was a yin-yang. The characters had a tough balance within themselves to maintain, and sometimes they edged too close to the darkness.
Kevin: I’ll show you I can fly, with broken wings (“With Broken Wings,” Digimon Frontier)
In many ways, this season was Kevin’s. More so than the first season of Alien Force, he shone and proved just what side he was on, ultimately becoming the hero of “Forge of Creation.” Yes, for all he went crazy, he was the hero there. The chips were down, and he made what for him was the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the universe. If he had died, there’s no doubt about it; he would have been considered the hero of the day. Instead, he lost his sanity and became a “monster,” which for him is a fate worse than death.
Kevin started off the season having recovered from the events of season three of Alien Force, where he went through the wringer. Ben’s ego got in the way of things and resulted in him going through a second mutation when they tried to hack the Omnitrix. Kevin’s sanity was intact, but he was incredibly depressed throughout the whole thing—a hint of things to come. It’s possible that the depression and self-esteem issues he suffered with were a result of accidentally absorbing Omnitrix energy and being tied to its biofield, but it’s equally possible that he simply freaked out and could no longer hide the issues he’d repressed for so many years. Ben completely fucked him up, but once he blew up the Omnitrix, he made things right and Kevin forgave him. Every time Ben tried to apologize after, Kevin waved it off—similar to how Ben waved off his apologies in the end of this episode. But he is a lot closer to Ben at the start of the season. When they confront Jimmy about WikiLeaking Ben’s identity, Kevin gets very protective and nearly beats the poor kid up, making him cry. In “Hit ‘Em Where They Live,” he reacts to a hit on Ben’s parents as if it were a hit on his mom, making it clear to everybody that he would go after Zombozo with deadly force, if Gwen didn’t specifically tell him not to. And in “Fused,” he flips the hell out when he realizes he can’t save Ben, telling off Ra’ad and guilt-tripping him into doing the right thing. Ben refers to Kevin as the older brother he never had, comes “Perplexahedron,” and it’s evident that Kevin sees Ben as his little brother. He doesn’t come right out and say it the way Ben does, but he clearly has adopted himself into the Tennyson family (beautifully shown in a single shot at the end of “The Final Battle”), to replace the family he isn’t entirely sure about. He reveals that he looks up to Grandpa Max and values his opinion—which means that Max’s praise of his CSI skills in “Ultimate Aggregor” must have meant a lot. Ben, however, really is the family member he’s closest to.
It doesn’t mean, however, that he’s not jealous of his more successful little brother. He reveals this on his rampage and tries to apologize for it. Ben is the blessed child, the one who always seems to get everything to work right for him. Kevin is the universe’s whipping boy. Ben gets the Omnitrix and saves the world, Kevin’s stuck with powers that drive him crazy and make him try to kill people. Ben gains respect around the galaxy and wins awards for his heroics, and Kevin has to deal with suspicion and distrust even when he fights directly alongside Ben in the same battles. Ben’s identity is revealed and he becomes renowned as a world-famous superhero, Kevin goes crazy and becomes a monster. Honestly, it sounds exactly like Charmcaster’s complaints about Gwen.
As far as love goes, Kevin loves his friends, his new family, infinitely more than he loves himself. Throughout Alien Force season three, he suffered under the delusion that Gwen would not love him as long as he was stuck in his chimeric, matter-absorbed form, adding a Beauty and the Beast dimension to their relationship. He failed to see that Gwen would never stop loving him, just as he’d failed to see that his mother wouldn’t stop loving him either when he was a kid. This is his issue again when he mutates for the third time. He blames Gwen for not saving him. He blames Ben for the mutation. But as the younger Ben points out in “Forge of Creation,” the problem isn’t that people don’t love him. Kevin has many people who love him: Ben, Gwen, Max, his mother, Harvey. He just fails to accept their love. We see that as a child, the power of love was what got him to control his anger and then his powers. Kwarrel was one of the few people that Kevin knew cared about him unconditionally—something he can’t understand from the others, who had started as his enemies or who had been afraid of him when he was out of control. For him, the transformative nature of love is the result of being loved and accepting that love. Ben and Gwen weren’t able to get him to accept their love again when he mutated, but he did love them enough to let them live, fighting off the urge especially to attack Gwen. He fights himself, apparently going through some kind of psychotic state where he mutters to himself and fights his urge to attack Gwen. When they managed to revert him back to normal, he was able to accept the love once more.
Gwen: You’ve got to believe in the power of love (“The Power of Love,” Sailor Moon)
As I said in “Enemy Of My Enemy,” Gwen has really gone on a journey bringing her into a much more messianic character—the one responsible for saving everyone. If anything, this pretty much makes her the hero of this mini-season. She’s the one who never gives up hope and always looks for another way, making the difficult decision to trust one of her most dangerous enemies to save the day. Sound like someone we know?
Gwen doesn’t always make the wisest choices when it comes to her need to save people. “Time Heals” in season three was the absolute worst mess she could have gotten herself into, creating an alternate timeline where Hex took over the world. While she doesn’t go that far this time around, she does have a few big screw-ups. Most notable is “Too Hot to Handle,” where she was so hung up on trying to help P’andor that she failed to realize what Kevin had—that he was a complete sociopath who didn’t care who he endangered, as long as he got more and more power. Again, this sounds familiar—this was foreshadowing for Kevin’s rampage. She also got easily conned into helping JT and Cash with their video blog in “Reflected Glory,” though the truth and Twitter got out eventually.
Her shining moment before the second mini-arc of the season is “Where the Magic Happens,” where just as in “Absolute Power,” she’s forced to trust one of her archenemies to help her defeat a much more dangerous foe. This time, however, things were different. Gwen and Charmcaster have always been broken reflections of each other, the exact equivalent of Ben and Kevin. Gwen’s the lucky one—the one who’s naturally talented and has people around her who never fail to let her know they love her. Charmcaster, not so much. Her dad’s dead, and her uncle’s an evil prick—which we certainly do know for sure. When Gwen comes to understand Charmcaster’s history, it makes it really damn hard for the girls to hate each other, and they join forces. It’s their combined power that defeats Adwatia, though Charmcaster chooses to remain behind as Ledgerdomain falls apart so she can free her people. And as I said, Gwen’s dark reflection moment comes when she summons the golems to save her and attack Kevin in New York.
