Episode Title:
The Saphrax Protocol.
Episode Description:
A team of Guild operatives break into VenTech with the teleporter stolen by The Monarch and abduct Rusty. Rusty is taken aboard Meteor Majeure along with The Monarch and Gary to perform a bizarre re-enactment of the trials of Saphrax: the world's first supervillain as part of the ritual The Monarch must perform upon reaching Level 10 within the Guild. In secret, Watch and Ward run DNA tests on Rusty, confirming that he is a blood relative of The Monarch. During the trials, Gary is apparently promoted to a Level 4 supervillain and the Monarch is given the chance to kill Rusty, however the Monarch is unable to follow through. He complains that the Guild have taken everything from him - his wife, his best friend and now his arch nemesis - and is about to quit along with Gary, who declares that he is "Hench 4 Life", when Red Mantle reveals that this was all an elaborate ruse to see if the Monarch truly was worthy of Level 10 status. Having killed all of the Guild operatives, Brock threatens to come aboard Meteor Majeure and take Rusty back by force. Watch and Ward enter the ritual room to retrieve Rusty whereupon Watch, unable to contain himself, reveals Rusty and The Monarch's blood relation, leaving The Monarch to scream: "Are you kidding me!?" Meanwhile, a comatose Hank wanders through a frozen dreamscape dressed as Lando Calrissian, and encounters The Action Man dressed as Mark Hand (leading to a debate about whether Barbarella or The Empire Strikes Back is the superior science fiction film), who believes that the two are in a kind of purgatory. The Action Man lets slip that Hank and Dean's mother was an actress who filed a restraining order against Rusty, preventing The Action Man from sharing her name. The two are eventually ambushed by the wampa who takes them back to its cave whereupon they are rescued by a winged Dr. Phineas Phage, whose lower body has been replaced with an AT-AT. He takes the two to a glowing lake which the Action Man believes to be the Matmos and Hank believes to be the Force. Believing that doing so will wake him up from his coma (and make him more of a man), Hank launches himself into the lake, with Phage noting that he displays symptoms of ADHD. At the hospital where Hank was recovering, Dean is informed by a nurse that Hank disappeared. Wracked with guilt and worried for his brother's safety, Dean rushes out into the street where Hank narrates that he has to leave his family in order to grow up (while disguising his identity with his Batman mask).
