We learn the history of En Sabah Nur.
Last time on X-Men: Evolution,
Mesmero started his big play. The Mutant Mind-controller used Rogue as a puppet
to steal the powers of all the X-Men, Brotherhood, and Acolyte members along
with Mystiques, who was working with him. Magneto and his crews try to
intercept her at Bayville High’s graduation ceremony, but Mesmero has her
bounce before she can get captured. Logan, Gambit, and Sabretooth are sent
looking for Rogue while Xavier and Magneto try to find Apocalypse’s tomb. The
trio track the limo the villains were using to an air strip and realize they’re
flying across the Pacific ocean and steal a plane to follow. Xavier uses
Cerebro and knowledge gleamed from his last mental battle with Mesmero to
determine that Apocalypse’s tomb is beneath the Sphinx of Giza. They arrive at
the Sphinx, Kitty finding them a way in, but they’re immediately trapped and are
about to have to duke it out with several giant robotic statues of ancient Egyptian
gods. This’ll be fun. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
How hot is that fire that it burns stone?
We open with the statues attacking.
One of the statues slams into the floor, shattering it and dropping Kitty, Kurt,
and Colossus into the dark below. Another section drops separating Pyro, Pietro,
and Scott from the group. Hank tries to fight the statue alone but is just
knocked around. Magneto saves himself and Charles from falling. Jean saves Bobby
from dropping, and Ororo saves them both from the statue’s attack with a lightning
blast. They’re knocked back and into another chamber as well, though. Magneto, Xavier,
and Hank enter their own chamber, Hank just barely making it inside before the
door drops and seals them in.
Scott and Pyro are left to fight
off two statues after Pietro speeds off to try to find them an exit. Pyro, being
a psycho, clearly loves it. The next room over, Ororo is doing her best to
blast her statue while protecting an unconscious Jean. They’re able to disable
it for a second by Bobby making an ice slide under its foot, knocking it to the
ground and then freezing it solid. But two more guardian statutes come to life
and attack them. Bobby is left to look after Jean while Ororo lightning blasts
them. In another section, Colossus is trying to break through a wall and almost
socks Kitty in her schnoz as she phases back through to him. She says that
there’s just more tunnels on the other side of the wall she’d been checking. Kurt
joins them, revealing that he’d found the headset, but it’d been smashed in the
fall. Colossus says they’ve got to keep looking and stomps off.
Huh, makes you wonder how many things would
have changed had this baby died...
Meanwhile, Hank is trying to reach
the busted headset with his own functional one but is obviously getting squat.
He wants to search for them, but Magneto and Xavier believe finding the tomb is
too important and trusts their team is prepared to defend themselves. Xavier
reaches out to everyone telepathically to tell them where to find them, while Hank
is tasked with reading hieroglyphs. He reads the history of Apocalypse. The glyphs
describe, and we’re shown a scene of, Rama Tut arriving from ‘beyond the stars’
and using advanced technology to conquer Egypt. His design and background are a
nice nod to Marvel canon, as Rama Tut is a time traveling Kang the Conqueror in
both continuities. While this was happening, a gray skinned baby was left to
die in the desert. The baby is found by a group of bandits and adopted by their
leader, Baal, and named En Sabah Nur, the First One. Nur became a warrior of
unmatched skill. Tut learns of Nur and saw him as a threat, sending his army to
kill him. While Baal and the army were killed, Nur survived and laid waste to
his foes, taking the name Apocalypse.
In another chamber, Cyclops optic
beams a statue back. He destroys an arm, revealing that it’s a machine of some
kind. Pietro runs back in, saying he found a way out, and then super speeds around
the one-armed statue to knock it over. That breaks a wall in Ororo and company’s
chamber but frees the frozen statue. Ororo destroys the two sphinxlike beasts,
also revealed to be robots. Bobby tries to refreeze the statue but is running
out of power. Thankfully, Jean wakes up and slams it into a wall
telekinetically. It flies through and opens a path to Scott and co. She then
throws the remaining statue back into the wall. Pietro leads them to the tunnel
he found.
Hank is still reciting Apocalypse’s
origin, saying that he hunted Tut across Egypt until the pharaoh fled and disappeared
forever. He then found the source of Tut’s power beneath the Sphinx, a vessel
of some kind. Inside was a device called the Eye of Ages. He mastered the
technology and planned to use it to transform all humans into Mutants. The Eye
of Ages was powered by Apocalypse himself. When he used it, it almost drained
his lifeforce dry. It left him weakened and his priests, fearful of the world
Apocalypse was attempting to make, betrayed him and sealed him inside. They entombed
him in the highest reaches of the world and locked behind three doors in the
hopes he’d be sealed forever. They realize that this isn’t the tomb, and worse,
they don’t know where it is. I mean… highest reaches of the world are a large
hint.
We jump over to the Himalayan
mountains where Logan and his group tracked the stolen plane. They follow the
trail up the mountain. Gambit has a good line here where he tells Sabretooth
and Logan to maybe “stop sniffing and follow the footprints!”
Back in the tomb, Kitty and Kurt
are exploring ahead of Colossus, bumping into, and scaring each other. Kitty thinks
their close to the top and suggest Kurt go rejoin the professor and she’ll look
for the others. Kurt is hesitant to leave Kitty with Colossus as he doesn’t
trust the steel shifting giant. Kitty thinks he’s a softy. He smashes through
the wall at that point, abashedly saying he “grew concerned” waiting for them.
Ahhh, Piotr is a big softie. Scott and his group join them a moment later, but
two of the statues follow them through, and the battle continues.