Gwen’s protective nature and her need to find the light within people leads her to conflicts with Ben throughout the mini-arc. When Ben affirms that he feels he has to kill Kevin, she immediately turns on him. She eventually learns to see his point of view, but she knows it’s not really what her cousin wants; while she goes through her plan, she points out to him that deep down, Ben really does want to do things her way. They finally come to blows when she tries to stop him from running after Kevin, and he counterattacks. The battle is brutal, with Gwen doing what she can to stop Ben while he does whatever he can to avoid being stopped. He attacks with Chromastone, Terraspin, NRG, Nanomech, and finally Way Big, easily defeating her, and then he points out that the reason why she lost is because she cares too much to hurt him, while he didn’t let himself worry about hurting her. It’s a very regretful battle, and it really shows that the pressure has torn their family apart. At the same time, she’s not so worried about what happens to herself, willing to use herself as bait to lure Kevin into her trap so they can drain off his energy. Like with the rest of the traits she’s been showing these past four episodes, this is very much a Ben thing—being willing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, but damned if you’re going to let anything happen to anyone else. As far as future development goes, I’d really like to see how she takes these traits she’s adopted from Ben and makes them her own, now that he hopefully will be moving back into his role as the hero.
Ben: This is where we started, and this is where we’ll end (“Seeing Red,” Eyeshine)
Numerous times throughout Alien Force and Ultimate Alien I’ve referred to Ben’s two modes: default personality and “hero mode.” “Forge of Creation” confirms that Ben has a hero mode that he goes into whenever the going gets tough. His mind is very strictly compartmentalized. Think of a very organized house of rooms, each with its own set of boxes. “Duped” takes these rooms and splits up the compartmentalization into three distinct personality subsets: Ben’s superego—a very emotional, self-effacing dork who can’t stand hurting anyone, his id—a brash narcissist with no sense of foresight but also doesn’t like actually hurting people, and his ego—a poorly defined, smug, intelligent, determined person with lots of creativity and apparently the ability to hurt people. For all “Duped” was a weak episode, it did foreshadow the compartments in his mind and the personas he must wear depending on the situation. Ever since he was a kid, he knew he would have to make very difficult, life-or-death choices. To prevent these truths from weighing too heavily on his conscience, he took refuge in a clown mask, playing the fool so he could function sanely. It was a very precarious balance: in order to hide the darkness inside him, he had to overwhelm himself with false light. But the brighter the light, the deeper the darkness. This season forces him to confront these truths and face his innermost yin.
He loses his secret identity in the beginning of the season, and with the loss of one mask, he has to try to replace it with another. He delves even deeper in to his foolish persona—as he puts it, letting the fame get to his head—but he’s always got someone to shoot him down, namely Will Harangue. While Harangue acts like a douche on TV, he’s an even bigger douche in real life, spinning his own villainous deeds into just another way to make Ben look like a bad guy. On top of that, Ben has a harder time just being an ordinary kid. He can’t hang out anywhere because he’s going to have legions of fans chasing him. He goes to watch his girlfriend play tennis, he becomes the headline. A simple trip to Mr. Smoothy turns into a spectacle. By “Absolute Power,” he admits to Kevin that he’s tired of it all. He just wants his secret identity back; it’s exhausting when you lose your mask.
As far as flipping out, he’s been doing that since season start too, even before he met Aggregor. In “Hit ‘Em Where They Live,” he was barely in control of himself when he learned that his parents were being targeted by some of his old enemies. He pretty much becomes Batman that episode: there’s no time to fool around and have fun with the mission; his mom’s life is at stake. And he blames Gwen for not protecting her. If not for Kevin being the cool head on the team, ironically enough, he probably would have lost it. As it stood, he freaked the hell out of Vulkanus when they fought. Aggregor only made things worse, and he didn’t have to do a damn thing. Ben never faced an enemy that didn’t just outsmart him, he outwitted him. The guy was a Greg Weisman villain. He never had to lift a finger because Ben was doing all the work for him. He lost the Andromeda Five? All he has to do is track the Ultimatrix while Ben finds them. The Map of Infinity? Ben found every single piece for him.
During the battles with Aggregor and the later fights with Kevin, Ben doesn’t just go into hero mode; he pretty much goes into villain mode. He’s the wrath of God in the body of a sixteen-year-old boy. He sees red throughout the whole thing. Aggregor pisses him off like no one else in the universe. The apparent deaths of the Andromeda Five lead him to fight with lethal intent for the first time in his life; not even Vilgax faced the kind of beating Ben had ready for Aggregor. As with his fight with Kevin, it’s Gwen who manages to get him to stop, telling him that he’s going too far. Only then, he listened and calmed himself down. Now, it’s almost impossible. He beats the Forever Knights and Vulkanus so thoroughly that you wonder who‘s really the insane one on a rampage. Everything looks exactly like Kevin’s rampage. Hell, when he fights Kevin for the last time, he promises to try to make it quick and painless—just as Kevin had promised him in “Enemy Of My Enemy.” Out of respect for their friendship, they’re both willing to go for the headshot instead of letting each other bleed. It would be no surprise if next season featured Ben losing control; we actually get to see how dangerous he is when he wants to be.
Guilt plays a big role in Ben’s anger. Ra’ad yelled at him for finding all of the other Andromedans for Aggregor, and Azmuth raged at him for failing to protect the Map of Infinity. Ben himself admits that he blames himself for Kevin’s mutation, just as Kevin and Gwen blame him. He tells himself that Kevin’s evil, dissociating himself from him. He’s not fighting a friend; Kevin’s just another enemy. He thinks this is the professional thing to do, the right thing, what he has to do. Even in the earlier episodes, he was more willing to sacrifice. He accepted Andreas’s sacrifice in “Andreas’ Fault,” though he was sad about it having to happen; he never would have done so in Alien Force. His willingness to sacrifice himself, however, remains constant; he gives the team a good scare in “Deep,” and he provides a diversion for Aggregor so Ra’ad can escape in “Fused.”
