The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes is an American superhero animated series produced by Marvel Animation in cooperation with Film Roman based on the Marvel Comics superhero team. The first season debuted on Disney XD on September 22, 2010. The second season was one of the inaugural shows of the Marvel Universe programming block alongside Ultimate Spider-Man. The series originally features a team based on the roster for the original Avengers, consisting of Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man, and Wasp. The team is later joined by Captain America, Black Panther, and Hawkeye in the first season, and Ms. Marvel and Vision in the second.
In terms of overall tone and style, the series is based on the original stories by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The series also uses material from all eras of the comic's run as well as other sources, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Synopsis
Season one Following a mass prison breakout at the Vault, the Cube, the Big House, and the Raft, Earth's mightiest heroes unite to form the Avengers, a team comprising Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Ant-Man, Wasp, Black Panther, and Hawkeye. The Avengers battle various supervillains, including Baron Zemo, the Leader, Kang the Conqueror, and Ultron, as well as the criminal organizations Hydra and A.I.M. It is ultimately revealed that Loki orchestrated the breakout and had the Enchantress form the Masters of Evil to distract the Avengers so that he can conquer Earth as well as the nine realms, including Asgard.
Season two Following Loki's defeat, the Avengers track down the remnants of the Masters of Evil. The team is joined by Ms. Marvel and the Vision as they face new enemies including Doctor Doom, Thunderbolt Ross, and the Red Skull, as well as alien threats such as the Skrulls, the Kree, and Galactus. The season alludes to a developing storyline in which Surtur escapes Muspelheim and gathers strength to oppose the Avengers as a prelude to Ragnarök.
Numerous other Marvel Comics characters make guest appearances, such as Spider-Man, Wolverine, Ant-Man (Scott Lang), the Heroes for Hire, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Daisy Johnson (Quake), Beta Ray Bill, Falcon, and Winter Soldier.
Episode list
Season Episodes Originally aired Season premiere Season finale 1 26 2 26
Cast
Eric Loomis – Tony Stark / Iron Man Brian Bloom – Steve Rogers / Captain America Rick D. Wasserman – Thor, Absorbing Man, Surtur Fred Tatasciore – Hulk, Graviton, Mandrill, Red Hulk, Thing, Volstagg, Yon-Rogg, Kalum Ro James C. Mathis III – T'Challa / Black Panther, Bulldozer, King Cobra Wally Wingert – Hank Pym, MODOK Colleen O'Shaughnessey – Janet Van Dyne / Wasp, Cassie Lang, Vapor Chris Cox – Clint Barton / Hawkeye, Crimson Dynamo, Fandral, Rattler Jennifer Hale – Carol Danvers / Ms. Marvel, Corrina Peter Jessop – Vision Phil LaMarr – J.A.R.V.I.S., Wonder Man
Crew Joshua Fine – Supervising producer Vinton Heuck – Director Sebastian Montes – Director Jamie Simone – Casting and voice director Christopher Yost – Story editor, writer Ciro Nieli - Supervising director (season 1) Frank Paur - Supervising director
Production Development Josh Fine and a number of other creators of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes were initially developing a series based on the Hulk. However, it never made it past the scripting stages, with the team instead creating a new series based on the Avengers.
Production Marvel announced in October 2008 that its Marvel Animation division and the outside studio Film Roman would produce an Avengers animated TV series, The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, for planned broadcast in 2010. Fifty-two episodes were confirmed as being in production. The show's executive producers include Simon Philips and Eric S. Rollman. Joshua Fine serves as supervising producer and Christopher Yost serves as story editor on the show. A 20-part micro-series debuted on September 22, 2010, on Disney XD, focusing on each hero's backstory and the events that lead to the main series. The series started airing on Marvel's sister network, Disney XD in the United States on October 20, 2010, and on Teletoon in Canada on October 22, 2010, in English and March 2011 in French. According to Jeph Loeb, season 2 would presumably begin around October 2011, same as season 1 and producer Josh Fine tweeted in April 2011 that 13 episodes were completed.
At the 2011 New York Comic-Con, Loeb contradicted his earlier statement of season 2 launch in late 2011. Loeb announced at the panel at New York Comic-con that "Avengers Season 2 will be coming in early 2012 (to coincide with Ultimate Spider-Man)." This date would later be clarified as April 1, 2012. Dong Woo Animation, Lotto Animation, and Noxxon Enterprise produced the series' animation.
Changes in Second Season Due to changes among executives in the direction of the second half of the 2nd season (specifically the episodes after the Secret Invasion adaptation), the series producers received new orders from Man of Action Entertainment that altered the development of the show and some ideas were moved to the cancelled 3rd season. Various characters were considered to appear in the series, including Nova, Silver Surfer, Sentry, Hercules, Morgan le Fay, Taskmaster, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Doctor Strange, but were cut.
