Last time on X-Men: Evolution, we
got a crash course in what it means to be an X-Men. Kurt Wagner aka
Nightcrawler is brought into the mansion for the first time and is pretty
stunned by all the opulence, and that’s before he’s given a watch that makes him
look… more traditionally European. The X-Men also attempt to recruit Toad, but
the slimy dirtball is more interested in fight Kurt. There’s a major scuffle in
the Danger Room, but things get sorted out. Kurt tries to bale but is convinced
to stay by Scott Summers. Toad reports back to Mystique who is furious, but is
ultimately stopped from freaking out by her boss, Magneto, telling her to take
a chill pill. I’m paraphrasing slightly. Let’s get to it.
This episode opens on the Pryde
household. The important Pryde to this story, Kitty, is having a dream of
flying that turns into a nightmare of falling, which ends with her hitting the
floor of her basement. Her parents come in when she screams with shock. They
arrive and believe that she must have sleepwalked… until they see her sheets
and pillow partially phased through the ceiling. At the same time, Cerebro goes
off and tells Charles about Kitty’s basic stats and mentions that this is the
second hit they’ve gotten in the area of possible Mutants. As cool as Cerebro
is, this sort of violation of privacy feels troubling, especially given current
events. Just saying. Xavier orders the Blackbird prepped.
The next day, Kurt attempts to
sneak into school after running late due to getting a breakfast burrito, … kay.
He bamfs to the doors to try to slip in, but is stopped by Ms. Darkholme. The
shapeshifting villainess is pretty set in her role as an administrator, and
threatens to give him detention if he’s late again. Scott saves him, and also
sets up their B plot for the rest of the episode.
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| Of all the ways for powers to first manifest, I have to imagine falling out of bed and out of a locker rank up there with the "Least fun to explain" list |
Across the country, Kitty attempts
to slip out to go to school, but is stopped by her mother. The Prydes had
‘decided’ that she was going to stay home, but Kitty’s going stir crazy. The
“not talking about it’ mentality of her parents is so draining she’d rather be
at school. Her mother empathizes and lets her go. A few thousand miles up and
over, Xavier is flying in with Jean. He brought his top student along to try
and sell the Pryde’s on the concept of the Xavier school. Jean is apprehensive
about being the lead on the Pryde pitch, but Xavier has confidence in her. He
also plans to look in on Lance Alvers, the other ping that they’d gotten on
Cerebro earlier.
Jean and Xavier make it to the
Prydes and attempt their sales pitch. Mr. Pryde in particular is defensive,
telling them to leave his family alone. Xavier only makes it worse by
mentioning what happened last night. Shockingly, a defensive parent is only
freaked out more by someone somehow knowing something that they couldn’t
possibly know. Charles, how long have you been doing this? Since talking to the
parents didn’t work, Xavier tells Jean to meet Kitty directly while he looks
into Lance Alvers.
Back at the mansion, Logan is
working on his motorcycle when he detects a scent on the wind. His nemesis,
Sabertooth, has just ridden into town. Knowing that a clash is inevitable,
Logan suits up in his Wolverine gear and rides out to meet him. He drives
passed Scott and Kurt as they arrive home. They decide to follow after Logan,
because, you know, teenagers. They hop in Scott’s car and follow.
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| Lance, I know earth puns are your thing, but you should really think before saying you're going to rock someone's world. Oy. |
At Kitty’s school, she gets forced
into a locker as a prank. I’ve never understood why this is such a horrible
prank, the button to open the locker from the inside is fairly obvious. Apparently,
Kitty’s locker either doesn’t have it or she’s freaking out too bad to find it.
We’re then introduced to Lance Alvers, who slipped out after the bell to spray
paint the lockers. Kitty hears him, tries to get his attention, and ends up
working herself up enough to phase through the locker. She crashes into Lance,
who’s super stoked to meet another Mutant. He shows off his seismic powers to
Kitty to try and impress her. She instead freaks out and runs off. He tries to
stop her, but she phases out of his grasp. He vows she’s not getting away.
Dude. Take a God. Damned. Hint!
Kitty makes it to her gym class,
while Lance creepily watches from above. We find out why he’s interested in
particular with Kitty. He and his two goons are trying to break into the
school’s administrative office and steal midterm answers to sell. The office
has enough security that they can’t walk in, and Lance is smart enough to know
that causing a quake will be pretty noticeable. The solution to his problem? A
girl who can walk through walls. He tries to earn some brownie points with
Kitty by using his powers to screw up the long jump of one of the girls that
locked her in her locker, but that just scares Kitty and she runs off again.
She bumps into Jean but doesn’t stop.
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| While the yellow suit will always be my favorite, Logan does look good in orange. |
Kitty slips into the school
auditorium and tries to hide on the set. She accidently knocks over a prop bowl
of fruit, tries to grab it but phases through it instead. She experiments with
her power just a little and phases through it for the first time on purpose.
Jean walks in and tries to talk to her. Like her Dad, Kitty is pretty defensive
about the whole thing and tries to get Jean to just leave her alone. She puts
her feelings about her power fairly succinctly, “it’s hard enough just being
normal, you know?” Jean shows off her
telekinesis to move the fruit bowl and tries to give her the “you’re not alone”
speech. Kitty is impressed, tries to deny it, but Jean then reveals she knows
Kitty is denying because telepathy. Kitty freaks out at having her mind read and
runs off. Seriously, how often have the X-Men gone out recruiting because
they’re SUPER bad at it. Lance sneaks up on Jean and tells her to back off
because he’s all she needs. That’s not creepy at all.
Lance approaches Kitty again and
tries a softer approach with her. He’s able to get her trust a bit by hitting
her feelings on the head. Namely, that she’s scared, she’s worried about being
different and at about not having control. He offers to teach her and asks that
she meet him outside of the administrative building. Well, crap.
