Last time on X-Men: Evolution, the
team recruited Storm’s nephew Evan Daniels into their team. Yes, in this universe Storm has a sister and
nephew, I guess her parents either weren’t killed in a horrible accident or were
but had time to have one more daughter before it. Evan, codenamed Spyke, has a
beef with his former childhood best friend and current nemesis (for the season)
Pietro Maximoff. Pietro framed Evan for trashing lockers at their school. After
some training, Spyke and Quicksilver, as Pietro dubbed himself, face off. Jean and
Cyclops are able to help, capturing Quicksilver and clearing Evan’s name.
Unfortunately, Pietro is almost immediately freed by Magneto, his father (no I
don’t consider that a spoiler) who recruits him for the Brotherhood of Mutants.
So, it’s a bit of a wash episode wise. Enough rehashing. Let’s get to it, shall
we?
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| Stick-in-the-mud and party animal. Sounds like a bad sitcom premise. |
We open on a pretty average
lunchbreak at Bayville High. The X-Men are dealing with a fairly mundane problem,
should they go to a party or not? Well, technically just about everyone is pro-party
except for Scott. He’s got some legit reasons not to, what if someone touches a
non-covered part of Kurt and feels his fur, what if the Brotherhood boys show
up and cause trouble, that sort of thing. While it’s not stated, there’s also
the not so legit reason that it’s being thrown by Duncan Matthews. Well, the
fact he’s an asshole is legit, but the reason Scott wouldn’t be interested in
going is due to the Duncan-Jean situation. Oy, teenagers. Kurt tries to get
Scott to lighten up a little by acting like a clown and dancing on the table.
This plan royally fails when his movements cause his tail to pop out, which
Scott yanks on to get him to sit down and shut up. Kurt is offended by Scott’s
stick in the mud attitude and tail grabbing, and he Bamf’s away in a huff.
Scott asks if he blew it, to which the other X-Men agree.
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| Does that watch even tell time? |
A few yards away, Rogue is by
herself reading Dracula and hears a loud thud and smells the brimstone smell
that happens when Kurt Bamf’s in or out. Kurt had Bamfed into some sort of
storeroom in the basement of the school. He’d hit the ground hard, breaking his
image inducer, revealing his natural blue form. He hears someone coming down to
investigate, panics (for some reason, how many southern girls go to this school?)
and Bamf’s into a room marked Restricted. Inside the room, there are some 70s era
computers and a lot of dust. Kurt walks through an obvious laser trip wire,
triggering a self-destruct protocol. A Native American man appears on a
computer screen, mentions that he’d recorded this in 1978, and warns Kurt he’s
got 10 seconds to get out of there. Kurt tries to turn off the self-destruct by
pressing random buttons. It obviously doesn’t work, and he’s launched out of
the room in the blast. He’s fine, though, and just barely misses Rogue as he
was thrown from the room. After checking that he’s alive, she goes to
investigate the room. The tech is all trashed, except one laser cannon looking
thing. She grabs the device and looks it over. Kurt walks in and sees her,
tries to take it from her. This may come as a shock, but the goth girl on the
evil Mutant team doesn’t like being told what to do and won’t let go. In the
struggle, Rogue sets off the device and blast’s Kurt. He vanishes into a weird
bubble. He reappears in the main school building, but the area is kind of
weirdly smokey and the people walking through are ghostly and insubstantial.
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| Kurt, that thing clearly has a barrel. WHY WOULD YOU PUT YOURSELF IN FRONT OF IT! |
Back in the real world, Toad is
doing Toad stuff and is yelled at by Mystique in her Darkholme disguise. She’s
somewhat adamant that he not mess-up her car with his slime. I wonder if this
will come back around? Toad is clearly annoyed, but is distracted by Rogue. She’s
carrying the device out on a pole and tries to throw it into a dumpster. Toad
wants to have a look at it, but Rogue tells him it’s dangerous. She mentions possibly
killing an X-Man with it… somehow assuming that it’d scare Toad off? Toad grabs
the device and blasts the dumpster, vanishing it. Toad likey what he sees.