“What has to be done” is the keyword in everything Ben does. As a ten-year-old, he knew that one day, he’d have to kill somebody or risk somebody else dying. It’s the professional thing to do; when a Plumber has to fight a friend, he has to put his feelings aside and put the lives of others ahead of an out-of-control friend. Even more, he believes that he has no choice in the matter. This is his believed fate: Paradox tells him that he will do “what needs to be done” when he angsts about Kevin’s mutation in “Forge of Creation.” This misinterpretation of the prophecy drives him through this. In a way, it’s another form of dissociation; as long as he believes this is his destiny, that he has no choice in the matter, then it’s easier to do. However, he forgets that Paradox is a nonviolent man. From the very first time they meet him, he makes that evident. He doesn’t lay a hand on them. The only fighting he does in “War of the Worlds” is using the DNAlien cure guns. When he barges into the Air Force base in “Map of Infinity,” he shows a very clear distaste for guns. But when he told Ben that he’d know what he had to do, he smiled. A nonviolent man isn’t going to smile when he tells you you’re going to have to kill the man you consider your brother. Hell, I don’t think anyone could sanely smile at that. Furthermore, he called it Ben’s “greatest gift.” This is what everyone tries to remind him—Gwen out of the desire to get him to see reason, and Max to make sure that he understood what he was trying to do. Whether or not he would have been able to take that shot, he was able to give Kevin that one more chance. And he didn’t regret it. The moment Kevin was back to normal, he treated him normally. All the love that he closed himself off and refused to give, he let go and let himself accept. His family was back to normal.
Since “Vendetta,” we’ve known that Grandpa Max has known exactly who Kevin was and what happened to him in the original. It led to a huge question: Why the hell would he treat Kevin as a criminal, and not the mentally ill son of his late partner? Max implies his answer as he explains things to Gwen and Ben: he had to behave like a professional. Unlike Ben, he’s not the kind of person who can give second chances easily (Alien Swarm). You have to earn his trust (“Kevin 11”). Everything he has known from his Plumber training says that he has to put the people first. In protecting the innocent, he has to consider the greater good. Is it worth saving one person if more could die in the meantime? He doesn’t see how his math makes no sense to Gwen. Yeah, he’ll regret it, and he certainly does feel bad that he’s got to take down a young man he knows has worked his ass off trying to make something more of his life, but it’s for the greater good.
Finally, I have to compliment the music. The battle between Ben and Gwen and later between Gwen and Kevin featured an amazing piece that really carried the heaviness of the scenes, much like the score from “Countdown to Destruction” in Power Rangers in Space when Andros and Astronema fought. It was heavy on the strings and very mournful, carrying those regretful battles. There’s a similar sense from the scene where Max and Ben talk, only heavy on the brass, giving the idea that Ben has to do something he doesn’t want to.
“Absolute Power” was written by Charlotte Fullerton. Wil Wheaton returned as Darkstar, Vyvan Pham returned as Ship, and Zeno Robinson returned as Alan. Dee Bradley Baker played Harvey Hackett. Cooper was played by Chris Pratt.
The DVD credits inform me that this finale was a double act by the series' real official couple. Fullerton wrote part 1 while Dwayne McDuffie wrote part 2.
Naturally, this leads to the same argument between him and Gwen when he asks for her help in tracking down Kevin. She refuses to do so if Ben plans on killing Kevin; she still thinks there’s hope. Ben, however, sees it as a choice between saving Kevin or saving the world, and he has to pick the world. Gwen points out that Kevin came out of this before, but Ben asks if she remembers how bad Kevin was the first time because he’s much worse now. With no compromise possible, the cousins are forced to fight for their opposing beliefs—Gwen with magic and Ben with his aliens. In the end, Ben wins the battle as Way Big, shooting her with a laser from the side of his hands. As he stands over the unconscious Gwen, he points out that the reason why she lost is the same reason that she can’t fight Kevin: because she cares too much to hurt them.
While Ben goes on a mini-rampage, beating the shit out other enemies like the Forever Knights in search of Kevin, Gwen visits Max on Galvan. He’s doing much better, and in the apparent grand tradition of showing damn near every guy in this show in his underwear, we learn he’s a boxer man. To Gwen’s shock, Max agrees with Ben’s choice and argues that she’s the one acting unprofessionally, putting her personal feelings ahead of “what needs to be done.” Still thinking it’s bullshit, Gwen decides that she’s going to find someone who can help her.
This and a set of police reports lead her to a dark alley in the middle of a city, where Darkstar attacks a stray, collarless dog for energy. Gwen protects it, tells him off for a bit, and then admits that she’s not there to fight him. She pulls out her spellbook, blasting Darkstar back when he tries to drain her mana. Instead of shooting him, she casts a spell that restores his original appearance, and all to music that sounds suspiciously like Beauty and the Beast. While she strikes her deal with the devil, Max calls Ben, in a moment oddly like Batman Beyond. Though Max agrees with Ben, he wants to know where the decision came from. It’s a responsible choice: logical, safe, and sensible—but not Ben, the antithesis of just about all three. Ben’s way has always been to find another way; that he believes in second chances, redemption, and his friends, and people do everything they can to prove him right. Max admits that he’d treat Kevin like a “mad dog”—and if you know anything about Old Yeller, you know exactly what he means. But Ben argues that he’s had a lot of growing up to do since “Max Out,” even though lately, he’s lost a lot of his maturity and let his fame go to his head, acting like a colossal “jerk”—something Max refuses to argue with. Ben re-affirms his younger self’s statement in “Forge of Creation” that when it gets serious, so does he. Reassured, Max insists that he just wanted to be sure that Ben had thought this through, and Ben admits that he has. He’s sorry that Kevin will have to die, but the situation is too serious for him to play around anymore. It’s the decision he’s known he’d have to one day make, ever since he was ten.
But for all he sounds completely reasonable, Ben’s not entirely sane as he attacks Vulkanus for information, going full-out Jack Bauer on him. Gwen and Darkstar stop him, and they explain to Ben just why they need Darkstar working with them. Darkstar sees himself and Kevin as mirror images—both having an insatiable hunger for power. The plan is that Darkstar will use a fragment of the Dominus Librium (“Trade-Off”) and drain the energy off Kevin. It actually gets Ben’s hopes up for a second, but they’re going to need a big enough power source. Deciding this is a stupid plan, Ben argues that they’re wasting his time and if Gwen’s determined to keep screwing around trying to cure Kevin instead of stopping him, anyone else he hurts is blood on her hands.
