Last time on X-Men: Evolution, Mystique
decided to orchestrate a reunion between brothers. Unfortunately, this involved
breaking Cain Marko aka the Juggernaut, out of prison. She wanted to use Cain
to get access to Cerebro and offered to let him do as he pleases with his half-brother
as payment. Meanwhile, the X-Men and Brotherhood spent some time on a
wilderness survival retreat. Things got heated during a team race up a mountain,
but Jean kept Scott from going too far in his desire to beat the Brotherhood.
The two groups were brought together to save Mystique and Xavier after Cain
decided to ax them both. Cain was recaptured, much to Charles’ distress. Enough
recap, let’s get to it, shall we?
This episode opens with Rogue and
Kitty as the girls hit the hay. Fun fact, Kitty sleeps with a stuffed dragon
toy, a reference to Kitty’s actual pet dragon Lockheed. Yes, she has an actual
tiny dragon, and I couldn’t be more jealous. A few hours pass, and Rogue starts
having a bizarre nightmare. She sees a castle and hears a woman screaming “Monster,
what have you done to him!” The cloaked woman runs out of the castle, clutching
a baby to her chest, as she’s being chased by Magneto who shouts at her to “Come
back at once!” The woman runs through the forest, trying to escape Magneto and
a pack of wolves. Side note, no, I don’t know how Magneto is controlling these wolves,
but he clearly is. Magneto chases her to a rope bridge. She tries to cross, but
is attacked by the wolves and her baby is thrown from the bridge. Rogue wakes
up screaming.
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| A mother's anguish in one frame of animation. Saddening. |
The rest of the team come in to
check on her, as Rogue’s screams could be heard all through the mansion. Rogue says
that she’s been having these dreams off and on since she moved into the
institute. While Rogue is still disorientated from her dream, but somehow knows
that the baby in it was Kurt. Jean suggest that they speak with the professor
in the morning, but Xavier is already up. He calls Jean, Kurt and Rogue to his
office via Telepathy. Once there, Kurt explained that he obviously knew he was
adopted, but his parents neglected to mention that they pulled him from the
river. Since the dream was Rogue’s, Xavier starts by examining her.
Xavier goes through the dream with
Rogue via telepathy. We see the highlights of the dream again, Magneto with his
wolf posse, dropping the baby, with the first bit of new information being the
cloaked woman is revealed to be Mystique. 100% certainty, I’ve never seen
another blue woman in this series. She breaks down and sobs at the lose of her son
and demands to know why. Magneto just floats up and back to the castle. The
dream continues for a few more minutes, showing that Mystique confirmed someone
fished her son out of the river. Xavier and Rogue end the trance. I assume that
Rogue didn’t see things as clearly, as she doesn’t seem to freak out upon learning
that her teammate shares 50% of his DNA with Mystique. Xavier clearly knows and
is doing his best to obfuscate what he’d learned from the dream. Kurt wants to
know more, but Xavier claims he’s tired and that they’ll continue after classes
the next day.
The next morning, Xavier has a
meeting with Ms. Darkholme. He asks about what happened with Kurt and why she
stayed with Magneto even after, but she plays dumb. Xavier, in perhaps his
cruelest move to date, continues to push Mystique’s buttons until she has a
flashback and demands that he get out. As Xavier rolls out, he looks back at
her and tells her that “in case you’re curious, he turned out to be a very fine
lad.” Salt in the wound, Charles, salt in the wound. Outside, Xavier calls
Logan. Apparently, while I like to think he was sincere with his offers of
help, Xavier made the meeting in part to get the location of the Castle from
Mystique’s mind. He pulled the coordinates of it from her mind during her flash
back and sends the information to Logan. Logan jets off in the Blackbird.
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| How could anyone raise their torches and pitchforks at this face? |
Meanwhile, Kurt leaves class with a
spring in his step. He meets up with Rogue, to whom he admits he’s excited to
know more about his past. Rogue isn’t as enthused. She also doesn’t know
anything about her bio-parents, but isn’t as interested in who here parents
were. Interesting… Kurt get’s frustrated that she’s not as stoked as him, turns
off his inducer and bamfs away. Jean and Scott meet up with Rogue and they head
for the mansion. One of the background students walk off, and shapeshifts back
into Darkholme, who is clearly distraught. A short time later, Mystique calls
up Pietro. She gives her minion an envelope with instructions to give it to
Kurt.
Logan reaches the castle and let’s Xavier
know he’s going to touch down and starts examining the castle.
At the mansion, Xavier senses
Pietro’s approach, but there’s little one could do to stop Mr. Maximoff when he’s
running. Kurt is in his room looking at a photo of him and his parents. He
hears a knock at his door and bamf’s out to investigate. Obviously, his few
seconds of hesitation meant that Pietro was miles away by that point. He finds
the envelope. It has a note that tells him that if he wants answers, he needs to
go to a construction site at sundown along. Kurt hides the note in a drawer
before doing just that. Scott enters a moment later and notes his friend’s
disappearance.