According to producer Josh Fine, due to executive changes during the second season, a planned multi-season story arc involving the Red Skull was compressed into the season's second half. Other ideas were to present the Winter Soldier in a more lethal, although less powerful way. Thus as it was considered that the story of Unlimited Ultron and his robotic replacement plan was introduced very soon after the Skrull invasion with a similar story, wishing that this arc had been carried over to later seasons. In an original script of "Powerless", Loki (having severe facial injuries from the Midgard Serpent's acid) was revealed to be imprisoned in a corner of Yggdrasil, and Amora the Enchantress had freed herself from Surtur's possession and was serving him with free will, as well as Ms Marvel and not Iron Man being one of the villains' targets to lose their powers. In addition to Odin having a scene where he lost his eye and would be replaced by Kurse, while Amora would accuse Loki of trying to betray him for wanting to use his powers for his own plans to conquer Asgard instead of contributing to Ragnarok.> The Spider-Man who appears in the series was originally supposed to be the same version of The Spectacular Spider-Man, with Josh Keaton reprising the role, but he was replaced with Drake Bell, who voiced the character in Ultimate Spider-Man. Christopher Yost stated that it was originally planned to adapt the "Emperor Doom" comic arc (with the appearance of Wonder Man and the Scarlet Witch), which became the episode "Emperor Stark". He even sold copy ot the original script for such episode. It was originally intended to make the season 2 finale a 3-part one where the Avengers would further explore Planet Hala (capital of the Kree Empire) after defeating the Supreme Intelligence, having a final confrontation against Galactus there instead of on Earth. At the same time, that season finale would have originally made the New Avengers episode happen after Operation Galactic Storm, replacing the causes of their formation because the Avengers were on the other side of the universe and not because Kang took them out of time. Yellowjacket and Spider-Man would have been searching for Sentry (who was originally supposed to have been introduced in "Assault on 42" and have an episode focused on in it). Josh Fine stated that in such finale season arc, Princess Ravonna would have awakened from her stasis in Reed Richards' laboratory and would be seeking to free Kang with Solomon's Frogs, caused because The Avengers collapsed the Kree wormhole and prevented the destruction of Earth's sun, which prevented the event that destroyed the future Earth of Kang's timeline. Due to script changes by orders from above (Man of Action Studios and Jeph Loeb), the Ravonna thread was left pending, so later, when Christopher Yost was working on the comics for the series, he decided to address it as a seed for a possible 3rd season.
Cancellation The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes was not renewed for a third season and was succeeded by a new Avengers show called Avengers Assemble in 2013. On July 14, 2012, at the 2012 Marvel Television Presents panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Jeph Loeb, head of Marvel Television, said of the relationship between the two shows:
The only voice actors to reprise their roles for Avengers Assemble are Fred Tatasciore and James Mathis as the Hulk and Black Panther, respectively. Additionally, Drake Bell returned to voice Spider-Man for guest appearances, while the other members of the team share their voices with their counterparts in the Ultimate Spider-Man.
Future plot details Following the 10-year anniversary of the series' premiere, story editor Christopher Yost published a series of now-deleted Twitter posts outlining a hypothetical third season. These tweets, which Yost described as "what if" scenarios rather than officially planned content, included references to adapting major Marvel teams and storylines including Strange Tales, the West Coast Avengers, the X-Men, The Evolutionary War, and House of M. Following that, in a series of since-deleted Tweets, Yost also discussed what he might have included in seasons thereafter, mentioning a possible two-part fourth season including adaptations of The Infinity Gauntlet and Acts of Vengeance, or a possible fifth season based on Secret Wars.
Since the series' cancellation, character design supervisor Thomas Perkins published fan art of characters from the series in his book IF.... These designs have since fueled speculation regarding whether these character may have been considered for future seasons.
While accepting that it would still be unlikely, Yost and Fine have discussed their renewed interest in continuing the series.
Release
Home media DVD/Blu-ray nameRegion 1Region 2Region 4 Heroes Assemble! April 26, 2011 July 25, 2011 September 14, 2011 Captain America Reborn April 26, 2011 August 22, 2011 December 1, 2011 Iron Man Unleashed October 25, 2011 April 2, 2012 March 7, 2012 Thor's Last Stand October 25, 2011 April 30, 2012 May 2, 2012 The Complete First Season April 17, 2012 April 30, 2012 August 1, 2012 Secret Invasion September 25, 2012 May 6, 2013 March 6, 2013 End of the Cosmos February 19, 2013 June 13, 2013 The Complete Second Season May 7, 2013 April 3, 2013 The Complete First and Second Season September 29, 2014
Reception
Critical response On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has a 100% approval rating with an average rating of 7.50 out of 10 based on 5 reviews.