In the TotalZone arcade in New York City (“Kevin 11”), Kevin has pretty much demolished the place, apparently destroying the memories of how he, Ben, and Gwen first met. Whispering to himself, he paces until Gwen appears to confront him. She warns him that Ben is after him and plans to kill him, but she wants to cure him and she needs him to trust her. However, Kevin freaks out, having some kind of mental argument as he fights his instinct to absorb her power. He admits that this is why he’s avoided and spared her—he knew what he would do if given the chance. Unable to control his psychosis any longer, he attacks her with intent to kill. Gwen summons golems from Legerdomain to help, but Kevin drains them dry, giving him access to magical energy, which he blasts at Gwen. Really hammering that “dark reflection” theme home, Kevin calls Gwen “lovely” before draining her power, and Gwen has a very unnerving scream of pain as she pleads with him to stop. He blames her for not saving him, even though she and everyone else tried. In his mind, if he looks like a monster, he might as well act like one as well. Gwen just manages to escape, attacking him with games as she teleports to safety…where Ben and Darkstar are waiting. They fly back to Los Soledad, with Gwen disappointed that she couldn’t get through to Kevin. Ben gets in a potshot about how ridiculous an idea it was, but Darkstar insists that everything is going exactly as planned. Kevin’s gotten a taste of Gwen’s power, and if he really is anything like Darkstar, he’s going to come for more. They get to Los Soledad, where Cooper…
…Hold on a second.
HOLY SHIT. Puberty as been very, very kind to our favorite little geek. In less than a year, he’s gone from small and squishy to as tall and ripped as Kevin. It’s like going from this to this in a few months (and yes, that’s the same guy, Blake Foster of Power Rangers Turbo). Ben doesn’t even recognize him at first. Still, he’s adorkable and blushy around Gwen, so you know it really is him after all. The plan is that Cooper will build a machine that will power and focus the Librium, using all the equipment left behind from Aggregor’s entropy pump (“Ultimate Aggregor”), but it’s going to take time. Ben gives him and Darkstar an hour and he tells Gwen that he’s going to give her a chance, but only because he knows she’ll fail. When that happens, he has to complete what he believes is Paradox’s prophecy that he’ll “do what needs to be done” (“Forge of Creation”).
Kevin attacks Gwen’s house, looking for her, but who should come to the door but Grandpa Max? Back in action, he shoots Kevin with the bazooka from “Grounded,” proceeding to basically look like Batman fighting Darkseid. Unfortunately, Darkseid wins this round and Kevin defeats Max. But someone comes over and has the balls to tell the out-of-control Kevin to leave Max alone, and it’s…a balding middle-aged man. Who just happens to call Kevin “son.” This is Harvey Hackett, Kevin’s stepdad. Finally, we’re faced with the abusive prick who must have totally fucked up Kevin’s life…
…Oh.
So. Rule #1 comes into play: Don’t fully believe anything crazy kidlet Kevin says. Turns out that Harvey wasn’t abusive at all; everything was a fan assumption based on Kevin’s misconceptions. The conflict was entirely in Kevin’s head. So, oops?
Despite being completely normal in this circus of freaks, Harvey stands right in front of the Tennysons’ house to prevent Kevin from getting to Gwen. Fortunately for him, Ben arrives, going Spidermonkey to fight. And since Ben is the #1 cause of premature death to motor vehicles in Bellwood, the Rustbucket gets trashed in the fight because he thought it would be a good idea to throw Kevin into it. Gwen comes out and yells at Ben for going the “Gem and Gemma vs. Venjix” method of dropping something big on the bad guy, though Ben points out that it was the other way around. But Kevin’s not exactly down for the count, and he uses Terraspin/Galapagus’s powers to throw a tornado at Spidermonkey, sending him all the way across town before he manages to escape to a streetlight and transform back. Gwen runs for it in the meantime, keeping in contact with Ben via the Ultimatrix/badge comm. She manages to hitch a ride on a truck full of flammable stuff, and wouldn’t you know it? Kevin blows it up. Gwen manages to save the driver and tells him to run for it as battle ensues. Gwen is badly beaten, despite her powerful spells, but Ben arrives and goes Echo Echo. Wall of Sound turns out to be the only thing that can hurt Kevin, and he solves the problem by…killing all the Echo Echoes. Brutally. Sidenote: Aren’t they all aspects of Ben’s personality, or was “Duped” a fluke? While Ben is horribly murdered about ten times over, Julie and Ship arrive to rescue Gwen (seriously, writers? Are you trying to make me write more fanfiction?). Gwen’s scared by how brutally Ben attacked Kevin, though Julie points out that she saw it a little more as the other way around and asks if Ben’s going to be okay, since he’s gone the way of Kenny about a million times just now. Gwen, however, insists that this is Ben; of course, he’s okay; and sure enough, he’d hid a final Echo Echo in the trunk.
At Los Soledad, Cooper and Darkstar are completing the device when Kevin chases Ship there. Darkstar takes over while Cooper fires all of the base’s missiles at Kevin. It doesn’t stop him for long, and soon enough, Cooper’s out of ammo. Gwen gets back into her “Kevin bait” position and sends Julie and Ship away, and sure enough Kevin attacks. Cooper tries to help, but he doesn’t do so well, and Ultimate Echo Echo arrives just in time to save his life. He whispers something to Cooper before sending him back to the lab, then sets out to do what needs to be done. He apologizes for what he’s about to do, coldly admitting to Gwen that he lied about doing it her way. He blasts Kevin through a building, and when Kevin manages to recover, he rages about how unfair it is that Ben gets all the fame and love while he’s hated as a freak. Ben admits that he’s sick of his fame and wants his secret identity back, and he fights off Kevin’s attacks before surrounding him with sonic discs. He promises to try to make this quick and painless, unleashing “sonic doom”—a very powerful attack on all sides. Kevin falls to the ground, unconscious, and Ben holds a disc over his head, estimating that one last shot will do it. But before he can take it, Gwen stops him. Ben insists that he has to do what Paradox told him, but Gwen argues that he needs to protect the innocent—including Kevin. Finally talked down, Ben changes back and says that Gwen better be right.