Back with Scott and Jean, our favorite
stick-in-the-mud is wondering if he was too in-the-mud with Kurt. Jean pretty
much gives him a “Yes, But I want you to come to the conclusion yourself,” type
answer. They’re interrupted by some student’s running out of the boy’s room, screaming
about seeing a furry blue ghost. Scott goes into the bathroom to tear his friend
a new one, no one is in the room. He asks Jean to contact him telepathically
and tell Kurt to knock it off. She tries, scanning the school and X-Mansion with
her mind but can’t find him, much to the horror of Rogue who was eavesdropping
just out of sight. Lance and Fred walk up, prompting Scott to believe that the Brotherhood
boys did something to him. He tries to fight Fred and Jean and Lance begin a
face off, but are cut off by Darkholme, who pulls the two X-Men into her office
to hear an explanation.
Meanwhile, Kurt is trying to
teleport out of this space, but can’t even get off campus. His efforts get interrupted
when he’s almost crushed by a desk falling from the ceiling. Turns out, in Toad
is in Darkholme’s office, blasting her furniture as a sort of “screw you, boss,”
moment. He scampers when Jean, Scott and Darkholme arrive, but the two X-Men
see him blast Darkholme’s car as he runs away. Oh see, it did come back around to
the car thing. Wherever Kurt is, the car drops and Kurt leaps out of the way. In
the office, Jean and Scott see a spectral image of Kurt pass through the air. They
think it might be a trick, but Jean picked up his thoughts for a second, so
they know he’s alive.
Kurt flees to the gym, where someone
tries to walk up behind him. Kurt bamf’s out of the way, but then drops down
from the ceiling to converse with the mysterious figure when he realizes it’s
just a guy. This guy is Forge, no last name, a Cheyenne Native and a fellow Mutant.
He’s also the dude from the earlier video message, so the fact he hasn’t aged
since 1978 and ISN’T Logan is a bit troubling. Forge reveals himself to be a Mutant
as well. Usually he’s just an impossibly skilled engineer, but this version is
also able to transform his arm into a robotic multitool. Neat.
In the real world, Cyclops, Jean,
Shadowcat and Spyke have suited up and are chasing after Toad. He forces the
group to keep their distance by randomly firing behind him and teleporting
objects to Forge’s “Middleverse.”
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| Not going to lie, being trapped forever with just one other person sounds more horrible to me than just being trapped alone forever. |
In the Middleverse, Forge explains the basic
premise. He was building a dimensional projector for the science fair circa
1978 (I think he may have overshot the goal a little) and got stuck in the
Middleverse after a lab accident. He doesn’t need to eat or age there, which is
a bonus, but being stuck alone for 20+ years kind sucks. I’m kind of amazed
that he didn’t go full Castaway and befriend a volleyball to keep his sanity.
The pocket dimension ends just outside the girls locker room, as Forge points
out, much to Kurt’s disappointment. Guys, we really need to end this “dudes
want to peep” thing, just sayin’. Forge is whipping up a gizmo using some of
the stuff Kurt brought with him, looks like some sort of cassette player, extra
batteries and random wires, to make a device that should allow Kurt to Bamf
back to reality for a few seconds. The plan is to tell Kurt’s team to just switch
the projector to reset and that should get them home. Wow, to think he’s been trapped
out of time for 20 years and he was just a button press to returning to the
real world. That alone would drive me nuts.
The X-Men are able to get the
device away from Toad, much to his annoyance. He tries to scamper, but Spyke
stops him. A very angry Cyclops looks like he might start using enhanced interrogation
methods to find out what happened to Kurt, but is stopped by Rogue. She admits
that she’s the one that got Kurt blasted and that she’ll only help them if they
lay off Toad. The X-Men agree. She leads them to the busted-out lab, where they
find Kurt’s broken image inducer, confirming Rogue’s story. Spyke and Shadowcat
look over the machine and are able to somehow figure out it’s putting out a
massive energy pulse that seems to just dissipate after a few seconds. This
seems to cause the massive leap in logic that the machine creates an alt
reality that has Kurt trapped (just roll with it). Cyclops makes another
massive leap in logic and assumes breaking the device will free Kurt. This
scares the piss out of Forge, who believes smashing the projector will just leave
them trapped. Crap.
