Surely, the Morlocks could find a nicer place to live than the sewers. Surely.
Last time on X-Men: Evolution,
Mystique got out. She escaped Area 51 with relative ease and set about getting
payback on the person she most blames for her incarceration, Scott “Cyclops”
Summers. She takes on his brother’s, Alex Summers, form, and lures Scott to
Mexico. She then gases him and throws him into the middle of a desert without supplies
or his glasses. He might have died out there if his eyebeam hadn’t drawn the attention
of a crew of oil rig workers, and his psychic pangs of pain reach Jean Grey
back in New York. He’s taken to Mexico City and accidentally destroys the roof
of the hospital he was taken to. Mystique finds him again and the two duke it
out, while Jean, Xavier, Storm, and Wolverine arrive to try to find him. He’s
able to hold of Mystique long enough for Jean to find him. She kicks Mystique’s
ass with telekinesis and drives her off. On the ride home, Jean and Scott seem
to shift from platonic to romantic, much to their teacher’s approval. Enough
recap. Let’s get to it.
Oh, Hi guys!
We open at the Spear Sport’s
bottling company on a stormy night. It’s like Gatorade. We’re shown several
people coming out of the sewers. If that wasn’t enough of a tip off, the prominent
beak like-nose on one fella and a little girl with disproportionately huge hands
make it clear that these are Morlocks. Remember, they’re a group of Mutants that
typically have abnormal physiology that makes it hard for them to dwell among
humans so live in the sewers. The group of four start smashing any boxes or
equipment labeled with Pow-R8. Three of them are caught by security, but the fourth,
the little girl with big hands, removes her gloves and touches the security guard’s
arm, freezing him in place. They run off as the security alarm starts blaring.
We return to Spear Sports in the daylight,
the owner, Guy Spear, storming in and being quite upset to hear that their
plant is shut down for the day. The factory floor is in ruins, there’s a huge
hole in the wall and broken bottles everywhere. The guard is just recovering
from being paralyzed, but he isn’t coherent, according to his assistant. Spear wants
to keep things quite because they’re only a week out from releasing Pow-R8, so he
doesn’t want to bring in cops.
We cut to Bayville High, were a few
students clip out the skater from a Pow-R8 add. We join Scott as he cautiously
leaves his classroom. He sees Kitty coming towards him in the hall, turn and
runs away. He bumps into Jean, and we learn they’re both avoiding Kitty for
some reason. Evan, meanwhile, opens his locker and gets spooked by trap set
inside, that Powr-8 Skater guy on a spring. It’s covered in nails to look like
his spikes. Another student joins him, taking the skater guy off the spring and
helps Evan to his feet. This nameless student seems to try to ingratiate himself
with Evan, saying how he thinks powers are cool, giving tips on how to avoid
bullies and so on. He’s going to ruin it in a minute. Dick. Meanwhile, we learn
why Scott and Jean are avoiding Kitty. They almost get off campus without her
seeing, when Kurt teleports onto Scott’s car and tells them she just got her
driver’s permit. They know. He tells them she’s looking for any licensed 18-year-old
to ride with her. They know. They drive off as Kurt tells them that he thinks
the professor will ask them to do it, and they shout, “WE KNOW!” as they go. Guess
they’re trying to avoid that execution, huh? Kitty sees them drive off and
tries to flag them down, but they speed up. Kitty sees Rogue and asks when her
18th is. Kitty Pryde is not subtle.
Evan and his ‘fan’ run into some bullies,
and he tries to threaten them with his new “friend” Evan. Evan tries to walk
away, but they start shoving him and demanding to see his thorns. Kurt and his
girlfriend Amanda walk up just in time to see Evan Spyke up, having spines pop
out of his forearms, chest and up his spine, and beat the snot out of the
bullies. Kurt runs over, pulls Evan out of sight and teleports them away.
Back at the mansion, Scott and Jean
are called in by the professor and he starts trying to sell them on being Kitty’s
driving instructor. Logan comes in, only having heard that the job Xavier want’s
done requires nerves of steel, and might be dangerous, and assumes it’s up his
alley. Scott and Jean run off before he can change his mind. We cut to Logan riding
shotgun with Kitty, who is so excited about driving that she doesn’t wait for
the gate to open to let them out. Don’t worry, she phases them through.
.png)
Oh, not good.
Evan returns to his room, spikes
still out, crossing paths with Ororo. She wants to talk to him, but Evan is
angry and says not now. He sits in his room and broods for a bit before trying
to retract his spikes. It takes visible effort for him to pull them in, and, to
his shock, when he takes off his shirt and checks, the spines on his back are
still visible. Oh my.
Logan and Kitty return to the
mansion, the X-Van having a newspaper box stuck in the hood, a stop and street
sign partially phased into the back, and Logan looking horrified. He returns
the keys to Xavier, saying “Scott and Jean are right. I owe them. And you,
Chuck.” Uh-oh. Later, Scott and Jean hear Kitty in the library. Jean, in one of
her coldest moments, telekinetically lifts her boyfriend and pushes him inside.
In the kitchen, some of the kids
are having breakfast. Evan is chugging milk until Berserker, who I just tonight
learned is named Ray, asks for the jug. Evan pushes it to Ray but is horrified to
see the backs of his hands are spiked. Ray doesn’t notice. Ray asks Evan if he’s
still doing the Pow-R8 Skate competition because it’s about to start. Whoops.
.png)
The face you make when you see someone you
know but don't want to be seen.
