Time for another Ben 10 video, gentlemen.
Today we’re gonna be counting down the top 10 darkest moments from the first 4 shows
that were nightmare fuel to all of us silly 12 year old boys.
Listen, the Ben 10 franchise is generally a pretty fun and light-hearted bunch of episodes,
but here and there, the subject matter delved pretty deep into some awesome dark subject
matter.
And this applies to all 4 shows!
What can I say?
I just miss when cartoons didn’t have to pander to kids to be able to sell their toys!
You gotta love plots with needless graphic violence or gross out, or plots delving into
themes of mental disorder or sacrifice.
And Ben 10 happens to have a lot of those here for us today.
So enough introduction, let’s get into the top 10 darkest moments from Ben frickin 10!
#10: Ghostfreak Wildmutt Kid [Ghostfreaked Out]
Ghostfreak may not be my favorite alien in Ben 10, but his arcs and plotlines can be
incredibly enjoyable when handled right.
In the season 2 episode, Ghostfreaked Out, Ghostfreak escapes the Omnitrix and reveals
his true form.
But he still has a weakness of being impervious to sunlight, which makes him try to merge
with Ben to revert himself to his powerful form.
He also takes over Gwen’s body which can be pretty freaky and scary, but the dark moment
from this episode is this nightmare clip from the very intro of the episode, where Ben turns
to Wildmutt to save a kid stuck in a tree, but out of nowhere he starts talking with
his Ben voice as Wildmutt, and the kid turns into Ghostfreak and the tree grabs Ben in
its claws and sort of eats him, until Ben wakes up and starts screaming.
This intro nightmare is a great foreshadowing to Ben’s somewhat fear of Ghostfreak and
the level of significance this villain can bring, especially as it relates to how powerful
he really can be in messing with Ben’s mind.
It’s also pretty bizarre to see Wildmutt talk and also to see the kid turn around with
a messed up ghost eye.
#9: Grandpa Max Sacrifice [Max Out] The second season of Alien Force is my favorite
season of, maybe the entire franchise, but this episode happens to be from my second
favorite, which is the first season.
Ever since the start of the series, the team has been on the hunt for Grandpa Max, who
has left them clues to assemble a team and giving them hints as to the DNAlien predicament.
In the episode ‘Max Out’, we follow the gang as they heal Gwen’s brother Ken from
a Xenocyte, and infiltrate a Highbreed base, where they are shipping trucks full of Xenocytes
around the country.
The gang reunites again with Max as he’s fighting a Highbreed commander, who unfortunately
grabs hold of Max and nearly beats him.
The odds seem stacked against the team here as Max is at a disadvantage and the Highbreeds
are sending thousands of Xenocyte eggs around to infect humans everywhere.
And that’s when Max heroically pulls out an unfocused Null Void projector, and against
Ben’s fair judgement and in a moment of self sacrifice, self destructs the projector,
seemingly killing himself and the entire DNAlien base in the process.
We thankfully see Max again in later episodes as it’s revealed he went to the Null Void,
but this clip of Ben yelling at Max to not leave is super sad and dark to watch in context.
While some say it was rushed to kill off Max 2 minutes after reuniting with him again,
but I think it’s a beautiful moment that was absolutely scarring because of how much
it meant to Ben to see his grandpa again.
#8: Feedback Dies [Showdown: Part 1] Ben 10: Omniverse may have been much more
heavily on the comedic side of things, but the dark moments shined through like no other
show’s did.
The amazing music coupled with serious themes never ceased to amaze, and scenes like this
one from Showdown pt. 2, where Ben loses Feedback to Malware, is a prime example of that.
In this moment, because of Ben’s arrogance and overuse of Feedback as an alien, Malware
hacks the Omnitrix, removes Feedback from the selection, and murders him in front of
Ben.
Ben’s totally crushed reaction as well as Feedback’s deteriorating face are horrifying
to watch and make for some pretty dark subject matter.
This scene also started the chain of events that led to another amazing scene where Ben
gets Feedback back, in a moment I’ve discussed in my other Ben 10 moments video!