They take Kevin inside and hook him up to the machine, draining the energy into the Librium. And it works. Kevin’s human again. But Darkstar decides to be a complete dick and take the power within the Librium, getting all gold-plated again, including his briefs (what is with your underwear fetish, guys?). However, Ben’s having none of that shit and quips, “Like everybody didn’t see that coming.” He presses a big red button, and Darkstar collapses, forced back to normal as all the energy drains right out of him. Turns out that Ben out-Xanatosed him and had Cooper install the big red button to press in case of inevitable betrayal. The stolen power has gone right back where it came from, since according to the laws of physics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Kevin decides to pay back Darkstar for “Trade-Off” and punches him out, giving him a black eye. And sorry, fangirls, but I like seeing Darkstar get hit. Darkstar unconscious on the floor is apparently the best mood for kisses, so Gwen gives Cooper a peck on the cheek in thanks and then makes out with Kevin, much to Cooper’s discomfort. Don’t worry; I don’t think you’ll have any problem finding a girlfriend, Cooper. The cavalry—Max and a Ship-armored Julie—relax and update the team. Thanks to Ben’s last-second plan, Alan and the others are okay, their energy returned to them. However, because matter also can’t be created or destroyed and the theory of relativity states that energy and matter are transmutable, this means the Andromeda Five are okay too. Ra’ad thanks Ben for saving them, but Ben passes the credit to everybody.
With his head clear, Kevin starts feeling guilty about some of the things he said to Ben while he was completely guano loco, but Ben waves off his apologies. He insists that they’re both jerks, and this is what makes them such good friends. Gwen points out that she’s not a jerk, so Ben says that Kevin should apologize to her, but Kevin starts arguing with him. It turns into a dick-measuring contest of whether an out-of-control Ben or an out-of-control Kevin would be stronger, but they grin when they realize that everything’s back to normal. Gwen asks who’s going to help her explain to her parents why her house is completely trashed, but the two jerks decide to head to Mr. Smoothy, leaving her holding the bag.
Analysis this time will be a bit abbreviated, since I want to take time to analyze the season as a whole, and thus I’ll expand on the themes I discuss here. One of the main themes this episode is, as I said, the dark reflections of the heroes. If you put them in front of a broken mirror, who do you see?
The clearest parallel is Kevin and Darkstar, and they both make it evident in the episode. Darkstar’s entire plan hinges on the fact that he and Kevin are alike, and if he miscalculated, the whole thing would have gone to pot. We’ve known about these similarities since Michael Morningstar’s first appearance in “All That Glitters,” and he continued to expand on it in “Darkstar Rising” and “Trade-Off.” However, the differences have always been more important than the similarities: Kevin has always had a reason behind what he did, and at heart, he was a good man; Darkstar, on the other hand, does what he does because he wants to. This makes him an aggravating character for me, since his motivation is very flat, as well as his character period. He wants power. And that’s it. He’s a bit vain, manipulative, and…well, evil. So few character traits and such weak motivation really only works for recurring villains who are spectacularly good at their jobs (for example, Aggregor, Vilgax, Darkseid in JLU) or spectacularly bad at it (such as Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb and Drakken from Kim Possible). Darkstar’s pretty average at what he does. And he’s become predictable enough that Ben knows to install an emergency shut-off switch in the middle of his machine so when he does betray them, he doesn’t get very far and the episode gets to end. This time, the parallels between characters is more important than the differences between them. Notably, Kevin refers to Gwen as “Lovely Gwen” when he drains her, knowing that he’s putting himself in Darkstar’s place.
But if Kevin’s dark reflection is Darkstar, it doesn’t mean that he’s not a dark reflection for someone else. As he had been when they were kids, Kevin is the image of Ben through a broken mirror. I’ll expand on it more later, but it’s very clear that Ben too is out of control. He spends most of the episode on his own rampage, beating the shit out of assorted enemies, just the way Kevin’s been attacking all of his perceived enemies. He spends all his time dissociating himself from Kevin, telling himself that Kevin is evil and crazy and needs to be put down. Everything’s compartmentalized into the neat little boxes they were in as kids: Kevin’s the bad guy, Ben’s the good guy. The good guy has to beat the bad guy. Only, it’s nowhere near as neat and clean as that. He tells Grandpa Max that he’s come to his decision logically and as an adult, but he’s definitely not acting like an adult, nor like a rational human being. Gwen has to remind him that his job is to protect the innocent, and when she points out that Kevin too, he finally stops attacking and does what really does need to be done: give Kevin a second chance. That’s when he’s able to stop dissociating everything and remember that Kevin is his friend and he loves him.
Yes, I used the L-word. It’s a big thing here.
Gwen also has a moment where we see her dark reflection—Charmcaster. The whole episode, she uses the spellbook she’d stolen from her way back in the original series (please don’t ask me which episode), but it really becomes obvious when she summons the golems to save her. Darkstar is to Kevin as Kevin is to Ben as Charmcaster is to Gwen—the trifecta is complete. However, unlike the boys, Gwen keeps track of her own identity, to some extent. As I said in the review of “Enemy Of My Enemy,” Gwen has more or less shifted into Ben’s former role as hero and savior—basically, the light that guides the way. There will be considerably more analysis on Gwen and her progression in the season summation part.
We also pretty much close the book on Kevin’s past now. We’ve pretty much gotten every question about him answered now: his biological father, his change in sides, his time in the Null Void and how it changed him physically and psychologically, and now about the rest of his family.
What really happened was that when Kevin was about three or four, his father, Devin, was killed by Ragnarok (“Vendetta”). This actually supports a detail from “Darkstar Rising,” where Kevin said that he’d never known his father; while the detail was retconned came “Vendetta,” it can be seen as a mild one of Kevin’s exaggerations. At three or four, he’s not going to remember much about Devin, who would have been incredibly busy in his job as a Plumber. And apparently not long after Devin’s death, Kevin’s mother decided to remarry. Harvey Hackett insists that he was third in her heart: she never really got over Devin’s death, and he was ahead of Harvey, but it was Kevin she loved the most. By this line of logic, I’m going to assume that this is the whole reason she remarried: to ensure that her four-year-old son would have a father in his life. So it’s understandable where a very young Kevin would have gotten this sense that his dad was being replaced, no matter how Harvey tried to be kind to him. Harvey tried to raise Kevin as his own son, and that only created more friction; in Kevin’s mind, he was Devin’s son, not Harvey’s, and he had no right to usurp that position. So, yeah. That’s really painful. Harvey knows his wife doesn’t love him completely, and his stepson hates him. Ouch.
