Last time on X-Men: Evolution, Evan’s
extracurricular homework assignment got a bit complicated. He inadvertently leaked
Logan’s location to his archnemesis Sabertooth. The burly biker attacked the mansion,
but was driven off by the X-Men and mansion security. Wanting to make up for
it, Evan got Kitty and Rogue to help him set Sabertooth up. With a little help
from Logan, they were able to beat the beast back and drop him somewhere up
north to cool off. And no, we never find out what grade Evan got on that assignment.
Shucks. Ah well, that’s enough recap, let’s get to it, shall we?
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| Raven, I think you really need to reconsider your plan to unleash the UNSTOPPABLE JUGGERNAUT if you don't actually have a method of stopping him. Just sayin'. |
We open on Stokes County Maximum
Security Prison. It’s a heavily fortified facility with safeguards on top of
safeguards. We’re shown as a guard goes through several barred doors, one heavy
vault door, a laser array, and several other defenses before getting to a
control panel. He hits a few buttons and causes a tank of green liquid to rise
up from the ground. In it, there’s a man chained to the ground and floating in
the goo. The guard decants the man, shapeshifting back into Mystique. She tells
the prisoner to “Wake up Cain. It’s time you had a long overdue family reunion
with your brother, Charles Xavier.” Oh no… she’s waking up Juggernaut.
We then cut over to the X-Men. They
along with the Brotherhood and several normie students from Bayville High are
on a wilderness retreat at Ironback Survival Camp under the tutelage of Sgt.
Hawk. Apparently, the X-Men were given a choice, a wilderness retreat with an
intense former Sgt, or a retreat with Logan. Yeah, I’d have gone with the army
man too. Scott’s put in charge of the group as a team leader, much to the Brotherhood’s
annoyance. Toad and Fred are up for killing them, but Lance wants to beat them
on the court and in public.
Mystique fully releases Cain,
taking the time to stoke Cain’s anger at his brother for locking him up in what
amounts to suspended animation. She offers him a deal along with his helmet,
break her into the X-Mansion and give her access to Cerebro, and she’ll let him
do as he wishes with Charles. Mystique must not know that Cerebro requires a
telepath to use it effectively. Whoops. Cain takes his helmet and starts
busting through walls. He doesn’t want to take the stealth approach, or follow
orders. He’s going home.
Back at Camp, the kids are doing a
short obstacle course. It’s almost immediately broken by Fred. Who in their
right minds asks the kid that clearly weighs a metric ton to try to climb a
rope? Scott and Lance pull out ahead and make it to a pair of rafts. Lance
knocks Scott into the river with a seismic blast and pulls out ahead. Evan sees
and is all for popping Lance’s boat with some spikes, but Jean stops him, pointing
out they agreed to trying to not use their powers for this thing. She says that
Scott will handle this like a leader. He immediately proves that prediction
wrong by optic blasting Lance into the water and paddling to victory. The Brotherhood
boys and X-Men start arguing about who cheated the most, but Hawk shuts that right
down with pushups. After the students exercised a bit, he offers them an alternative
solution to fighting. He tells the students that they’ll be split into their
two teams and race to the top of Mt. Humiliation. He put a flag up there, and
the winner is the group that gets up there first and snaps a picture of the
entire group with the flag. So, no Kurt or Pietro just zooming to the end. To make it more interesting, Lance and Scott
both agree their groups won’t use powers on the race up.
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| Really glad this was a freight train, and not a passenger car. Little victories. |
Back at the Mansion, Logan finds
Charles using Cerebro. He asks if the prof is detecting new mutants, but Charles
explains he’s just keeping a telepathic eye on the students. Logan is clearly a
little miffed that his students are getting survival training from someone
other than him. Before they can get to much into that discussion, though, Cerebro
starts alerting Charles to a new Mutant. He’s excited at first, until Cerebro
reveals it’s an Enhanced Mutant signature that had been detected before. Cain
is on his way home. Charles explains that Cain Marko is his half-brother, they share
a father, and that his brother had been born with an X gene, but his was
dormant for most of his life. He used “mysticism” to unlock his power, turning
him into an unstoppable Juggernaut. We’re shown an example of this as on the road,
Cain easily tosses aside a pair of cop cars that try to stop him.