Guy Spear is MCing the event, and
using it to show off his new drink. We’re shown one of the Morlocks, a one-eyed
woman with an eyepatch, watching from beneath the bleachers, Evan skating in at
the last minute and his friends showing up in the stands as Spear finishes his
speech. Evan starts his skateboard run
and does extremely well. He takes some of the Pow-R8 stuff, but the woman knocks
it from his hand when he tries to drink, harshly whispering “Poison” as she
does so. Ray sees her walk by and clearly knows her. The competition keeps
going on, with Evan being the only one who seems to be the only skater not
messing up badly. When he ends his run, another skater accuses him of cheating.
Spear comes in and tries to calm things down. When he hears Evan is a Mutant,
though, he says he’ll need to talk to the judges. Evan, knowing where this is
going says forget it and skates off. He takes and drinks some of the Pow-R8,
and immediately throws it up. His vision get’s cloudy and he accidentally
launches spikes everywhere, damaging his surroundings. Ororo and Bobby stop a
sign from falling on the crowd, Kurt saves a kid from falling, and Ray sees Evan
and the one-eyed woman head in the same direction. Evan goes to the amphitheater
that he and Hank McCoy like, and is ambushed by the Morlocks, one phasing in
from behind and grabbing him while the little girl stuns him.
Back at the mansion, Kitty basically
Fast and Furious-style drives Scott’s car to the front of the Mansion. She runs
to talk to Kurt, and the two teleport away to help look for Evan while Scott
announces he never wants to ride in another vehicle again. Inside, Hank and Xavier
are running tests. Xavier concludes that the Pow-R8’s “toxic eliminators” aren’t
dangerous to humans, but are very poisonous to Mutant cells. Ororo is adamant
they find him.
Evan, meanwhile, is with the
Morlocks. They give him a drink of something that eases his symptoms, but the One-eyed
woman, Callisto, explains that he needs rests to recover. He wake up sometime
later and overhears Callisto and Caliban, the Mutant tracker, talking. Callisto
reveals that she thinks that Evan’s mutation is getting more extreme and that he
may want to join them. Caliban isn’t so sure. The big nose guy, Lucid, arrives,
telling Callisto that Spear added security to his facility and they could use
Evan’s help. Caliban is against it. Evan joins them and Callisto tells him why
they’re attacking Spear’s bottling plant. Namely, Pow-R8 is being dumped into
their sewer home by Spear and it’s seeped into everything. As Pow-R8 is extremely poisonous to Mutants,
that’s incredibly bad. Evan agrees to help. Caliban tells them someone is spying
on them. It turns out it’s Berserker… I mean Ray. He tells Callisto that she’s
got to know that the X-Men will get involved when they know Evan is with them.
She isn’t concerned, though, as they’ll only know if Ray tells them, and she
has the little girl, Torpid, sneak up and stun him.
.png) |
| Bye Evan, I'll miss you. |
Later, the Morlocks attack the
Spear plant again. They plus Spyke, break in jut as Spear comes in and finds
his security staff frozen. They pour a chemical into the Pow-R8 vats,
destroying the chemicals that hurt mutants and gum up the pluming. In the sewer,
the paralysis wears off on Ray and he escapes from the other Morlocks. He calls
the professor as he runs. Spear surprises the Morlocks and has his guards fire
tasers. One of the shots goes wide, hits a junction box, and causes an
explosion. The Morlocks run into the sewers, implausibly outrunning a tide of Pow-R8
until they hit a wall. Evan makes spikes to use as steps to pull them above the
poisonous liquid. When all seems lost, Cyclops’ eyebeam slams through the road
above, cutting them a way topside. Jean floats down and uses her telekinesis to
push back the Pow-R8 and lift the Morlocks upwards. They escape as Storm
summons a big thunderstorm to dilute the Pow-R8. After, Evan walks off with the
Morlocks before anyone notices.
Later, Xavier explains the
situation to Spear, who claims to not have known his drink was dangerous to
Mutants. Xavier believes him, and explains that the Morlocks aren’t a trusting
sort, as they’ve seen the worst of human nature up to this point and only rely on
each other. Hence why they didn’t talk to him about it.
The X-Men, meanwhile, search the
sewers for Evan. He finds Ororo and talks to her. She wants to take him home,
but Evan says that he wants to go with the Morlocks, to “take a break” from the
craziness. He walks off before she can talk to him. I do not envy the conversation
Ororo is going to have to have with her sister.
.png)
Payback sucks, don't it, Charles?
Xavier gets his comeuppance for
pushing off Kitty’s drivers training, as Logan told Kitty to play chauffeur for
Xavier. As they drive off Spear orders Pow-R8 be brought back online ASAP, as
it has suddenly become a lot more valuable.
…
No, Pow-R8 is never brought up
again.
This was a fine episode to serve as
Evan’s send off. I have read that he was a character that the writers consistently
had trouble writing for, so in retrospect I’m not shocked that they decided to
cut him. And, at least they had been foreshadowing all this season that Evan’s
mutation was growing more… aggressive and difficult for him to control. And the
spikes coupled with how angry he’s been lately; I could see why joining the
Morlocks might seem… therapeutic to him. Even if he has to live in a sewer. I
think that the Pow-R8 as unintentional poison was a good plot McGuffin, but I must
admit I’m always a bit confused by the “it doesn’t effect humans,” bit when we’re
shown a bunch of humans falling down after learning it’s poisonous. I get it,
that was supposed to show us that skating is hard, and that Evan is good as he’s
the only one not messing up, but the scene paired with the poison reveal had me
thinking the humans were being affected too, just not as severely. Much like the
Kitty and her pyramid hat subplot from last season, the Kitty driving subplot was
silly fluff, but I at least chuckled at her insane driving antics this time. As
I said earlier, this marks the end of Evan as a regular cast member. He’ll
still appear in the opening and closing credits, and he’ll have a few more appearances,
but they won’t be for a while. Next time, Toad tries to impress Wanda. No, he
still doesn’t realize regular bathing would go a long way to helping this.
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