Kevin’s powers only made matters worse, as indicated by his very first appearance when he insisted that his parents thought he was a freak. The word might even have been used at some point, given how much Kevin uses it to refer to himself throughout his first appearance and this season (not to mention his whole use of the loaded word “monster” in here and season three of Alien Force). Harvey ended up afraid of Kevin, and it wasn’t until Kevin was threatening Gwen that Harvey was able to overcome that fear and stand up to his stepson, attempting to give him the grounding of a lifetime. The whole reason Kevin ended up on the streets of New York was directly related to his powers; he demolished the house, presumably landing everybody out on the streets. Kevin convinced himself that he’d been thrown out, so I’m going to take a leap of logic and assume that he argued with his mom and Harvey, then left on his own after somebody crossed the line—whatever was said, Kevin indicates that his mom had the last word. He took this as a sign that nobody wanted him, and it fucked up his head for the rest of his life. He was horribly mistaken, however, and he failed to see the love all around him. His mother never stopped loving him (as we saw in “Vendetta” and learned in “Darkstar Rising”). She was proud of him for turning his life around and becoming a Plumber, and because of this, Harvey refused to let her see what Kevin had become now. This implies that sometime before “…Nor Iron Bars a Cage,” the Levin-Hacketts were moved to some kind of safehouse, partly so Kevin wouldn’t attack them and partly because Harvey didn’t want his wife’s heart broken again. So…yeah. Kevin owes her the biggest Mother’s Day gift ever. Does Hallmark make a card for “I love you, Mom, sorry I blew up the house”?
I’m trying something new that I want to use with my W.I.T.C.H. reviews—a season summation. While I’ll still do an overarching endpoint analysis, the season summation will examine themes within a particular season, and especially for season one, how it connects and grows from the last series.
And because I’m a total dork, it will all be done with song references and links.
And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves (“Under Pressure,” Queen and David Bowie)
I’ve referred to this season as having a theme of love—the transformative nature of love, the bonds of love, and the vows of love. Every single one of these characters has love inside them, and this is what motivates and changes them. When they turn their backs on it (Kevin and Ben), then they become “monsters.” This is a second theme, carried over from season three of Alien Force, which is more or less the prologue to Ultimate Alien rather than a follow up to the Highbreed plot of seasons one and two. That season brought up the question of “What makes a monster and what makes a man?” Kevin believed that if you no longer looked human, you automatically got your Monster Club Membership Card, and the word was thrown around a lot. However, season three of Alien Force was deeply flawed, never quite knowing what it was supposed to be: lighthearted like Ben 10 classic, or dark and grown up like seasons one and two. Ultimate Alien has a better sense of its own identity and balances everything better. It has really hilarious moments and a very mature story. The characters are forced to act like adults, but you see that they yearn to be kids again. If I had to construct a model for it, I’d say it was a yin-yang. The characters had a tough balance within themselves to maintain, and sometimes they edged too close to the darkness.
Kevin: I’ll show you I can fly, with broken wings (“With Broken Wings,” Digimon Frontier)
In many ways, this season was Kevin’s. More so than the first season of Alien Force, he shone and proved just what side he was on, ultimately becoming the hero of “Forge of Creation.” Yes, for all he went crazy, he was the hero there. The chips were down, and he made what for him was the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the universe. If he had died, there’s no doubt about it; he would have been considered the hero of the day. Instead, he lost his sanity and became a “monster,” which for him is a fate worse than death.
Kevin started off the season having recovered from the events of season three of Alien Force, where he went through the wringer. Ben’s ego got in the way of things and resulted in him going through a second mutation when they tried to hack the Omnitrix. Kevin’s sanity was intact, but he was incredibly depressed throughout the whole thing—a hint of things to come. It’s possible that the depression and self-esteem issues he suffered with were a result of accidentally absorbing Omnitrix energy and being tied to its biofield, but it’s equally possible that he simply freaked out and could no longer hide the issues he’d repressed for so many years. Ben completely fucked him up, but once he blew up the Omnitrix, he made things right and Kevin forgave him. Every time Ben tried to apologize after, Kevin waved it off—similar to how Ben waved off his apologies in the end of this episode. But he is a lot closer to Ben at the start of the season. When they confront Jimmy about WikiLeaking Ben’s identity, Kevin gets very protective and nearly beats the poor kid up, making him cry. In “Hit ‘Em Where They Live,” he reacts to a hit on Ben’s parents as if it were a hit on his mom, making it clear to everybody that he would go after Zombozo with deadly force, if Gwen didn’t specifically tell him not to. And in “Fused,” he flips the hell out when he realizes he can’t save Ben, telling off Ra’ad and guilt-tripping him into doing the right thing. Ben refers to Kevin as the older brother he never had, comes “Perplexahedron,” and it’s evident that Kevin sees Ben as his little brother. He doesn’t come right out and say it the way Ben does, but he clearly has adopted himself into the Tennyson family (beautifully shown in a single shot at the end of “The Final Battle”), to replace the family he isn’t entirely sure about. He reveals that he looks up to Grandpa Max and values his opinion—which means that Max’s praise of his CSI skills in “Ultimate Aggregor” must have meant a lot. Ben, however, really is the family member he’s closest to.
It doesn’t mean, however, that he’s not jealous of his more successful little brother. He reveals this on his rampage and tries to apologize for it. Ben is the blessed child, the one who always seems to get everything to work right for him. Kevin is the universe’s whipping boy. Ben gets the Omnitrix and saves the world, Kevin’s stuck with powers that drive him crazy and make him try to kill people. Ben gains respect around the galaxy and wins awards for his heroics, and Kevin has to deal with suspicion and distrust even when he fights directly alongside Ben in the same battles. Ben’s identity is revealed and he becomes renowned as a world-famous superhero, Kevin goes crazy and becomes a monster. Honestly, it sounds exactly like Charmcaster’s complaints about Gwen.
