While Xavier is away, the kids will play.
Last time on X-Men: Evolution, Jean’s
powers started going haywire. For reasons unknown, could be stress, could be
psychic connection to an elemental avatar of destruction in the shape of an
ancient Greek monster, who can say, her powers grew out of control. This took
the form of constantly hearing people’s thoughts and throwing objects
telepathically at random. Things came to a head when she nearly destroyed the X-Mansion.
She’s stopped by Rogue taking some of the pressure off by absorbing a bit of
her power, and Scott talking her back to reality. The episode ends with Jean repeating
a line Scott said to her during her more manic episode, signaling hope for his crush
or so it seemed. Oh, and the students were introduced to Mr. Hank McCoy, a
beefy new chem/phys ed teacher at Bayville. Wonder if he’ll be important?
Whatever, let’s get to it, shall we?
We open at Stokes County Maximum
Security Prison, the abode of one Cain Marko aka Juggernaut. A prison guard
doesn’t notice until it’s almost too late that the system is warning that
Juggernaut is waking up. They’re able to keep things contained for now, but the
system needs repairs and there’s only one person who can do it, Cain’s
half-brother, Charles Xavier.
Back at the Mansion, Charles awakens
his senior class of X-Men to let them know the situation, that he got a call
from Warden Stone that the system is malfunctioning and he needs to repair it. While
Scott says he can get the team suited up in five minutes, Xavier forestalls him,
having elected to go on this mission alone. That said, he’s in a bit of a pickle
as Ororo is out of the country visiting friends in Kenya (She and her in universe
sister are Kenyan Natives), and Logan has just sort of bikered off somewhere.
With not real other option, he offers Scott and Jean the chance to co-captain
things while he’s away, which they agree to. He heads out. Scott asks if anyone
is up for an early Danger Room session, but no one is, not really even him.
They head back to bed.
Later that Day, Xavier arrives at
Stokes County, and consults the Warden on what to do. Apparently, the only way
to fix the system is to completely reboot it while Charles makes some adjustments.
There’d be twenty second delay as the system reboots, the warden is afraid Cain
could break free in that time, but Charles thinks his paralysis should hold
that long. And they really have no other option, so they prepare, putting the
prison on high alert.
The Juggernaut stirs...
At Bayville high, Jean stumbles upon
an interesting sight, her friend Taryn hitting on Scott, asking to see… his
eyes. Oh, hunny, very poor physical trait to focus on. She persists for a few
minutes, much to Jean’s clear annoyance before leaving, telling Scott she will
learn all his secrets someday. Scott walks around the bulletin board Jean was
crouched behind. She tries to play if off like she wasn’t spying… but like come
on, she totally was. And storms off when he points this out.
Kitty, meanwhile, accidentally
crashes three different computers in a programing class. Nearby, Risty is
cheering on Webber Torque a he plays through an online game instead of
programming. Webber, preferring to go by his gamertag Arcade, gets caught much
to his chagrin. After class, Risty asks Kitty if she knows about any parties
that weekend. Kitty hadn’t, but Risty puts it into her head to throw a party at
the mansion. She tells the other three younger X-Men, Evan and Kurt are down,
but Rogue points out that Scott and Jean are less than party animals. Thankfully
for their evening plans, X-Men are problem solvers.
How many guards lives flashed before their eyes
when Juggy started moving?
Back at Stokes county, Charles begins
the reboot and repair of the system holding Cain. While completely surrounded
by armed guards, aka meat-shields, I might add. As Charles works, Cain starts
waking up. The colossal brother is only able to lift his arms and break the
chains holding his arms before the system reboots and he gets put under again.
Warden Stone lets out a sigh of relief, but Charles isn’t relaxing, he believes
the system was sabotaged.
Meanwhile, Jean meets Scott at a
secluded cliffside. Scott had been told by Kitty, and Jean by Kurt, that one of
them wanted to talk the other about something. Scott, rather smugly, thinks it
has to do with Taryn flirting with him, but Jean scoffs at that. While they’re
talking, Kurt bamfs him and Kitty in. Kurt takes something from under the
dashboard and Kitty steal’s Jean’s phone. Jean assumes Scott’s car not starting
is him trying to keep her secluded for that mysterious talk, much to his
chagrin.
Back at the mansion, the party is
in full swing, with Risty arriving with Webber. Everyone seems to be having a
good time, eating, dancing, and all that jazz. Risty shows Webber around, they
find a suspiciously open elevator. Risty mentions that it probably leads to the
big computer Rogue told her about, and Webber couldn’t go down faster if
someone mentioned alcohol and scantily clad girls. They reach a biometric
scanner, but Webber is able to hack it… who brings a hacking device to a party?
Whatever, he’s able to crack the door open and the two of them walk into Cerebro.