#7: Gwen’s Finds Out She’s Dead [Time Heals]
Time Heals is another episode similar to How Long is Forever and Same as it Never Was,
two similar apocalyptic episodes I compared a few videos ago, and I had originally planned
to do a 3-way with this episode as well, but ultimately this episode went at the story
a bit differently.
After Gwen creates a time travel spell to stop Kevin and Ben from hacking the Omnitrix,
thus turning Kevin into a monster, Paradox warns Gwen to not go through with it, because
the consequences would be too grave compared to Kevin’s ill-fitted appearance.
She doesn’t listen to him and stops Kevin from going through with it, then when she
comes back she discovers a tyrannical nightmare world run by Hex as the supreme ruler.
The dark part comes in when she discovers with Paradox what a mistake she’s made.
Kevin is now Charmcaster’s rock slave, Ben has been captured in their prison after he
fought bravely, and Gwen herself was murdered in the battle.
Her realization that she is dead in this world freaks Gwen out and she vows to make things
right, going and freeing Ben in a very heartfelt scene that makes Ben seem really sad and innocent.
Overall this moment was pretty fricking dark and Gwen’s obituary being basically presented
to her was pretty freaky to watch.
#6: Finish Me [Prisoner 775 Is Missing] Possibly the most depressing kind of victory
is when the enemy begs for their own demise.
That was the case for Prisoner 775, who was trapped by Colonel Rozum in Area 51, after
he crashed on Earth, in exile from his homeworld where his mate and child had died in a revolution.
And so Prisoner 775 describes the horrific conditions that the prison was like at Area
51, treating them inhumanely like scum rather than prisoners or aliens.
And so he vows to murder Colonel Rozum’s family to even the odds, but is stopped by
Ben as Ultimate Wildmutt, who by the way, the only cool thing about him is that he can
talk now in this really awesome growly texturey voice.
And as he holds the Colonel hostage and nearly murders him, the line he says always sticks
with me.
Rozum tells him his family had nothing to do with this.
(neither did mine) Ben grabs a hold of him, and that’s when he begs to be killed to
join his family.
The performance from the voice actor is also amazing, pleading to be executed so he can
join the ones he unfairly lost and so he can escape the cruel world that he has to be subjected
to now.
This was messed up, and made Prisoner 775 one of the most sympathetic and deep villains
to come out of this show.
#5: Michael Morningstar Girls [All that Glitters] I personally think Darkstar’s introductory
episode is his best in the franchise, and it also includes one of the darkest scenes!
As he sucks the life out of his high school girlfriends to gain power, he is able to gain
the attention of Gwen who likes him a bit more than Kevin here, and is tricked by Michael
into getting one of these scary looking tattoos that sorta mind control her and allow Michael
to absorb her mana energy.
And because Gwen is so powerful as an Anodite, he becomes ultra powerful at the climax of
the episode when he sucks Gwen completely dry of any energy.
Please don’t take that out of context haha.
In this scene, we see Gwen’s usually smooth and bright face completely desaturated and
wrinkly, completely dry of any energy to fight Michael’s trap, as he’s getting more and
more golden and powerful.
Not even Ben and Kevin are able to stop him, until Gwen herself takes her energy back and
turns Michael back into an ugly piece of garbage.
And, I just love the touch they added of Kevin breaking his Plumber’s badge.
Such a minor thing but I just love the way it looks.
#4: Ben, Kevin and Gwen Die [Enemy of My Frenemy] Jesus Christ, did you ever think they’d
outright murder Ben, Kevin AND Gwen all in one scene?
In this episode, Charmcaster has killed thousands of beings in Ledgerdomain to be able to resurrect
her dead father.
Here, she succeeds almost perfectly in killing Ben and absorbing his life energy, then shooting
Kevin after he sacrifices himself for Gwen, then beating Gwen and taking her life energy
as well.
This crap was messed up bro!
They do come back after her father is absolutely horrified at what Charmcaster has done to
bring him back, and he dies again so all these innocent beings can be alive again.
But honestly, it is super messed up how Charmcaster just obliterated these three for her own selfish,
or even somewhat sad motives.
All I can say is, the raw emotion in these clips as Ben, Gwen and Kevin all basically
lose their life support, is super dark and chilling to watch!