The X-Men, meanwhile, are jogging
toward the mountain summit. They’re doing fairly well, but the “city kid” Evan
is lagging a bit behind. The Brotherhood seems to have gotten ahead, as Toad
leads the way up the mountain, while Fred climbs up behind, pulling Pietro and
Lance up behind him. Pietro’s a bit nervous about Blob slipping and turning the
two of them into paste, but Lance wants to win too badly to avoid the risk.
Meanwhile, Storm takes the Blackbird
out. She flies around the area of Bayville, summoning intense fog. The hope is
that if Cain is too hard to find, no normies will get killed trying to stop the
Juggernaut. Wolverine moves Xavier into the Danger Room, as that is the most
heavily guarded part of their facility. Wolverine asks if Charles has any ace
in the hole that he can use against Cain, to which Charles says he does. He can
basically mentally blast his brother into unconsciousness, provided he’s not
wearing his helmet which shields him from Charles’ attacks. We’re then shown
Cain walking through a train as it thunders by, causing a massive pileup.
Back at Mt. Humiliation, the Brotherhood
boys have reached a plateau. Toad and Fred had spotted an abandoned mineshaft, Toad
had gone ahead to scout as Fred pulled Pietro and Lance the rest of the way up.
Toad rejoins them and tells them that there’s a shaft that leads almost all the
way to the top. The boys go in, assuming they’d just assured victory, and
totally ignoring the DANGER signs they rip down to get through. The X-Men are
slightly farther back. Scott, who clearly wants to win bad, has Kurt bamf up to
check on the flag despite the earlier promise of no powers. After confirming
the flag is still there, he has Evan spike launch a line up the mountain and
starts climbing the rope. He stops and offers it to a clearly angry Jean, who
brushes past and starts free climbing up.
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| Do you think the metal bones help with pain management at all, or do they just make impacts much, much worse for his organs? |
The Brotherhood reach Toad’s shaft,
but find that It’s mostly blocked by rubble. Lance throws Toad up against a
pillar and starts yelling at him for costing them the win, but Toad and Pietro
encourage Lance to shake things up a bit with his powers. Unfortunately, he shakes
it a bit too well and causes a cave in. The quake causes the whole mountain to
shake and Evan almost falls to his death. Jean grabs him with Telekinesis and
pulls him back up. Scott wants Jean to levitate them all to the top, but she
calls him out for wanting to cheat and not getting there’s a difference between
saving a life in an extreme situation and winning a stupid contest. This seems
to shake something loose in Scott. They find the shaft and hear Toad calling
for help. Scott assures the slimeball that they won’t leave the Brotherhood to
die.
Back at the mansion, Xavier
explains a bit more about his brother to Wolverine. Apparently, Cain had a very
bad relationship with his and Charles’ father, which left him incredibly angry.
It’s not said outright, but if we assume Xavier is their father’s surname, which
seems likely, then some of that resentment might stem from being an illegitimate
son. Just saying. His anger turned all the more violent when he awakened his
power and became nigh invulnerable. Charles eventually elected to stop his brother
and lock him up to protect everyone else. He had no choice, or so he claimed. They’re
interrupted by Cain’s arrival.
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| Yeah, your mentors are about to be murdered, but we can take a few minutes for a group shot. No Rush. |
Wolverine rushes Juggernaut, but has
little success cutting through his armor or skin. Juggernaut throws him through
several object and finally down into the subbasement. Mystique, following behind,
is irate at discovering that Cerebro had been smashed as a Wolverine shaped
object was thrown through it. Juggernaut slams Logan into the Danger Room,
leaving the little Canadian dazed. Mystique rushes in behind and starts
screaming at Cain for going back on their deal. He instead backhands her, says
that he doesn’t make deals and he’s going to end both Xavier and Mystique. Well,
this plan royally backfired.
