Last time on X-Men: Evolution, Fred
“the Blob” Dukes was introduced and almost immediately formed an unhealthy
attachment to one Jean Grey. Her attempts at being nice to help him adjust to
his new environment and potentially get another Mutant to the Institute were misinterpreted
as romantic interest. When she attempted to spurn his advances, he ends up
kidnapping her and tried to force her to date him. The massive Mutant ended up
beating Wolverine and Cyclops when they arrived to try to help, but was ultimately
defeated by Rogue. While technically on the same team, Rogue doesn’t condone
kidnapping a date. She used a combination of Scott’s optic blast and Blob’s own
strength to send the tub of lard flying. She still doesn’t feel comfortable
with swapping teams, but the X-Men agree they owe at least one member of the Brotherhood
a favor. Next, we’ll see what happens when
a speedster crosses paths with a living spike strip. Let’s get to it, shall we?
We open, much like the first episode,
with a sporting event. Though this time it’s basketball. We’re shown our two
new characters, Evan Daniels and Pietro Maximoff playing a very close game of
basketball. Evan’s aunt, Ororo Monroe, is watching with her sister and brother-in-law.
The game ends with Pietro making a pass to Evan who makes the winning basket.
He’s shoved while making the shot and as he tumbles spikes sprout from his
forearms. He covers the spikes up, with only his aunt noticing. Evan is taken
off by the team with cheers, with Pietro looking on angrily.
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| Imagine walking in on this scene! |
After the game, Pietro confronts
his friend about hogging the glory and says he should have taken the shot himself.
Evan shakes his head at his friend and points out that there was no way Pietro
could have made it to the other end of the court in time. Hm… He claims that he’s
not going to “hold up” guys like Evan anymore and storms off. Ororo comes in to
congratulate her nephew, drop some exposition that he and Pietro have been
competing for most of their lives, and to ask about his spikes. It’s implied
that they’ve had this conversation a few times, but Ororo must have dropped the
subject to respect her nephew’s privacy. Evan tries to convince her the reactionary
spikes was a one off, but then he sneezes and covers the locker room in spikes.
He asks if he’s busted, to which Ororo simply says “Big time.”
At the Daniel’s house, Ororo and Evan
discuss transferring him to the Xavier Institute. Evan isn’t completely on
board with the idea, doing his best to derail the idea before it can begin. He
convinces Ororo to let it go until the next day, so his parents can enjoy the night
after his big win. Ororo contacts Xavier telepathically, tells him what happened
and they prep Plan B, sending Scott and Jean to help Ororo sell the school to
her sister and brother-in-law. Not sure why Ororo would need help convincing
her own sister, but there you go. Xavier also tells Ororo about another Mutant Cerebro
detected but couldn’t get a lock on. She clearly believes it to be Pietro, but
is vague about it.
The next day, Evan goes to his
locker to find that his cash had been stolen from his wallet. Pietro zooms over
and informs us that this is the second time in a month that it’s happened to
Evan. He wants to catch the thief, and Pietro loans him some money to use as “bait.”
Evan tells Pietro he’ll catch him later, to which Pietro claims he won’t ever
do, not even on his best day. Sinister.
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| This is where the story falls apart for me. Teenagers get superpowers, you know what's the first thing they'd do? Tell their Frenemies! No way this is how they'd found out. |
In the evening, Scott and Jean
arrive and they discuss the institute with the Daniels. Both of Evan’s parents
are on board with the idea, but he’s still firmly against it. He goes to his
room while the others discuss. That is until Jean senses his thoughts and they
find out he’s making a break for it. Evan hops out of a window on his
skateboard and zooms off. He makes it to his school with the intention of
catching the locker thief and showing the thief his prickly side. The flaw in
this plan is made readily apparent when a gale force wind blows through,
causing the lockers to burst open and random objects to fly around. Evan creates
a spike barrier around himself, and the wind dies down, revealing Pietro. He
shows off Evan his new threads and claims that he’s Quicksilver now. Evan asks why
he’d trashed the lockers, to which Pietro basically says, “Was bored, seemed
like it’d be fun for a bit.” Evan is furious at Pietro, but not as much as when
the speedster zooms off and leaves Evan to be caught in his place. He’s put in
lock up, where his family and Scott and Jean arrives. Scott proposes he join
the Institute and that then Xavier would handle bail and such, to which Evan
reluctantly agrees.
The next day at the Institute, the
majority of the students have breakfast and discuss Evan’s situation. Scott and
Xavier suspect he knows more about the locker incident than he’s letting on,
but Xavier isn’t going to “pry” on the subject. Logan suspects the kid is going
to look to get personal payback. Xavier agrees and decides that they’ll try to give
Evan other means of getting his anger off, such as getting him on Bayville High’s
basketball team and training in the danger room. Evan hears all of this and
seems miffed. And by miffed, I mean his spikes start extending.