#3: I am Ben Tennyson [The Purge] Ah man, how can you be a Ben 10 fan and not
gush with sheer joy when you hear Ben’s badass speech against the Forever Knight leader
in this scene where he threatens the Knights.
In this episode, the Forever Knights have imprisoned some aliens which really pisses
Ben off so he turns into Ultimate Spidermonkey and beats the crap out of one of their leaders.
Then he turns back and gives an amazing speech basically gloating about his achievements,
but the delivery from Yuri Lowenthal and the look of loss in the Forever Knight’s face
is just so satisfying.
Especially as a guy who NEVER liked how hyped up the Forever Knights were in this franchise,
when they’re basically just pawn characters like the Krang bots in TMNT 2012.
In this moment, the Knights finally get the lecture they deserve, and this speech also
just makes Ben look like a massive badass in my opinion.
The way he holds up the Ultimatrix and the camera zooms into his face as he threatens
the Knight with death, is just priceless, and when the leader tells his troops to stand
down, you just know that Ben is in total control.
#2: Nesmith Murders Innocent People [Catch a Falling Star]
Here it is, I’ve already reviewed this episode in a short, and it is by far the darkest episode
of Ben 10, but one particular MOMENT still has this darkest EPISODE beat by a long shot.
But before we get to that, let’s talk about the dark moment from this episode, where Nesmith
murders Dr. Pervis and several other innocent civilians in front of Jennifer’s face, like
the driver who was checking up on them.
These scenes of pure evil on Nesmith’s part were never really seen on Ben 10 up to this
point, usually if a bad guy killed someone it was through some scheme or the victim was
related in some way to the plot.
But the people Nesmith murders on this road trip to his headquarters are just innocent
people who assist him in his quest to change his face structure, and other people just
pull over to make sure he’s okay, and he blasts them to dust.
We also see this all from Jennifer’s perspective, as she comes to be nonchalant about all this
evil.
This ties into the whole ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ argument surrounding this episode, and it
absolutely fits into these dark scenes in particular.
Again, I’ve talked about this episode before, and I’ll link that video in the description,
but overall, this episode may be the darkest, but there’s still one individual scene that
has this beat.
#1: Ultimate Echo Echo Almost Kills Kevin [Absolute Power pt 2]
Yep, who didn’t see this coming?
If you’ve seen my Ben 10 hot takes videos, you know I talk a whole damn lot about this
scene, and there’s a reason for that.
It is frickin awesome!
One of the most enjoyable and satisfying scenes to watch in Ultimate Alien, if not I’d say
the entire franchise.
After a half season of buildup in terms of chasing Aggregor, defeating Aggregor, then
chasing Kevin and trying to defeat Kevin, this final straw battle is all it boils down
to, so this better be damn good, right?
Ben and Gwen have this character clash in the episode about being sympathetic and trying
to reason with Kevin, through Gwen’s method, and being aggressive and taking Kevin out
once and for all before he hurts more people, through Ben’s.
After Gwen fails a bunch of times trying to find Kevin’s good side, Ben knows it’s
necessary to take him out for good.
He pushes Gwen aside as he says that epic line (I lied) and blasts the living margaritas
out of Kevin Ethan Levin.
He almost finishes the job, until the yin and yang of Gwen’s morality comes into the
picture, and thankfully he spares Kevin, being able to save him afterward.
Honestly, this entire fight scene of Ultimate Echo Echo, the coolest looking and sounding
alien EVER by the way, pushing Gwen’s overly sentimental attitude aside and just blasting
the crap out of Kevin, is absolutely dark and just incredible to watch every time in
my opinion, and that’s why it earns itself the #1 spot.
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And THAT was the top 10 darkest moments from Ben 10!
Did you agree with my list?
Are there other moments I forgot to mention or left out?
Which one’s your favorite?
Tell me all that in the comments down below, be sure to like and subscribe to support me!
I’d say dislike to leave me some criticism but the geniuses at Youtube removed dislikes,
so how about just share it instead and make my day?
With all that said, thank you so much for watching, and I’ll see you beautiful ladies
and jellyfish next time!
Shalom!