Last time on X-Men: Evolution,
Wanda finally tracked down her dad. The angriest Maximoff twin was lured to her
father’s secret base on Mt. Arrowrose. Magneto, deciding that Wanda’s attempts
to destroy him were inconveniencing him, got his latest recruit Mastermind to
rewrite her memories to remove all the horrible stuff and lead her to believe
that Magneto was a loving and attentive father. At the same time, Toad was
attempting to trick Wanda into loving him by using Kurt’s stolen Image Inducer
to make him look like a not-Toad. It doesn’t work, but his hounding her is what
let him know she was in trouble. He convinces Kurt to help him free Wanda,
which was a harder sell than normal as Toad ruined Kurt’s meeting with his
girlfriend Amanda’s parents, but he does go along with it. They free Wanda,
Amanda tells Kurt she’s not going to listen to her parents to stay away from
him, and Pietro convinces Toad to not tell Wanda the truth about her past as it’ll
keep her from running off again. Dark ending, really. Enough recap. Let’s get
to it.
Rogue and headaches really don't mix...
We open with Scott and Rogue
playing racquetball. The two hit back and forth a few times before Scott misses,
and I assume Rogue wins. I don’t know that rules of racquetball. She nonchalantly
asks if he wants to play again tomorrow, but he’s seeing a concert with Jean. Rogue
tries to play off not being super bummed out by this but fails kind of miserably.
To me, that is, Scott doesn’t seem to notice. Once alone, Rogue has a migraine
of some kind and gets flashes of Jean’s memories.
Later, Mystique meets up with her precognitive
“friend” Destiny. Destiny has come to warn her that Rogue is in danger. She
says that Rogue has always had a part to play in Mystique’s greater destiny,
but her presence is growing dimmer. She believes that might mean that Rogue
might not have a future. This dialogue is played over Rogue smacking the
racquetball back and forth a few times before hitting it so hard into the wall
it explodes and suddenly, she’s having another headache memory, this time of draining
Blob. She throws her racquet, and it imbeds itself into the wall.
The next day, Rogue is doing her
hair and getting more flashes of Jean memories. Logan knocks on her door. He
wants to check on her because he found the remnants of her racquet, but Kitty runs
in and grabs her before she’s forced to either tell the truth or lie. They meet
Jean in the garage, she’s giving them a lift in her new SUV. Kitty suggests
Jean drive a carpool to the big concert, but when Jean mentions going with
Scott, she, and Kurt who teleports in a moment later, start teasing her about
going on a date with Scott. Much to her, and Rogue’s, discomfort. Later, Rogue
is heading to the bathroom, but when she goes to push open the door, she has a flashback
of copying Kitty’s power and phases through the door. Oh my. Inside is Mystique…
I mean, Risty. You remember that Risty is Mystique, right? Right. She claims
that her parents back in the UK had kept her coming back to the US for a few weeks
after the Sentinel incident, to explain her disappearance. Rogue apologizes to
Risty for hiding the Mutant thing, goes for a drink of water, but then flashes
back to her first episode where she drained Storm and fries the fountain with a
lightning blast. Whoops. She runs off. Risty follows her and a frantic Rogue
tries to explain her powers to Risty. She claims that she retains some part of
everyone she’s absorbed, and after the last year or two, it’s getting crowded.
Risty suggests going to the concert together to laugh at nerds and to get Rogue’s
mind of things, to which Rogue reluctantly agrees.
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Giving Rogue Shapeshifting powers right now
is... problematic.
That night, the concert is going on
and everyone seems to be having a good time. We see Tabitha rocking out, Kurt
and Amanda dancing along, Kitty comes in with Jamie (he was the only one who
didn’t have plans) and Jean teases Kitty for being on a “date” when she sees
the two of them walk by. Jean and Scott are both super awkward about them being
on a date and it’s kind of cute. Rogue sees Scott and Jean and has a flashback
to when she took Scott’s power on the mountain back in episode 7 when she
joined the X-Men. Risty asks if she still has a thing for Scott, which she
denies. Risty and Rogue push forward in the crowd. She keeps getting bumped and
having flashes of people she’s absorbed. A girl who’d been sitting on her friend’s
shoulders falls, ripping Rogue’s sleeve off and she accidentally absorbs from randos
in the crowd, further filling her head. She finally bumps into Risty,
transforming her back into Mystique. Now having a large dose of shapeshifting
power in her system, when Rogue has her next flash, her body shifts to match
it. And, unfortunately, her next flash is to Sabretooth. Whoops. As Sabretooth,
she runs onto the stage and roars at the crowd before causing a bunch of damage
by knocking over amps. Jean stop the crowd from being crushed, Kitty keeps her
from pancaking a bystander, Multiple tries to restrain her, Kurt teleports some
debris she threw to keep it from hitting anyone, and finally Scott blasts her
into a wall. While covered in debris, Rogue has another flash and swaps to a
new form and powerset, Juggernaut. She runs through a wall and escapes, with
Mystique in pursuit. The X-Men decide to regroup at the Mansion.
Rogue as Juggernaut almost gets
caught by police, but she swaps to Magneto and magnetically throws the cop car
back. She then swaps to Quicksilver and runs away, before almost being cornered
again, but this time swapping to Arcade, that one off villain from last season.
She enters an alley and transforms back to herself. Mystique finds her and
tries to explain what happened. She claims that she did it to be close to
Rogue, but Rogue doesn’t believe her, knowing that Mystique used her to spy on
the X-Men. They fight, both in Mystiques form before Rogue returns to normal.
