4. Retaliation and Remembrance
The episode sets itself back on Earth New York where Mary Jane reveals her ex-husband's secret identity as Spider-Man to the Kingpin of Crime. With this knowledge, the Kingpin decides to hire the Rhino and Shocker on a planned trip to Counter-Earth, where they are to kill Spider-Man when he will be caught off guard as Peter Parker. The trip will occur in a number of months in preparation for the construction of Solaris III, which will be built privately underground the Kingpin's HQ. With that, the Kingpin gives Mary Jane financial security for the rest of her life for providing such information.
As MJ returns back home, she begins to remind herself as to why she had revealed Spider-Man's secret identity to the Kingpin, which starts off in flashbacks, ranging from MJ's first meeting of Peter with her famous line, "Face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot," to her relationship with Peter, her falling into limbo in Spider-Man's last fight with the Green Goblin (from Spider-Man: The Animated Series episode Turning Point). And at this point, the episode takes its own storyline as one big flashback to reveal how Spider-Man saved MJ from limbo following the series finale of Spider-Man: TAS.
It is revealed that following Spider-Man's defeat of Spider-Carnage in Farewell, Spider-Man, he and Madame Web journeyed into the dimensional limbo to which Mary Jane fell. In this limbo, they find a tear in its fabric and enter it. Inside, they find a hellish world ruled by the Dread Dormammu (who appeared in the Spider-Man: TAS episodes Doctor Strange, Venom Returns, and Carnage). In order to find out what happened here, Madame Web uses her powers to roll back time for herself and Spider-Man to see. As they view this reality's past which reveals what happened, it turns out that this world's Jonathon Ohn created a Time Dilation Accelerator that opened a portal that branched into two different directions in reality-that of Mary Jane's position in limbo that finally landed her onto this world, and that of Dormammu's dimensional prison. Mary Jane came out of this portal first, but Venom and Carnage came out second. Though Venom had betrayed Dormammu previously, his time with the demon and Carnage psychologically transformed him into a monster not too dissimilar from his red counterpart. When the dimensional portal opened, Dormammu used his powers to modify Venom and Carnage's life-sucking abilities so that they can directly give the life-forces to the demon himself in this reality's absence of Baron Mordo's soul-retaining jar. Immediately afterward, both symbiotes arrived in this reality behind Mary Jane and began sucking up lives all throughout New York, which they gave to Dormammu so that he could enter this world. As a result, he went through and took this entire universe over. The demon's power is such that not even Madame Web or the Beyonder, who had since regained his powers completely when he returned to his home dimension, as Madame Web briefly states, can stop Dormammu. This world also lacks Dr. Strange, which would make it impossible to defeat the demon here. But Spider-Man comes up with the idea to return to his home dimension to seek Dr. Strange's help in defeating the Dread Dormammu.
Once Web teleports herself and Spider-Man back there, the latter quickly explains the situation about the demon and Strange and his sidekick Wong agree to help stop Dormammu whole-heartedly. So Web teleports all four of them back to the reality that Dormammu took over, and considering that she can barely help out anyway, she stays out of the rest of the conflict. Knowing that they cannot take on Dormammu and his forces alone, Spider-Man, Strange, and Wong ally themselves with all of America's local rebels who are fighting against Dormammu's fascistic rule. The rebels all band together to outright attack Dormammu's palace as a mere distraction while Strange, Spider-Man, and Wong can confront the demon himself by travelling through the sewers.
Within a few days, the trio lead their rebel forces against Dormammu and attack his palace. While the rebels battle off Dormammu's semi-demonic forces with modified weapons capable of fending off supernatural entities, Spider-Man, Strange, and Wong enter the palace. Strange confronts Dormammu head-on and they enter an epic fight with their own powers while Spider-Man fights Venom and Carnage, and Wong fights off several bands of semi-demons with his own karate skills. In the end, Dr. Strange defeats Dormammu with his own magic, releasing all of the souls to return to their owners while Dormammu is banished back into his dimensional prison. The semi-demons disappear into nothing, leaving the human survivors to rejoice at their victory, and Venom and Carnage, seeing that they have lost now that Dormammu's been defeated, depart their fight with Spider-Man.
As the world rejoices at Dormammu's defeat, Spider-Man finds Mary Jane and they reunite, with Mary Jane telling him that she knew that Spider-Man was Peter Parker ever since he saved Harry Osborn from the Vulture in the TAS episode Shriek of the Vulture. With that, Peter and Mary Jane kiss, and Madame Web teleports Spider-Man, MJ, Dr. Strange, and Wong all back into their home reality. There, Strange and Wong resume their duties while Spider-Man resumes his own "career" in fighting crime-Madame Web previously revealed that since Spider-Man's absence in this reality, what with fighting in the Secret War, battling Spider-Carnage, the search for Mary Jane, the war against Dormammu-crime had steadily increased. Mary Jane returns to reunite with her Aunt Anna, and, even though Spider-Man's duties have become greater, Peter manages to get a brief hug from Aunt May after his long absence, which he explains by outright revealing his identity to her.
The episode transitions back to the present with Mary Jane looking at a picture of herself and Peter, lamenting whether or not she did the right thing in betraying Peter after he betrayed her back in Back to the Start. Then the episode ends by going back to the past, just after Dormammu's defeat, by revealing that Venom and Carnage still retained some of the dark magic bestowed upon them by Dormammu. While they can't steal souls like they used to, they are now able to transform themselves into gelatinous blobs. They are both then encountered by a mysterious figure hiding in the shadows who explains that he will teleport them back to their home reality, as they are needed for the Synoptic.