In the inner chamber, Hank and Xavier
wonder what could be entombed here if not Apocalypse. Magneto thinks it’s “answers”
and rips the doors down to the inner most chamber to get them. Inside, they
find Rama Tut’s ship. It opens as they approach, and they enter it. It has an
interface like Cerebro, and Xavier tries to use it to find Apocalypse. As they
power it on, Logan reaches Hank and tells them they’re in Tibet. He tells them
they’re at Makalu Peak. Hank tells them to try t stop them any way they can,
but at that moment Mesmero mentally blasts them. Xavier’s block is enough to
keep them from killing each other, though, so they keep trudging after them.
Back in the tomb, our heroes are
battling the statues. They destroy one by Kitty phasing its foot through a
stone step to stop it from moving and then Jean hurling Colossus at it, destroying
it. Kitty excitedly announces they make a good team, just before remembering
there’s another statue to beat.
Bye Mystique.
Mystique, Mesmero and Rogue reach
the tomb. Mesmero delivers the final key, the shapeshifting mutant Mystique. He
explains that they’re both needed to free Apocalypse. Mystique reveals that she
only agreed to help in part to protect herself and Rogue’s future. She also
asked why Mesmero didn’t mind jack her, to which he admits that he can’t. Mystique’s
powers of control with her enhanced powers make it too difficult for him. He
tells her to enter through a small hole and touch the sign of Apocalypse, a
scarab beetle, and the door will open. Mystique doe so, but the moment she
touches it, the doors start to open, and she’s turned to stone. Damn. Rogue
walks past her and into the chamber. Logan and the other’s burst in. They’re
tough, but Mesmero shows off incredibly hand to hand skills and a shock staff
that keeps them at bay. Rogue opens the Eye of Ages and reveals the old and
withered but still alive Apocalypse. He opens his eyes.
The team draws the final robot into
the chamber with Xavier and the others. Magneto helps the rest of them destroy
the robot statue while Xavier learns from the ship. He discovers that Tut was a
time traveler and he learns how to use it to transport them instantaneously.
They cripple the last statue before everyone gets on board.
Rogue "Wow, so that's how it feels, awful!"
Logan and Sabretooth are finally
able to stop Mesmero, snapping Rogue out of her trance. Unfortunately, Apocalypse
grabs Rogue’s hand before she can react. Instead of draining him, though, it
seems Apocalypse drains her, taking the powers (illustrated by him
sucking the shades of the Mutant’s she’d absorbed recently) into himself. This
revitalizes Apocalypse, making him young and strong again. Logan arrives as
Apocalypse rises.
Xavier transports them all to Apocalypse’s
tomb. Uh-oh. Logan tries to strike at Apocalypse, but he clenches his hand and
knocks him back telekinetically. The others get ready to fight him, but he claps
his hands together and knocks them all back. He floats past them all and into
his ship. They get up in time to see him seal himself inside and vanish again.
Magneto announces that they failed and Xavier agrees, saying their greatest battle
is just beginning.
He has risen.
Hell of a way to end the season.
Well… not really. There’s one more episode that should have taken place between
38 and 40, where everyone besides a still sick Rogue takes a cruise but end up
having to save the world. But that episode was aired out of order for some
reason. I hope you don’t mind me considering it part of season 4, which I will
get back to at some point in the near future. Good? Good.
This was a solid finale. I would say
having most of the main cast fight robotic statues for most of the episode’s run
time feels like the action equivalent of busy work, but the information about
Apocalypse that is dropped makes up for it in my option. Plus, the anachronistic
technology in his tomb does help set him up as a threat. Since, ya know, having
a lot of powers is scary, but so is access to technology thousands of years
more advanced than today. Maybe I’m being lenient because Apocalypse is one of
my favorite villains of all time. Speaking of those powers, let’s talk about how
he gets them in this iteration. Apocalypse is one of the most powerful villains
of the Marvel canon, on par with Thanos, Dr. Doom, and Kang and only a few steps
below cosmic threats like Galactus the devourer of worlds. All his depictions
show him having multiple powers that he can use in concert that make him all
but unstoppable to even a small group of Mutants or other heroes. Size
shifting, the ability to grow weapons right out of his body, inhuman strength,
energy blasts, energy absorption, shapeshifting, Apocalypse has all of these
and more. Seeing this version stealing the powers he needs from Rogue was a unique
way of showing how he gained this immense power. Even if they don’t explain how
he did it beyond “he’s Apocalypse, that’s how.” The history of Apocalypse,
while short, was also well done. While he was a major recurring villain in X-Men:
The Animated Series, his origins were never divulged. You just got that he’s
an ancient Mutant that is a threat in the past, the present and the distant
future through the shows run. I think this is in part to avoid the time traveling
shenanigans necessary to explain his story and talking about who the hell Rama
Tut is. I liked that they decided to go all in and show that he is Kang the
Conqueror. That’s canon to the comics too, by the way. Kang, having read about Apocalypse
in the far future, went back in time and attempted to recruit him as a lackey, unfortunately
being defeated by Apocalypse and giving him the technology that he needed to go
from a threat in the age and location he was born into a threat across all
time. Apocalypse isn’t as talkative as most versions in this episode. You usually
can’t get this guy to stop talking about how he is the end, that he will
destroy all, he is inevitable and so on. But it kind of works here. Facing off against
the most powerful Mutants of the current age, against Magneto, Xavier, and
their assembled forces and they weren’t worth even a shot speech on the
futility of fighting him. Such a shame. Mystique’s end was a bit shocking. She
who was obsessed with safeguarding herself and her kids is taken out because
she believed a sketchy dude when he said he’d keep is word. Turned into a lawn ornament
and left to rot. Bye Raven. Apocalypse is free and he’s going to shake the
world. Alright, enough X-Men: Evolution and onto She-Hulk.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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