Mystique drops the bombshell that everyone who knows the lore between these two
already saw coming, but was probably shocking to newbies in the 00s, that
Mystique is her adoptive mother. She adopted Rogue when she was four. Rogue
runs off, and Nightcrawler teleports away, but doesn’t take his form for some
reason.
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This is, what, the third time Mystique has
lied to Rogue's face?
She turns into Sabretooth again;
smells Logan driving by and attacks him. Logan’s sense of smell tells him that that
isn’t Sabretooth in front of him. Scott and the others arrive in the X-Van, and
Scott blasts her without realizing what’s going on. Logan explains and he and
Scott move into the warehouse he blasted into her. Scott tries to reach out to
her, but that causes her swap personalities to Scott and blasts him, before turning
into Lance and almost crushing them with debris. She returns to normal and asks
for their help. Logan and Scott both say they will, but when Scott says they’re
her ‘friends’ she remembers Risty, says she ‘has no friends,’ turns into Storm
and causes a storm. Logan and Scott are thrown out of the building. Jean asks
what’s going on, and Scott explains that it’s like every personality she’s ever
absorbed is fighting to take over. Rogue, flying on air currents, returns to
her normal form, and fires an optic blast. Jean just barely pulls them out of
the way. Logan thinks that means she’s gotten control of all the powers and
once and that’s bad. The X-Jet flies toward her, carrying Ororo, Xavier and
Hank, and she magnetically tosses it aside. Everyone is okay, though. As Rogue
optic beams everything in sight, Storm takes to the sky.
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Giving Rogue multiple powers is always neat but
also extremely dangerous.
Jean tries to pull Rogue down but
she fights back, throwing Jean instead. Kurt teleport grabs her, but she teleports
right back. Storm flies up and tries to lightning blast her, but Rogue throws
back a bigger blast, dropping her. Jeans saves Storm, and Logan tells them to
get back. He can take more punishment than anyone. He has Bobby ice launch him
into the sky. He tackles Rogue to the ground. When she lands, she makes copies
of herself as Logan tries to talk her down. He also has experience with things not
making sense in his head. One Rogue lifts him up magnetically and the other
four optic beam him. He gets swarmed by Rogues and he says that she’s letting
the voices in her head push her around, and the real Rogue wouldn’t stand for
that. She takes the clones back in, but she’s not sure she can get control.
Xavier rolls up and tells her telepathically to help him delete the excess
minds from hers. They do so, visually represented by Rogue shapeshifting into the
form of each person she drained, from the football guy to Kurt to Pietro to Storm
to Scott to Blob to Mystique to Risty to Kitty to Sabretooth to Lance to Arcade
to Magneto to Jean to Toad to Beast to Juggernaut. I guess the various randos
and less important characters like Multiple didn’t leave enough of an impression
to get a shapeshifted form. Logan asks if she’ll be okay, and Xavier says he’s
not sure.
Back in the mansion, Scott goes to talk
with Xavier. He explains that Logan hasn’t left her side since she was brought
in, and that driving out those other minds left her weak. And that’s on top of
learning her connection to one of the series big bads. Logan tells her that
getting over this won’t be easy, that something about betrayal sticks around, but
that she’ll learn to deal with it, and to do that she just needs to let her real
friends help her. Rogue grabs his hand and starts crying. Outside, Mystique and
Destiny pull up in Destiny’s limo. She says that Rogue is back in her future,
but now a great darkness looms on the horizon. Both their fates are in the
hands of an ancient mutant that is about to rise again. She takes off her glasses
to show her clouded eyes for dramatic emphasis.
…
Apocalypse! Apocalypse! Apocalypse!
That’s not in the episode, I just like
foreshadowing the rise of En Saba Nur.
This was a great episode. It’s
established canon that the memories Rogue absorb messes with her head, and that
she does retain a piece of the people she absorbs. Hell, her super strength,
and flight powers that most versions develop is based on draining Ms./Captain
Marvel so completely that it’s effectively permanent. So, the idea that Rogue keeps
the power she takes in, she just normally doesn’t have access to it is tracks.
Adding Mystique’s shapeshifting and the mentally jarring truth about their
connection, ya, I could see why Rogue would retreat into her own head and let the
little bits of people she’s absorbed take over and run amuck. It is unnerving
when Rogue gets enough control that she keeps her form but has access to all
the powers. Like, I’m used to Rogue showing off one ability she only has for a
limited time, but seeing her fly, shoots lasers from her eyes, controlling
storms and magnetically moving thins is just… wrong. Rogue and Mystique’s
connection is something I knew about (having seen X-Men: The Animated Series
in my youth), I saw this reveal coming. I find it odd that this is new info for
Rogue when she’s absorbed Mystique’s memories before, but maybe she didn’t dig
deeply enough that time. I don’t know, (shrug). I liked Logan opening himself
up to Rogue to try to talk her down. Logan is a reserved character, so him
admitting he’s been betrayed before, and it hurts feels like a big deal. Oh,
and the crush on Scott thing is dull. Sorry, I hate love triangles. Rogue is going
to be recovering for a while, which I also liked, if a character is hurt and
doesn’t recover by the next episode, you know they’ve been hurt bad. We’re
going to do two more episodes of X-Men: Evolution before switching to She-Hulk.
So, next time, another key to Apocalypse tomb reveals itself.
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