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| Think this is the 5th or 6th castle explosion that Logan has had to dodge? After 200 years, it can't be the first. |
Meanwhile, Pietro calls up his dad
to report. Wow, the thought of Magneto having a cell phone feels way more insane
than anything else in this episode. Also, again, I don’t count saying Magneto
is Pietro’s father is a spoiler. It was a well-established fact for decades
before that recent retcon. He lets the big man know what the note said, and
that the Blackbird and Wolverine were missing from the mansion. Magneto is
annoyed by this turn of events and tells Pietro to gather the Brotherhood and
intercept Kurt. Kurt can’t know the truth about what happened to him. Magneto,
meanwhile, is going to take care of a visitor.
Logan lands the Blackbird and
starts climbing up and into the castle. He makes it a few yards into the castle
before the ancient castle is revealed to have laser cannons, electric fencing,
and other X-Mansion level defenses. He fights through it to the lab. The lab
had recently been trashed, but Logan is able to tell it’s some sort of genetic
research lab. I’d question how Wolverine knows that, but if anyone knows what
Mutant experimentation looks like, it’s James “Logan” Howlett. It’s a shame
that he didn’t get there before Magneto trashed the place, but fortunately
Wolverine is able to spot the bomb Magneto planted to torch the place. He leaps
out a window just before it goes up in smoke and fire.
Back in Bayville, Jean and Scott
look for Kurt. They find the note hidden in his drawer and they rush to gather
the others.
Kurt arrives at the construction
site. He meets the cloaked woman who reveals herself to be Mystique. He pulls a
Skywalker ‘It’s not true, that’s impossible!” but, come on Kurt. You’re really shocked
one of your parents is the only other blue person you’ve ever met? Seriously?
Before they can get too into exchanging info, the Brotherhood boys arrive. Mystique
tries to call her minions off, but they’ve got “higher orders” as Pietro puts
it. The Brotherhood knock Kurt around for a few moments before the X-Men
arrive. The two teams start brawling, and all I can say is that they better be
glad cell phone cameras weren’t a thing yet. Shadowcat tricks Blob into getting
stuck in a cement mixer. Spyke beats up Toad. Jean and Scott take out Quicksilver.
And Rogue grabs Avalanche and steals his powers. Mystique tries to run, but
Rogue goes after her. She demands answers for Kurt, but Mystique claims it’s
too late for that. Rogue tries to stop Mystique by causing a quake, but
Mystique shapeshifts into a raven and flies away. Damn.
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| I'm starting to see a resemblance beyond the blue skin. |
Logan, Xavier, Scott and Jean
discuss what happened. Lab was trashed, obviously, but Logan is confident it
was a genetic testing facility. Xavier is surprised that Magneto would be
willing to go so far in his Mutant research, but honestly, it falls in line
with Magneto’s agenda for me. Xavier wonders about how much to tell Kurt, but
Logan advises keeping things back. Some of what they know could mess him up.
Meanwhile, Rogue and Kurt are talking. Again, Kurt is shocked that he was
birthed by the only Blue woman he’s ever seen, which is just odd. Kurt’s also
fairly certain that the Professor is holding things back. Rogue advises that he’s
probably got a good reason for it. She encourages Kurt to keep learning about
his past and that she’ll support him. A good pseudo-sibling moment. We fade
over to Mystique. She’s in her office and looking heartbroken at the parent-child
interactions she can view from her window.
I’m going to break it to you now, no,
we’re never told exactly what happened to Kurt or what Magneto was trying to do
with his experiments in universe. But, head writer and producer Greg Johnson
(no relation) has explained in interviews that the idea they went with going forward
was that Magneto had been experimenting on Kurt to try to force the activation of
an X-Gene, and he succeeded. So, this is probably how it went down. Magneto’s
#2 gets pregnant and has a baby. Magneto, having an infant that he knows either
has an X-Gene that will one day manifest or at minimum he’s a recessive carrier
decides to see if Mutations can be artificially induced. He puts the baby, who looked
like a normal human up to that point, through some sort of chemical or
radiation treatment that forcibly activates his X-Gene. A side effect of
process being that he grew blue fur and his hands and feet into their three
fingered variation and grew a tail. Pretty twisted, not going to lie. Part of
me wonders why she stuck with Magneto after that.
Overall, this was a solid episode.
I liked the reveals about Kurt’s heritage and the circumstances of how he ended
up being separated from Mystique. From the flashbacks, it seems like Mystique did
love him dearly, as she was clearly distraught at losing him both times. The
idea that his more devilish appearance might be the result of Magneto’s inhuman
experiments is an interesting twist on why Kurt looks the way he does. In the comics,
his appearance is due to the fact his biological father Azazal was a demonic
looking Mutant and he passed those traits onto all of his children. The episode
also characterized Kurt very well. He knows he was abandoned as an infant,
learns that it was under much more intense circumstances than he’d assumed, but
still is excited about the prospect of finding out about his past. Kurt’s an
optimist, through and through, and it’s good that they show showed that off. I
will say that I wished they’d foreshadowed this a bit better. Not anything too
crazy, maybe just like have Mystique be noticeably disturbed when she saw Kurt’s
true-blue form for the first time, or something. Just a little bit to hint that
there’s more than meets the eye here, or something. But that’s my only real complaint.
Next time, Wolverine is haunted by memories of the man that made him a beast.
Sounds like fun!
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