A ghost from Storm's past is stalking her.
Last time on X-Men: Evolution, Scott’s
relaxing visit with his little brother Alex turns soggy. Alex is swept out to sea
by a riptide after falling off his surfboard. The two Summers struggle to
survive the storm. Thankfully, the X-Men were watching the news, and rocket out
on the X-Jet to save them. They’re almost lost in a funnel, but Storm holds it
off long enough for Jean to pull them into the jet. Oh, and Kurt played with
his image inducer, broke it, and the episode ends on gender-bent Kurt being
flustered. Charles set that up as a prank. Oy. Enough recap, let’s get to it.
Ya'll choose to follow a man that paints a skull on
his face, and whatever happens is on you.
We open on an African tribal dance.
I believe it’s in Kenya, but it’s never addressed. A Hungan, a witch doctor, with
a skull painted on his face comes out of his tent. He tells his people that after
ten years he’s tracked down the Windrider. He plans to capture her and use her
powers for the Bakunto people. He ignites a statue of this Windrider, and they
helpfully superimpose Storm’s image over the statue, as if there was some other
weather manipulating woman that this could be about…
We cut over to Bayville High at Lunch. Jean sees and tries to hide from Scott and
Taryn, who seem to either be officially a thing now or just on the cusp of it. They
call her over, and it gets SUPER awkward SUPER fast. God, I don’t miss high
school. She starts to bail, but as she does, Evan skates by and steals her milk.
Not having that today, she tosses him telekinetically, causing him to crash through
some other lunch eaters and has him land in front of the principal. Whoops.
You know, if her in series background is the same
as the comics, this is actually a fairly tame reaction.
At the Mansion, fog has rolled in
and its ominous. Storm is waiting in the Danger Room and is looking miffed.
Spyke comes in, running late as usual. Their training session is called
Stormcatcher, Spyke has to protect his aunt through the course. They make it
maybe ten steps before Storm is grabbed by a bunch of robot arms. Spyke breaks
her free, but falls into a pit trap. He makes himself some spike handholds to
climb out. But then a smokescreen activates, obscuring everything. Spyke
freezes up as he’s unsure of how to handle smokescreens. Storm tells him to use
his ears, but then gets shut up in a box. Now… this is the WORST situation for Storm
to be in. Ororo Munroe suffers from a pretty severe case of claustrophobia, a
side effect of being buried alive after plane attack that killed her parents.
Not said in the episode, but it’s her canon backstory in the comics, so since
they don’t disprove it here, I still consider it canon for this timeline too. She
blasts herself free of the box with lightning, shorting out the simulation. She
rather angrily tells Spyke to leave, which he grumbles that he didn’t activate
the box, and Storm is clearly freaked out because she didn’t either.
Ororo leaves the training area a
little while later. The lights won’t come on, and she feels like she’s being
stalked up to when she gets to the elevator. She jumps about a foot when it
opens, but it’s just Beast inside. He’s a good sport about it, though. She
comments that she’s a bit on edge due in part to Evan, which Beast makes a bit
worse when he reveals he’d found Evan’s progress report and it’s not good. We
don’t get details, but it’s implied he’s doing poorly in school.
Later that night, Rogue is dropped
off at the mansion by Mysti… I mean Risty. It’s foggy as hell and still ominous.
She goes inside and arms the security system. Up in her own room, the fog rolls
into Ororo’s room. Silhouettes are shown in the fog as it surrounds her. She
wakes up screaming for them to stay back. The room is empty. Logan comes in,
draws his claws and immediately goes to check the balcony. Charles and Kitty come
in to check on her as well. Logan can’t find anything, but Charles tells him to
check the security feeds, just in case. Charles chats with Ororo, and she
admits that she might be a bit frazzled with Evan. Charles thinks that maybe
they took him from home a bit too early, and they agree it might be best to
send him back to his parents. Evan, of course, was listening from the hallway.
To try to clear her head, Ororo
goes to take a bath. She starts filling the tub, goes for some bubble mix, but when
she recloses the cabinet a skull had been drawn in steam in the mirror. We’re
shown Charles rolling down the hallway when he notices the water dripping from
the ceiling. Kitty checks on Ororo, and sees that the tub has overflown and she’s
sitting in the steam. She claims to be fine and walks off, but Kitty finds and
shows Charles the mirror Ororo saw the skull on, she shattered the glass. Ororo
finds Evan packing his things. She tries to talk to him, but he’s angry and
trying to act like he isn/t
At Bayville High, Rogue is explaining
an edited version of the Ororo/Evan situation to Risty. The faux-British girl accidentally
mentions Storm’s claustrophobia. She plays it off like gossip she’d heard from
one of the Institute kids, but we know that she got it from the data that
Mystique stole from the Mansion a couple episode’s ago. Outside, Jean and Scott
are talking about Ororo’s freak out, but is distracted by Kitty running up and
telling them that Evan’s being sent home and he’s angrily emptying his locker.
