Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout! 3.01-3.02 Review

Marvel’s animated TV series for Guardians of the Galaxy is back for a third season. However, season three brings back the ragtag heroes back with a bit of a twist. The latest season is retitled and themed after the new Disney theme park attraction for the Guardians, Mission: Breakout!, which opened at Disney California Adventure last year. The folks at Disney XD provided 411mania with the first two episodes of the new season to get an early sneak peak at what’s in store for the heroes for the latest season.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout! Episode 3.01 – “Mission: Breakout”

In the season three premiere, the Guardians now find themselves as prisoners of The Collector. The debut episodes picks up a considerable amount of time after the Guardians have already been captured and incarcerated by The Collector, and they are given their own separate, elaborate prisons. Each prison has been especially created for Peter Quill aka Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Gamora and Drax.

The Collector’s prison/museum facility in the show is modeled to look virtually identical to the fortress you will visit to take part in the Mission Breakout! attraction at California Adventure. The pilot is basically an animated adventure version of the ride. However, rather than the facility being a type of museum that civilians can visit to observe The Collector’s exhibits, it appears to be purely a building made for The Collector’s own amusement and to imprison the Guardians.

Each of the heroes have been set up in their own prison cell that’s meant to give the maximum humiliation and frustration. However, The Collector messes up big time by dumping a pile of trash into Rocket’s cell, and from there he’s able to jury rig a hamster wheel into a wheel of death to blast his way out and escape, much like he’s the first one to escape in the theme park ride.

The episode features a fun extended cameo and role for Stan Lee, basically playing himself. I won’t give away too many details other than that Stan Lee has an amusing role in the season premiere.

Now, to be perfectly honest, this episode doesn’t do a whole heck of a lot to set the stage for the entire season. Groot is in his “baby Groot” form, which happened late in the second season during the Adam Warlock/Magus storyline. The capture and incarceration of the Guardians is completely off-screen, so we can only guess how that happened. That is unless this episode is being shown out of order, and the Guardians’ imprisonment might get shown later. Though the “Mission Breakout!” episode was labeled as first one for the third season in the production order.

So, the Guardians are humiliated and have to come together to break out of the prison, and high jinks ensue. It’s definitely a fun and enjoyable episode. But to be perfectly honest, this storyline plays like one that could’ve been extended as a two-parter and three-parter. That way, the setup could’ve started with showing how the Guardians were imprisoned.

The official materials mentioned The Collector framing the Guardians, and the impression was that is what would land them in prison. And so the Guardians would essentially be cosmic fugitives on the run from the law and the Nova Corps, and they are out to clear their names. It’s possible that story arc could still be in the cards later this season, but it appears to be on the back burner based on the first two episodes.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout! Episode 3.02 – “Back in the New York Groove”

The Guardians are in the midst of a heist of trying to steal a coveted artifact for The Collector when they receive a distress call. That distress call originates from New York and Avengers HQ. They return to find their previously established allies laid out, or rather Iron Man and Ant-Man are unconscious after some type of attack. It turns out a symbiote that Thanos kept in his asteroid has escaped. That symbiote is now running loose in New York City. With the Avengers out of commission, it’s now up to the Guardians to stop it.

Eventually, the Guardians track the symbiote to the NYC subways, which means that Star-Lord has to go on the hunt keeping a low profile. So, he brings Rocket along in a pet traveling carrier, which is incredibly funny. However, rather than locating the symbiote, they run into none other than Spider-Man. To make things clear, the encounter here is based on the new animated version of Spider-Man voiced by Robbie Daymond.

Spider-Man and the Guardians start off at odds with each other. So, it starts off with your typical superhero team-up shenanigans with the heroes fighting among each other before they ultimately realize they are all on the same side. This is a bit of a tangent, but I did find it clever how on one occasion, the Ultimate Spider-Man actually joked about this common superhero trope convention.

The continuity for Marvel animated shows is a bit amusing considering the movie style version of the Guardians of the Galaxy were introduced in the second season of Avengers Assemble. The first season of that show featured the same characters (Star-Lord, Gamora, Groot, Drax, and Rocket) but they were all in their pre-movie animated style. That version of the characters was used throughout multiple episodes of Ultimate Spider-Man, Avengers Assemble and Hulk and the Agents of Smash. The version of Spider-Man from the Ultimate Spider-Man who had teamed up with the pre-movie versions was also on Avengers Assemble. The heroes from Avengers Assemble are presumably the same ones the Guardians interacted with in their own animated series, including this episode. And yet in this episode, we meet the new Peter Parker/Spider-Man voiced by Robbie Daymond, who has only met Iron Man at this point in his own show. Confused yet.

The basic idea here is that there is some continuity between the Marvel animated shows, but it’s a very loose continuity. It’s even looser than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Basically, it seems there will be a continuity reset for the animated shows in order to service which ever version of the animated characters is being utilized by Marvel Animation at the present time. Hence, the Guardians were reset in animation to hue closer to the live-action film franchise. Ultimate Spider-Man was created to coincide with The Amazing Spider-Man franchise. Those characters crossed over into Agents of SMASH and Avengers Assemble. After Ultimate Spider-Man ended, animated Spider-Man was rebooted with the new series. And now that Spider-Man is showing up in Guardians of the Galaxy, and one would imagine Avengers Assemble at some point. Even Avengers Assemble has gone through some mild continuity resets to adjust its characters closer to the film interpretations.

The Guardians fighting and ultimately becoming allies with the new Spider-man is one of the more amusing aspects. It’s also nice to see Daymond’s Spider-Man getting to interact with a new set of heroes. Technically, we never got to see Spider-Man play off of the movie-inspired versions of the Guardians before in animation. Also, Rocket trashing Ant-Man and the Avengers’ HQ tech is hilarious. Unfortunately, Captain Marvel isn’t around in this episode, so we don’t get to revisit that strangely amazing and hilarious relationship dynamic and rivalry. But there’s always part two.

There is a pretty wild and amusing reveal in the “Back in the New York Groove” episode. Marvel fans might find it overkill or cool. The visual of this major turning point is very impressive, and it appears the story will last at least one more episode. However, it doesn’t appear the over-arching story for Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout! is set in stone yet and how the Mission Breakout! theme will be implemented down the line. Either way, I look forward to finding out.