Back at the cliff, Jean and Scott
are both miffed at each other. Scott tries to lead the way to a payphone at the
base of the cliff. Jean, not wanting to follow, pulls him all the way back to
her telekinetically and then trudges passed him.
 |
| I lived in the 2000s, and Arcade must be some kind of idiot to think any game could look as realistic as the Danger Room Footage would be. |
Arcade is able to hack Cerebro,
because electronics genius, and starts perusing programs. Thank god he doesn’t
have the telepathic powers to fully utilize Cerebro, just saying. Risty asks if
the computer has any games, and that revs Arcade up. He finds bios on the new
X-Men, but assumes they’re game characters. Risty, claiming she could use them
for her game in the programming class, asks him to make a copy of the data. He
burns her a DVD and then tells her to leave so he can concentrate. He finds the
Danger Room program and boots it up.
Jean and Scott have gotten towed
and are on their way back to the Mansion.
The X-Mansion party has hit the “people
starting to break stuff” phase, but the X-Men really can’t deal with that right
now, as Rogue got an alert that the Danger Room is active. She and the other
four suit up to check it out, finding that the door won’t open. Nightcrawler bamf’s
in to shut it down, but is almost immediately overwhelmed by weaponry, being knocked
to the ground and knocked out. Shadowcat phases in, see’s Nightcrawler and then
pulls the other two in to save them. Arcade, thinking this is a game and not
questioning why the characters look like three of his classmates and one looks
like a blue Kurt, is excited to see new players and turns up the difficulty.
He basically overwhelms them using
the Danger Room’s weapons, laser turrets, grasping claws, buzzsaws, etc. Shadowcat
gets knocked out after either misjudging how many walls of steel popped in
front of her or from overusing her power. Psyched he knocked out two of them, Arcade
lowers them all into a crevice and nearly crushes them between to giant balls,
but Nightcrawler wakes up enough to bamf them out. Arcade, annoyed at such
obvious cheating, accidentally activates “Defcon 4,” whatever that means.
Outside, Jean and Scott arrived at
the mansion to find the party still in full swing. They apologize to each other,
sort of, just as the mansion seals itself down behind heavy blast shields and
weaponry starts coming out of every object. Scott switches shades for his visor
while they try to figure out how to get into the mansion.
Inside, Risty is trying to find an
exit, when she’s blasted by one of the newly activated lasers. She hits the ground,
knocked out… and then slowly turns blue… Yep, Risty Wilde is in fact Mystique,
Now sporting a darker blue, yellow eyed look. That can’t be good.
Cyclops and Jean, (I guess they
both had costumes in his car?) dodge and blast through the yards defenses to
get to the hanger and into the mansion. They’re immediately confronted by a big
drone that tries to blast them, but they break it to pieces instead. Mystique wakes
up just before they enter the room, and avoids notice. She slips around then and
gets out how they got in.
While Rogue, Shadowcat, Spyke and
Nightcrawler dodge through fireballs in a hallway, Cyclops and Jean make it to
a security terminal. They can’t shut anything down, but Cyc is able to get a
visual on Cerebro and see’s Arcade using the system. The other four drop in,
with Kitty explaining who Arcade aka Webber is. Just before he finds them on
the security feed. He tries to knock them out with an electric blast, but they
escape, and as a group get into Cerebro, Rogue draining Arcade just enough to
knock him out.
She's baaaacccckkkk.
The kids are sent home, and the four
party organizers are set to cleaning. Rogue, Scott and Jean ‘debrief’ Arcade.
He apologizes for hacking the system, but that game was too entrancing to pass
up. They’re initially shocked that Webber still thinks that was all a game, but
Charles comes in and telepathically confirms. He sends Webber home in a taxi.
Afterward, Scott tries to apologize for what happened, but Charles has deeper
concerns. Namely, he believes his trip, the party and even Arcade’s shenanigans
were all part of a greater master plan. The episode ends with Mystique leaving
the mansion grounds, shapeshifting back into Risty and walking off into the
night. Oo, ominous.
This was a very interesting episode.
Mystique’s plan was relatively simple but brilliant. Remove Charles while the
other adults are away, use teens to throw a party because teens, have Webber
get her the data she wanted and then leave him to cover her escape. And to
think it ALMOST didn’t work due to getting knocked out. I liked the callback to
Cain and his prison, it was a solid reason for Charles to be gone, and to see
him legit start sweating as his half-brother ALMOST broke free was tense to say
the least. And the use of Arcade was inspired. Arcade is a mercenary villain
from the Marvel universe, often trapping his targets in his amusement park of
traps and tortures he calls Murderworld. This slightly toned down, civilian ID
of Webber Torque was a show original, although his design does look like a teen
version of the adult assassin. The subplot about Jean getting jealous that her
friend is attracted to Scott is kinda basic, but I know the execs thought they
needed to inject teen angst into this show to make it marketable. I’d have just
fast forwarded to Jean and Scott being a thing in season one, but I tend to
rush like that. Mystique getting her hands on not only the X-Men, but assumedly
all other Mutants that Charles has detected over the years is something that
will come back to bite the crew in the ass later, but we’ll cross that bridge
when we get to it.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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