Story: Max is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past,  Present and  Future on Christmas Eve, in hopes of putting him in the holiday spirit.

Well, at least its not A Wonderful Theme, but the other standard A Christmas Carol variation. We quickly learn that the #1 rule of supervillians is to hate Christmas.  Max seems pretty evil in the opening of this episode.  Max often takes one step forward into goodness and then two steps backward.

Here’s the question though: Would Max really be that evil to Nora?  His evil-ness seems misplaced.  I could see him focusing that evil on Phoebe, but Nora, no.

Max is first visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past who notes: “All your lame ideas to ruin Christmas have failed.”  This sets up an interesting premise as I hope we are going to be getting some backstory here – and we are.

Christmas Past #1: as a baby, Max barfs on Barb, who thinks she has said her name.  Her conclusion – this is the best Christmas ever.

Christmas Past #2: the last Christmas in Metroburg.  Max gives coal to everyone (now that’s evil).  Hank takes all the coal and turns it into a huge diamond, which means Hank can now retire (I wonder how he gets paid to begin with) and the family can move to Hiddenville.

As “Phoeba” notes, “Killing the Christmas spirit will always turn your bad gifts into good gifts.”

Note of hilarity: Watch Jack Griffo play the nerdy supervillian.

Christmas present soon arrives (Max: Let’s wrap this up.)  Max gives Nora an empty box (again, I doubt he’d be this cruel to Nora).  We also learn Max’s full name: Maximus Octavius Thunderman.

Max decides to ruin everyone’s Christmas.

Christmas future arrives next.  We get some good throwbacks to previous episodes.  We had the “future pump” and Max’s line: “I’m going to mind text you LOL.”

What interesting here is the role Billy assumes after the family goes bad.  He has control of the lair and hangs with Dr. Colosso/Max because “her has no one else to hang out with.”  Nice parallel to Max and Dr. Colosso’s existing relationship.

When Max sees that future Nora still forgives him for ruining their family (she even gives Doll Max her last bow), he decides to bring Christmas back.  We do get the Christmas Carol line: “Sorry, Max Thunderman, it’s too late.”

In the end, Christmas is back, but Nora still receives an empty box (nice connection to the previous Christmas present scene).  But there’s a note inside – “Look outside, love Max.” Outside its snowing.  And as Max tells Phoebe, “It is so bad being good once a year.”

Overall, I enjoyed the episode – we got some nice back story and we got some more humanizing of Max.