Back at the Mountain, the X-Men help
the Brotherhood out of the hole. Once out, Pietro and Kurt race to the top, both
getting there are about the same time and start struggling over the flag. They’re
interrupted by the Blackbird pulls up. Storm tells the students that both Mystique
and Xavier are in danger and that they need to come with her to save them. Both
teams agree, but they take a moment to retrieve the flag and return it to Hawk
along with a group photo of everyone with the flag. Woo, little victories.
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| Okay, not going to lie, this is a pretty cool group shot. |
Charles tries to talk his brother
down, convince him that the institute is about new beginnings and starting
over, but Cain’s not interest in talking. Charles activates the Logan’s Run
X-13 training sim to slow his brother down. It works, slowing Cain just long enough
for the X-Men and Brotherhood to arrive. A still recovering Logan tells them to
get the helmet off Cain.
Jean keeps Cain from reaching his brother,
lifting him up but clearly draining most of her strength doing it. Blob hip
checks Juggernaut to the side, allowing Kurt to Bamf onto Juggernaut’s back and
undo a latch on the helmet. Juggernaut grabs him and tosses the elf aside.
Cyclops and Avalanche disorientate Juggernaut with their powers, which lets Pietro
run up and undo another latch. He stumbles near a wall, allowing Shadowcat and
a copying Rogue to phase through it and get the last two latches. Toad leaps
above him and rips the helmet off with his tongue. Juggernaut tries to rush
Charles again, but Xavier with a sad look on his face is able to mentally blast
his brother into submission. Mystique and her Brotherhood leave, promising that
they won’t see this sort of team up again any time soon. But Scott and Lance
have a friendly bit of banter before they depart.
Charles, Logan, Scott and Jean ship
Cain back into lock up. Charles seems to be deeply saddened to see his brother
reincarcerated, but he accepted a long time ago that he couldn’t change Cain.
As they leave, Scott muses what it’d be like to work with the Brotherhood more
often, if the boys could get out of their own way and join them. He suggests
Jean could nudge them along in that regard, and gives her permission to keep nudging
him if he ever acts like he did on the mountain again. A solid ending.
I really enjoyed this episode. They
modified the backstory about Cain Marko quite a bit, but the end result was the
same. I liked that they kept the point that Cain’s powers are relatively new. In
the comics, he’s Charles’ 100% human step-brother who discovered a magic ruby
that turned him into the avatar of a dark god called Cyttorak. So, while they
made him a Mutant like in X-Men 3, he’s still truer to his origins here as his
power had to be artificially activated. And I liked that, while we didn’t dive
too deeply into it, it seems clear that Charles is deeply saddened by Cain’s
unwillingness to change. Again, this is probably speculation on my part, but I
can’t help but feel that a backstory episode would have revealed that there was
a time when they got along fairly well, before Cain’s anger and power consumed
him. Fun fact, both men are played by David Kaye. He was able to changed his
voice and cadence just enough that it really sells the idea that these are two
brothers instead of one man doing two voices. The X-Men and Brotherhoods
wilderness survival arc felt a bit rushed in comparison. I don’t know, maybe this
episode would have worked better as a two parter. They could have stretch out
the race a bit, include a few more instances of both sides almost using their
powers but electing not to, with Scott and Lance getting more and more
desperate to win the race. End with the kids making it to the mountain and Charles
becoming aware of Cain, then part two could have been the actual climb and a
slightly deeper dive into Charles and Cain’s relationship. Would that have made
for a rather dull part 1? Yes, but I think if they got the pacing right, they
could have kept people interested and on the hook for part 2. Oh, and the fight
with Juggernaut could have been longer that way. What could have been. That all
said, I did like the team fight against Juggernaut even if it felt a bit
rushed. Juggernaut is probably the most powerful character that has been in
combat thus far, and it really would take a group effort on this scale to
subdue him. So yeah, this was a good one. Next time, we’ll delve a bit deeper
into the past of our favorite blue German Elf, and what might have caused him
to… look like he does.
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