As far as love goes, Kevin loves his friends, his new family, infinitely more than he loves himself. Throughout Alien Force season three, he suffered under the delusion that Gwen would not love him as long as he was stuck in his chimeric, matter-absorbed form, adding a Beauty and the Beast dimension to their relationship. He failed to see that Gwen would never stop loving him, just as he’d failed to see that his mother wouldn’t stop loving him either when he was a kid. This is his issue again when he mutates for the third time. He blames Gwen for not saving him. He blames Ben for the mutation. But as the younger Ben points out in “Forge of Creation,” the problem isn’t that people don’t love him. Kevin has many people who love him: Ben, Gwen, Max, his mother, Harvey. He just fails to accept their love. We see that as a child, the power of love was what got him to control his anger and then his powers. Kwarrel was one of the few people that Kevin knew cared about him unconditionally—something he can’t understand from the others, who had started as his enemies or who had been afraid of him when he was out of control. For him, the transformative nature of love is the result of being loved and accepting that love. Ben and Gwen weren’t able to get him to accept their love again when he mutated, but he did love them enough to let them live, fighting off the urge especially to attack Gwen. He fights himself, apparently going through some kind of psychotic state where he mutters to himself and fights his urge to attack Gwen. When they managed to revert him back to normal, he was able to accept the love once more.
Gwen: You’ve got to believe in the power of love (“The Power of Love,” Sailor Moon)
As I said in “Enemy Of My Enemy,” Gwen has really gone on a journey bringing her into a much more messianic character—the one responsible for saving everyone. If anything, this pretty much makes her the hero of this mini-season. She’s the one who never gives up hope and always looks for another way, making the difficult decision to trust one of her most dangerous enemies to save the day. Sound like someone we know?
Gwen doesn’t always make the wisest choices when it comes to her need to save people. “Time Heals” in season three was the absolute worst mess she could have gotten herself into, creating an alternate timeline where Hex took over the world. While she doesn’t go that far this time around, she does have a few big screw-ups. Most notable is “Too Hot to Handle,” where she was so hung up on trying to help P’andor that she failed to realize what Kevin had—that he was a complete sociopath who didn’t care who he endangered, as long as he got more and more power. Again, this sounds familiar—this was foreshadowing for Kevin’s rampage. She also got easily conned into helping JT and Cash with their video blog in “Reflected Glory,” though the truth and Twitter got out eventually.
Her shining moment before the second mini-arc of the season is “Where the Magic Happens,” where just as in “Absolute Power,” she’s forced to trust one of her archenemies to help her defeat a much more dangerous foe. This time, however, things were different. Gwen and Charmcaster have always been broken reflections of each other, the exact equivalent of Ben and Kevin. Gwen’s the lucky one—the one who’s naturally talented and has people around her who never fail to let her know they love her. Charmcaster, not so much. Her dad’s dead, and her uncle’s an evil prick—which we certainly do know for sure. When Gwen comes to understand Charmcaster’s history, it makes it really damn hard for the girls to hate each other, and they join forces. It’s their combined power that defeats Adwatia, though Charmcaster chooses to remain behind as Ledgerdomain falls apart so she can free her people. And as I said, Gwen’s dark reflection moment comes when she summons the golems to save her and attack Kevin in New York.
Gwen’s protective nature and her need to find the light within people leads her to conflicts with Ben throughout the mini-arc. When Ben affirms that he feels he has to kill Kevin, she immediately turns on him. She eventually learns to see his point of view, but she knows it’s not really what her cousin wants; while she goes through her plan, she points out to him that deep down, Ben really does want to do things her way. They finally come to blows when she tries to stop him from running after Kevin, and he counterattacks. The battle is brutal, with Gwen doing what she can to stop Ben while he does whatever he can to avoid being stopped. He attacks with Chromastone, Terraspin, NRG, Nanomech, and finally Way Big, easily defeating her, and then he points out that the reason why she lost is because she cares too much to hurt him, while he didn’t let himself worry about hurting her. It’s a very regretful battle, and it really shows that the pressure has torn their family apart. At the same time, she’s not so worried about what happens to herself, willing to use herself as bait to lure Kevin into her trap so they can drain off his energy. Like with the rest of the traits she’s been showing these past four episodes, this is very much a Ben thing—being willing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, but damned if you’re going to let anything happen to anyone else. As far as future development goes, I’d really like to see how she takes these traits she’s adopted from Ben and makes them her own, now that he hopefully will be moving back into his role as the hero.
Ben: This is where we started, and this is where we’ll end (“Seeing Red,” Eyeshine)
Numerous times throughout Alien Force and Ultimate Alien I’ve referred to Ben’s two modes: default personality and “hero mode.” “Forge of Creation” confirms that Ben has a hero mode that he goes into whenever the going gets tough. His mind is very strictly compartmentalized. Think of a very organized house of rooms, each with its own set of boxes. “Duped” takes these rooms and splits up the compartmentalization into three distinct personality subsets: Ben’s superego—a very emotional, self-effacing dork who can’t stand hurting anyone, his id—a brash narcissist with no sense of foresight but also doesn’t like actually hurting people, and his ego—a poorly defined, smug, intelligent, determined person with lots of creativity and apparently the ability to hurt people. For all “Duped” was a weak episode, it did foreshadow the compartments in his mind and the personas he must wear depending on the situation. Ever since he was a kid, he knew he would have to make very difficult, life-or-death choices. To prevent these truths from weighing too heavily on his conscience, he took refuge in a clown mask, playing the fool so he could function sanely. It was a very precarious balance: in order to hide the darkness inside him, he had to overwhelm himself with false light. But the brighter the light, the deeper the darkness. This season forces him to confront these truths and face his innermost yin.
He loses his secret identity in the beginning of the season, and with the loss of one mask, he has to try to replace it with another. He delves even deeper in to his foolish persona—as he puts it, letting the fame get to his head—but he’s always got someone to shoot him down, namely Will Harangue. While Harangue acts like a douche on TV, he’s an even bigger douche in real life, spinning his own villainous deeds into just another way to make Ben look like a bad guy. On top of that, Ben has a harder time just being an ordinary kid. He can’t hang out anywhere because he’s going to have legions of fans chasing him. He goes to watch his girlfriend play tennis, he becomes the headline. A simple trip to Mr. Smoothy turns into a spectacle. By “Absolute Power,” he admits to Kevin that he’s tired of it all. He just wants his secret identity back; it’s exhausting when you lose your mask.