Cyclops puts the projector on a table
and prepares to hit it with a full power eye beam. Shadowcat points out she
could just phase her hand through it and short it out, but Cyclops and Spyke
seem positively offended that she’d suggest such a non-explody option. Forge
quickly gets Kurt fitted with his new device, telling him he’ll have only a few
seconds to teleport in and tell them to reset, don’t destroy. Kurt Bamf’s and
gets two words out. While there’s at first a little confusion as to if he meant
“Reset, Don’t,” meaning don’t reset, or “Reset. Don’t” meaning Reset Don’t destroy,
but Cyclops has faith that Kurt would be serious in a serious situation and not
comically switch words around. Or something. I personally don’t see the comedic
value in switching words around, but I’m over the halfway point to 30, I’m
getting old. He hits the reset button, and another pinkish dimensional bubble
opens up. Kurt and Forge try to teleport through, but can’t pierce the barrier,
as the device Kurt just used is out of juice. Which is bad. But Kurt knows of
an alternate power source. Which is good.
Things get a little more
complicated for those out of the Middleverse, as the Brotherhood shows up.
Well, three of them did, Toad, Avalanche and Blob. I guess Pietro went home
early? (shrug) They were sent by Mystique to get the projector and Rogue.
Everyone’s favorite Southern Goth pretty much shrugs and leaves, basically claiming
she’s all kinds of done with this projector thing. While the teams face off
against each other, Kurt and Forge are in Darkholme’s car and have hot wired
it. They tie it into Forge’s teleportation booster and they’re able to Bamf
their way out of the Middleverse. They ALMOST run over the Brotherhood, but
Blob was out front and stops the car. Seeing the projector is trashed, the
Brotherhood boys storm off. The X-Men walk out with Forge, much to Rogue’s
relief, who’d been watching from the shadows. Guess she was more invested than she
let on. Scott offers Forge a spot on the X-Men, but Forge says he’s going to
track down his parents. Huh, who wants to tell Forge how much things change
after 20 years… Not it! They still give him a card with the X-Mansion’s contact
info. Scott and Kurt apologize to each other, and the group drive off to go to
Duncan’s party, showing that he’s going to try to be a little less of a stick
in the mud. Or something.
This episode was another n the Okay
category. On the plus side, they introduced Forge. He’s a fairly kickass Mutant,
being a competent fighter as well as the single greatest engineer on Earth. His
Mutation lets him design and build advanced technology intuitively. They added
his ability to turn his arm into a multitool to add a visual element to his
power. I also enjoyed this versions 70s-isms. But on the negative, it seems to
take forever to actually get him on screen. Like, Forge physically doesn’t show
up until about the last third of the episode. Lame! And, they were hoping to make
more diverse X-Man team, and yet you don’t make one of the two most well known
Native American (the other being James Proudstar aka Warpath) a series regular?
Come on! Now that I think about it, why haven’t they done more with Warpath? He’s
literally Captain Native America, surely there’s a ton of stuff he could do. I’m
digressing too much. I’m not even going to touch on the fact he’s voiced by Sam
Vincent, who I’m fairly certain is white. Beyond pointing it out. I mean no
offense to Sam Vincent, as he’s a fine voice actor, and I’m sure he’s a good
dude, but white guy playing a non-white guy is kind of a hot button issue. I also
wasn’t super psyched about Kurt and Scott’s “lesson” this episode. Don’t get me
wrong, I’m 100% behind character development, I just know that this is an
example of growth without growth. Scott should learn to be less of a stick-in-the-mud
and Kurt could be more serious, but I know that as soon as the next episode starts
Scott is going back to being a stick in the mud and Kurt is going to be is back
to being a jokester. If you’re going to develop your characters, commit, damn
it. And then there’s the fact that they didn’t include Pietro in the finale,
most than likely because playing keep-away with a speedster is kind off hard to
do. It’s just kind of silly. Oh, and I feel the need to point out that Blob
referred to Scott as Slim a couple times this episode, which was his nickname
when he was initially introduced. What? I like little factoids like that. So
yeah, it’s just an Okay episode. Next time Rogue’s gotta make a choice, we’ll
see if she can make the right call.
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