Season Review: Marvel’s Hit-Monkey Season Two
I’m guessing nobody passed around Hollywood that 2024 is the year of the dragon, because we’ve been getting nothing but monkey movies and TV series this year. Not that they’ve been particularly bad, examples being the excellent Monkey Man which is streaming on Peacock, or MAX’s Godzilla vs Kong: The New Empire, and even the latest example, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Add in that Hulu is launching today the season two premiere of Marvel’s Hit-Monkey, and Summer 2024 has had enough monkey business going around to keep everyone more than occupied.
When Marvel’s Hit-Monkey was originally announced, it was meant to be one quarter of a new team up crossover animated special called The Offenders that was supposed to include Howard the Duck, Tigra & Dazzler, and M.O.D.O.K. Before the crossover special we were supposed to get treated to four separate animated series inspired by their respective comic-counterparts, with only two ultimately being produced for Hulu, the excellent Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. and Marvel’s Hit-Monkey. In what almost seemed like a WWE King of the Ring moment, Marvel’s Hit-Monkey has been named the lone survivor (ironic when you take into the account this series’ fascination with the afterlife) being the only series of the originally announced The Offenders to get a second season.
Marvel’s Hit-Monkey certainly has the DNA to make this one work and this continues to show in the series’ second season. The series comes from Floyd County Productions, the same Atlanta-based animation studio responsible for 14 seasons of Archer, and there are clear and obvious parallels that showcase why Floyd was the perfect studio for Hit-Monkey. Like Archer, we get a usually hammered jive-talking agent by the name of Bryce Fowler(Jason Sudeikis) acting as the “ghost with the most” sidekick to our titular Japanese macaque, both of whom have absconded from the war-torn Tokyo Japan for the sunny beaches of downtown NYC. Following close behind are returning characters from Hit-Monkey season one, Haruka (Ally Maki) and the new Lady Bullseye, Akiko Yokohama (Olivia Munn), both of whom adjourn to NYC to resolve some unfinished business.
Instead of continuing on with assassinations of lowly peasants, Bryce and Monkey are in NYC to try and get bigger game dished out by Bryce’s former employer Eunice (Leslie Jones). Whilst here, Bryce attempts to reconnect with his daughter Iris (Cristin Milioti) who is standoffish at first but can’t deny the similarities between herself and her father and soon joins the business…kinda. The guest cast is super fun, with Rob Corddry (Buddy), Jim Gaffigan (a hustler), and a more prominent Keith David (the Devil!!!!!) all adding a back-end cast that is just super sharp in almost every regard.
As we progress the season’s ten episodes, Hit-Monkey runs into a new underground group with a mission to gather up a bunch of ancient weapons, and even with all of these new additions to the cast, Marvel’s Hit-Monkey never makes you feel like you’re forgetting anybody which makes sense considering, again, the Archer DNA that is present. That said, there is a definite difference between having Neal Holman directing this series and Kevin Mellon. With Neal directing the show’s first season, I got more sensibilities akin to that of Tarantino’s Kill Bill, frenetic, action-packed, and popcorn fun. With Mellon’s efforts, Marvel’s Hit-Monkey comes off a bit more safe, less anime-influenced like in the prior season which could have something to do with the changed setting, but I don’t really get the same pull from the dramatic sequences in season two as I got in season one. This could also have something to do with the fact that 20th Television Animation produced this season versus the series’ first go-round which was a Marvel Television effort, a bit of a difference in pathos when you consider 20th Television Animation really has its roots set more in comedy rather than drama. Could budget also have been a factor here? It sure seems like it is in a number of sequences that didn’t seem to have the same production pastiche as before.
That said, despite Josh Gordon & Will Speck not being as around this season as they were in last season when it came to writing the show, season two has a viable enough premise that follows through quite nicely. It would’ve been nice to have seen some more famous Marvel characters given that the season two takes place in downtown NYC leading one to think that if the most important Marvel city in the world was going to hell, SOMEBODY more famous would’ve shown up. I’ll save you the trouble and break it to you slowly, Amazon’s Invincible got a more famous cameo in IT’S second season than anything this Marvel series got, and that’s even compared to the first season which had a pretty good one. Instead, a lot of the “team-up” characters used you will not have heard of, but in some cases this leads to hysterical endings, most notably in the opening scene of season two which alone had me begging for a spin-off for the character used.
Overall, I think Marvel’s Hit-Monkey does enough right to make me want to see the series continue. Jason Sudeikis continues to show his Emmy-winning range and Olivia Munn really ups her game this season as a main adversary. Fred Tatasciore spanks the Monkey as well as anyone in the voice-acting game and even in a growing echelon of quality Marvel animation with the likes of Marvel’s What If? and X-Men ’97, Marvel’s Hit-Monkey shows why this offender does good business.
I hope this turns out to be another Gravity Falls-type show with an overarching storyline.