As far as flipping out, he’s been doing that since season start too, even before he met Aggregor. In “Hit ‘Em Where They Live,” he was barely in control of himself when he learned that his parents were being targeted by some of his old enemies. He pretty much becomes Batman that episode: there’s no time to fool around and have fun with the mission; his mom’s life is at stake. And he blames Gwen for not protecting her. If not for Kevin being the cool head on the team, ironically enough, he probably would have lost it. As it stood, he freaked the hell out of Vulkanus when they fought. Aggregor only made things worse, and he didn’t have to do a damn thing. Ben never faced an enemy that didn’t just outsmart him, he outwitted him. The guy was a Greg Weisman villain. He never had to lift a finger because Ben was doing all the work for him. He lost the Andromeda Five? All he has to do is track the Ultimatrix while Ben finds them. The Map of Infinity? Ben found every single piece for him.
During the battles with Aggregor and the later fights with Kevin, Ben doesn’t just go into hero mode; he pretty much goes into villain mode. He’s the wrath of God in the body of a sixteen-year-old boy. He sees red throughout the whole thing. Aggregor pisses him off like no one else in the universe. The apparent deaths of the Andromeda Five lead him to fight with lethal intent for the first time in his life; not even Vilgax faced the kind of beating Ben had ready for Aggregor. As with his fight with Kevin, it’s Gwen who manages to get him to stop, telling him that he’s going too far. Only then, he listened and calmed himself down. Now, it’s almost impossible. He beats the Forever Knights and Vulkanus so thoroughly that you wonder who‘s really the insane one on a rampage. Everything looks exactly like Kevin’s rampage. Hell, when he fights Kevin for the last time, he promises to try to make it quick and painless—just as Kevin had promised him in “Enemy Of My Enemy.” Out of respect for their friendship, they’re both willing to go for the headshot instead of letting each other bleed. It would be no surprise if next season featured Ben losing control; we actually get to see how dangerous he is when he wants to be.
Guilt plays a big role in Ben’s anger. Ra’ad yelled at him for finding all of the other Andromedans for Aggregor, and Azmuth raged at him for failing to protect the Map of Infinity. Ben himself admits that he blames himself for Kevin’s mutation, just as Kevin and Gwen blame him. He tells himself that Kevin’s evil, dissociating himself from him. He’s not fighting a friend; Kevin’s just another enemy. He thinks this is the professional thing to do, the right thing, what he has to do. Even in the earlier episodes, he was more willing to sacrifice. He accepted Andreas’s sacrifice in “Andreas’ Fault,” though he was sad about it having to happen; he never would have done so in Alien Force. His willingness to sacrifice himself, however, remains constant; he gives the team a good scare in “Deep,” and he provides a diversion for Aggregor so Ra’ad can escape in “Fused.”
“What has to be done” is the keyword in everything Ben does. As a ten-year-old, he knew that one day, he’d have to kill somebody or risk somebody else dying. It’s the professional thing to do; when a Plumber has to fight a friend, he has to put his feelings aside and put the lives of others ahead of an out-of-control friend. Even more, he believes that he has no choice in the matter. This is his believed fate: Paradox tells him that he will do “what needs to be done” when he angsts about Kevin’s mutation in “Forge of Creation.” This misinterpretation of the prophecy drives him through this. In a way, it’s another form of dissociation; as long as he believes this is his destiny, that he has no choice in the matter, then it’s easier to do. However, he forgets that Paradox is a nonviolent man. From the very first time they meet him, he makes that evident. He doesn’t lay a hand on them. The only fighting he does in “War of the Worlds” is using the DNAlien cure guns. When he barges into the Air Force base in “Map of Infinity,” he shows a very clear distaste for guns. But when he told Ben that he’d know what he had to do, he smiled. A nonviolent man isn’t going to smile when he tells you you’re going to have to kill the man you consider your brother. Hell, I don’t think anyone could sanely smile at that. Furthermore, he called it Ben’s “greatest gift.” This is what everyone tries to remind him—Gwen out of the desire to get him to see reason, and Max to make sure that he understood what he was trying to do. Whether or not he would have been able to take that shot, he was able to give Kevin that one more chance. And he didn’t regret it. The moment Kevin was back to normal, he treated him normally. All the love that he closed himself off and refused to give, he let go and let himself accept. His family was back to normal.
Since “Vendetta,” we’ve known that Grandpa Max has known exactly who Kevin was and what happened to him in the original. It led to a huge question: Why the hell would he treat Kevin as a criminal, and not the mentally ill son of his late partner? Max implies his answer as he explains things to Gwen and Ben: he had to behave like a professional. Unlike Ben, he’s not the kind of person who can give second chances easily (Alien Swarm). You have to earn his trust (“Kevin 11”). Everything he has known from his Plumber training says that he has to put the people first. In protecting the innocent, he has to consider the greater good. Is it worth saving one person if more could die in the meantime? He doesn’t see how his math makes no sense to Gwen. Yeah, he’ll regret it, and he certainly does feel bad that he’s got to take down a young man he knows has worked his ass off trying to make something more of his life, but it’s for the greater good.
Finally, I have to compliment the music. The battle between Ben and Gwen and later between Gwen and Kevin featured an amazing piece that really carried the heaviness of the scenes, much like the score from “Countdown to Destruction” in Power Rangers in Space when Andros and Astronema fought. It was heavy on the strings and very mournful, carrying those regretful battles. There’s a similar sense from the scene where Max and Ben talk, only heavy on the brass, giving the idea that Ben has to do something he doesn’t want to.
“Absolute Power” was written by Charlotte Fullerton. Wil Wheaton returned as Darkstar, Vyvan Pham returned as Ship, and Zeno Robinson returned as Alan. Dee Bradley Baker played Harvey Hackett. Cooper was played by Chris Pratt.
The DVD credits inform me that this finale was a double act by the series' real official couple. Fullerton wrote part 1 while Dwayne McDuffie wrote part 2.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-17 11:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-17 04:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-19 01:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-19 02:25 pm (UTC)