At the locker, Kurt is trying to convince Evan to try to fight to stay, but he’s
not having it, he asks Kurt why he even cares as they’re not friends. Which you
can see broke Kurt’s heart, as he thought they were. The others try to talk to
them, but he blows them off.
Hank, your first mistake was asking teenagers
to NOT use superpowers.
Back at the Mansion, Hank goes onto
the misty grounds and is hit by Sam Guthrie aka Cannonball. He finds out that
the New Mutants had improvised a training session in the mists when Storm didn’t
show up. Hank decides to act as substitute, brings the students into the
mansion, and gives them a special training goal, play volleyball without using
their powers. His goal is to have on
training session that doesn’t lead to someone going to the infirmary. They get One
serve in before it devolves into a power brawl, much to Hank’s chagrin.
Meanwhile, Ororo is on her balcony.
She flashes back to when she was a teenager, being worshipped as a Goddess by
the Bakunto. She summons up a storm and lets the rain fall. We’re shown the
Hungan watching angrily. When Ororo comes out of the flashback, she’s
completely surrounded by cobras. She lifts off, and sees Evan skate off. She
chases after her nephew and calls for him to come back. She chases after him,
but runs into Nerombo. He’s a member of the Bakunto that we saw earlier, but he’s
here to help. He tries to warn her, but she’s too focused on Evan. She brushes passed
him, as he yells that the Hungan is after her. Bakunto warriors start tailing
her. Evan scales the fence, but is still in time to see Ororo getting chased by
men in warpaint. She tries to keep them back with lightning, but they hit her with
a poison dart and she’s knocked out. Evan runs back to the mansion and tells
the professor Ororo’s been kidnapped.
Ororo wakes up in a box. She,
obviously, freaks out and tries to break free with lightning. It doesn’t work
on the metal box. She struggles for an unspecified time, passing out. The Hungan
opens the top of the box and gloats that he broke her spirit, so he can take
it. He somehow pulls her spirit from her body and into his staff. He smugly asks
“Where is your power now, goddess?” as he closes the lid on her.
Run as you like, Hungan, you will not out run the
winds. You're no Fleet.
(Stormlight Archive reference for the win!)
Wolverine is able to track Ororo to
the docks. He radios it in but goes in on his own. He grabs a random guard, who
just so happens to be Nerombo. He threatens Nerombo, but Charles and the X-Men
roll up, keeping him from goring Nerombo. He tells them that the Hungan has Ororo
on the anchored boat, but he broke and stole her spirit and is going to use it
to rule Africa. Charles tell his team to break into pairs and find Storm. The
team runs through a gauntlet of Bakunto warriors throwing spears, swords, darts
and other weapons at them. Wolverine and Spyke it to the ship. They find the box
Storm was kept in, but it’s empty. The Hungan comes in and tells them they’re
too late, he sends a mind-controlled Storm to lightning blast them. Spyke
remembers Storm’s line about her being in his hands. He uses the advice about
listening to target the Hungan and launches spikes at him, shattering the
Hungan’s staff. Storm’s spirit returns to her and she. Is. Pissed. She blows
the Hungan away in a tornado, and he takes the mists with him. Storm drops with
exhaustion, but Spyke catches her. The others join them, and Charles mentions that
the Bakunto warriors vanished with the mists. How spooky.
The next day, Ororo has a chat with
her sister, and they agree that they think that if Evan is given one more
chance, he’ll turn things around. Evan agrees, saying he’ll be the best
student. He tells the other X-Men and they’re all overjoyed that he’s sticking
around. He skates off happily as the credits roll.
This is a good episode. I like the background
on Storm’s past. Her background as an ex-goddess to a small African tribe is her
most consistent backstory. The reveal about her claustrophobia was also really
well done. She seems to last only seconds in tight spaces before they start to
overwhelm her senses and mentally fries her. It’s a fitting weakness for a
woman that rides the winds. I just kind of wish there was more to it. We know
that she was a goddess, that the Hungan was jealous of her power and influence,
but not what straw broke Storm’s metaphorical back and cause her to leave the
Bakunto. It’s a big question mark. Also want to know what happened with
Nerombo. Like, why does he stay with an obviously psychotic witch doctor? Odd. Evan’s
continued scholastic problems feels less tacked on with this one, as his poor
performance is causing problems both for him and for his relationship with
Ororo and the others. As I said, it clearly hurt Kurt to hear Evan angrily say
they’re not friends, which makes it a great scene. I’m getting used to the little
Hank and the New Mutant mini-stories. I laughed hard at the bit where the
students didn’t last more than a single serve before all hell breaks loose. Don’t
worry, this is building to a bigger story later on. So yeah, this was a good Storm
story. Have a good night everybody, and have a Happy New Year!
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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