Jean called Xavier for advice.
While the episode doesn’t say it expressly, it looks like Xavier was at the
local child services building to get info on Lance, who is in the Foster Care
system. He warns his student that she needs to be careful to not allow Lance to
“bond” with Kitty, for fear of him taking control of her entirely. There’s a
pretty good line from Xavier about how all obstacles are meant to be overcome,
but that some are more irritating than others, as he rolls up to the stares
down from the Child Services building. Though I have to wonder how he got his
wheelchair up there in the firsts place…
Back in New York, Scott and Kurt
have lost Logan… though only for a minute, as the short Canadian in orange got
to the top of a parking structure to call out his nemesis. Sabertooth drives up
from the roof of the other building and the two of them start brawling.
Sabertooth is thrown off the top and ends up crushing Scott’s car, but they
escape thanks to Kurt’s bamfing them away. Logan and Sabertooth smash up some
cars in the parking structure before Logan gets pinned to a pillar by a car.
Scott and Kurt rush in… after getting in the costumes really fast for some
reason, and help save Wolverine. Scott blasts him and Kurt teleport attacks
him. Sabertooth is knocked into an elevator and escapes, promising Logan that
this is only a taste of what’s to come. Kurt is pretty smug about the X-Men
stopping Sabertooth, but Logan rather angrily tells them both to stay out of
his business. Go team!
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| Yeah, I think Avalanche is an excellent name for someone that caused this much damage. |
Kitty meets Lance outside the
administrative office. He is able to push her into using her powers to get
inside, framing it as some sort of empowerment thing. She gets in and lets him
in. Meanwhile, the Prydes and Jean and Xavier meet outside the school. The
X-men warn the Pryde’s about Kitty breaking into the office, much to her
parent’s shock. The Prydes and Jean run ahead with Xavier saying he’ll catch
up. Back at the office, Lance shows his true colors and downloads the answers
to the big midterms. He also starts to change Kitty’s grades, but she’s had
enough and tries to bail. Her parents and Jean arrive and try to get her away
from Lance, but the geokinetic causes a massive quake to stop her. Kitty’s dad gets
buried under a bookshelf, but he’s still able to apologize to Kitty for just
trying to ignore her Mutant status. Jean uses her powers to free Mr. Pryde.
Jean tells Kitty that if she goes with Lance then her power really will be a
curse. She phases out of Lance’s grasp. He freaks out and causes a massive
quake, leveling the building. Jean is able to protect the Prydes with her
telekinesis, but Kitty is buried in rubble. Xavier rolls up and does his best
to coach Jean from a distance. Kitty is able to phase through the rubble, grabs
her parents and Jean and phases them all out. Kitty and her parents reconcile
and agree to talk to Xavier about the Institute. Meanwhile, while emergency
services clean up the rubble, Mystique approaches Lance. She tells him that
she’s made a space for him at Bayville High, and that she’s got a lot to teach
her “Young Avalanche.”
Hm… again, this is a good but not
great episode. While it touches on one of the core concepts of the X-Men
franchise, powers being as much a burden as a blessing, the general confusion
and anger that can pop up while a young person process the changes, and seeing
how a toxic relationship might have formed if someone with ill intent
wormed his way into a troubled student’s good graces, it was just a little too
light of a touch to be good, ya know? I feel like ten to fifteen minutes of
this episode was cut for some reason. Like there should have been another scene
or two of Mr. Pryde’s denial of what’s happening to his daughter, or maybe of
him freaking out if the M word was uttered in his presence. And I think those
hypothetical cut minutes included more of Xavier’s research into Lance Alvers.
We could have used a scene of him getting info from the Foster Care people,
learning about Lance’s past and or how he’s using his powers in ill deeds.
Something to make his comments about keeping him and Kitty from connecting seem
less like a rash snap judgement and more of a well-informed analysis of a
predatory personality. I enjoyed Kitty in this episode, though. Fun fact, this
was her first animated appearance in about 11 years. She was supposed to be a
central character in the original X-Men cartoon, dubbed Pryde of the X-Men, but
the pilot wasn’t picked up and was later reworked into X-Men: TAS. In which she
never appeared. Weird. I liked how they characterized her as being more scared
than thrilled at getting her Mutant powers. It was a simple, but incredibly
accurate line when she points out that it’s hard enough being normal. And I
liked how they portrayed her relationship with Lance. She’s scared, vulnerable,
and ends up going along with someone that promises to make it all better. I
mean, I think anyone with an ounce of sense could tell he was manipulating her,
at least from the outside looking in, but I could see why the person getting
targeted might fall for his lies. As to Lance, I hate him, but in the sense that
he’s characterized really well as a scummy dude. Power to generate earthquakes
aside, he just oozes this vibe that were I a parent of a young girl, I’d be using
Lance as an example to Liliana of the type boy to avoid. What? Yes, I
have names picked out for non-existent kids. I’m a writer, I think about names
a lot, leave me alone. Oh, and Scott and Kurt’s side-story were short but
interesting. It helped establish their relationship, that they are fast friends
and the general dynamic of Scott getting Kurt out of trouble and Kurt getting
Scott into it. We’ll see that Kurt bonds with most of his team fairly quickly
but he and Scott always have a fairly strong brotherly bond. And the
introduction to Sabertooth and Logan’s feud was cool, even if I was questioning
how quickly Scott and Kurt got into their X-Men uniforms. Just saying. Anyway,
this was another good not great episode, but thankfully we’ll have a great
episode coming up next with the introduction of Evolutions version of Rogue.
They took a few more liberties with her, but it makes for an interesting
version of everyone’s favorite southern belle.
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