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| They're like the Breakfast Club, but with a Toad. |
Meanwhile, the Brotherhood kids, in
their first group shot, are shown waiting outside Darkholme’s office for a team
meeting. Inside, Mystique is getting the lowdown on a new recruit that Magneto
is very interested in acquiring, his son Pietro. Okay, he doesn’t flat out say
that but 1. Mentions his special interest in getting Pietro, 2. He knows an
awful lot about Pietro’s thought process, motivations, and desire to run solo, and
3. Anyone who knows the comics knows the family connection. It was retconned out
of existence a few years ago but for the vast majority of Pietro’s existence it’s
been known that he’s the son of Magneto. Magneto suggests that they use Evan as
bait to lure Pietro into a situation where he’ll need help to succeed, in order
to get him on board with the team, and Mystique already has an idea on how to
do it.
Evan meanwhile is doing training
sessions in the Danger Room. He’s basically racing around a crazy skateboard obstacle
course, trying to move and throw his spikes as quickly as possible. He wipes
out on the last run, but Logan compliments him on his already marked
improvement. Kitty comes on the intercom and tells him that he’s got a last-minute
basketball game that Principle Darkholme through together. The fact it’s
against his former school feels like it should be a massive clue to these kids that
Darkholme might not be on the up-and-up but no one seems to question it.
The away team’s bus pulls up and
Pietro steps out. Evan runs up and starts threatening his frenemy, but Pietro
doesn’t seem worried in the slightest. Jean and Scott join Evan and pretty
quickly key into the fact that Pietro is the one that trashed the lockers. Pietro
freely admits it, as he feels like there’s nothing that they can do about it.
He runs off at high speed, with Evan following on his skateboard and Jean and
Scott following after a moment later. I guess we’re not going to the basketball
game. Shucks.
Everyone switches to their uniforms,
so we’re switching to combat codenames. Evan is Spyke, Pietro is Quicksilver, Scott
is Cyclops, and Jean is… Jean. Yes, they still haven’t given her a new codename
since she dropped Marvel Girl back in the day.
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| Call me crazy, but I don't think those spikes are actually restraining him. Like at all. Just sayin'. |
Quicksilver runs through downtown,
with Spyke more or less on his trail. To show off, Quicksilver runs even
faster, causing a sonic boom that wrecks a bunch of cars and store fronts. Jean
and Cyclops join them, and the more experienced X-Men come up with a simple
plan. Basically, Jean lifts Quicksilver into the air telepathically. It works,
for a few seconds, but Pietro is free enough to spin himself around, causing a
massive twister. The X-Men are blown around a bit, but Cyclops is able to hit
Quicksilver with an optic blast and Spyke pins him to the side of the building with
some spikes. Quicksilver is still rather smug, though, as while he was caught
they still can’t prove he was the one that trashed the lockers. You know, like
they don’t have him trapped at the scene of a much bigger case of property
damage. But, he’s actually wrong about that, as Spyke reveals he recorded
Quicksilver’s confession before the chase began. The X-Men scamper as they hear
sirens approach.
In lockup, Pietro is already going
stir crazy and demanding to be free. Lucky for him, Daddy arrives to bail him out.
Again, not revealed but it’s heavily implied with how much extra effort Magneto
is going through to get Pietro. The speedster agrees to join his team if he’ll
let him out, which the master of magnetism does.
The episode closes on the young X-Men
enjoying an afternoon in their pool, celebrating Evan getting the charges
against him in the school vandalism case dropped. Xavier tells Ororo that her
nephew should fit in well here, with Ororo jokingly musing if that’s a good thing
or not. All’s well that ends well.
Again, this is a fine episode but I
think it’s a bit weaker than the last two. That’s probably because it’s pulling
double duty trying to showcase enough of Quicksilver and Spyke in a very short
runtime. It feels like we’re running at breakneck speed from plot point to plot
point from the moment Pietro and Evan talk at his locker onward. That being
said, I do like what we saw of both Evan and Pietro. Fun fact, Evan is an original
character created for the show to add a bit more diversity to the cast. He replaced
original X-Man Iceman as the eighth member of the team (once Rogue switches
sides). His spikes are a fairly useful and versatile, giving him both ranged
and melee options. I liked his characterization as a stubborn, headstrong kid
that needs to learn the value of teamwork and all that jazz. Makes him a nice foil
to Pietro. Interestingly, while Pietro has appeared in a few X-Men shows, this
is the only one to my knowledge that brought up one of the key aspects of his
personality, namely that he’s too fast for the world. While he can force his
body to move at normal speeds, his brain operates on a much faster level than most
peoples. This is how the comics and X-Men: Evolution explain his habit of cutting
people off verbally, why he’s always impatient and causing mischief. From his
perspective, he’s being very patient waiting for everyone else to catch up to
where he’s at. The other shows where he’s appeared, X-Men: TAS and Wolverine and
the X-Men never seem to mention this problem of his. How odd. I also really
liked how they stopped Pietro in the last encounter, combining skills to
overwhelm someone that was proving too difficult for even the team’s heaviest
hitter to disable on her own. It makes for neat visuals. With the introductions
of Evan and Pietro, I believe that’s all the totally new characters that will
be added to the roster this season. Well… there’s one more, but he’s a guest
character at best. But we’ll talk about Forge next time. Have a good night
everyone.
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