Viewer Log: X-Men: Evolution ep 43

Some R and R and a Volcano.  

Well, no more Marvel shows for the year or movies, and I’m really strapped for free time with my day job being in insane mode, so I need to do a few short and sweet posts. So, let’s do a few more X-Men: Evolution. We’re on to the home stretch for the show, so let’s tie this one off.

 

Last time on X-Men: Evolution, we learned the History of En Saba Nur. The first recorded Mutant was born in ancient Egypt at the time of Rama Tut (Kang the Conqueror in disguise) whom tried to kill him. Nur’s forces and his immense power overwhelmed Tut, who vanished into the time stream. Nur conquered Egypt and had attempted a plan to make the whole world into Mutants using Tut’s technology, but the process greatly weakened him, and his scared priesthood sealed him up to keep him from completing his plan. Intermixed with this information, the X-Men. Brotherhood and Acolytes battled giant robotic guardians. At the same time, Wolverine, Sabretooth, and Gambit tracked Mystique, Mesmero and a brainwashed Rogue to the Himalayan mountains. They enter the tomb, and Mystique is turned to stone in opening the final lock. Mesmero holds off the three Mutants long enough for Rogue to travel down the path to Apocalypse’s resting place. He awakens as Mesmero is taken out and grab’s Rogue’s hand. Rather than having his power drained, he drains her instead, taking the amassed abilities of all the Mutants she’d drained. He is rejuvenated in the process and begins to glow. The other Mutants arrive in Apocalypse’s ship, and he knocks them all down with one blast and take back his ship. Well, damn. Enough of this high-stake stuff, let’s do a beach episode. Well, a cruise episode. Let’s get to it.

 

I should point out, that despite airing after the finale with Apocalypse rising, the episode takes place between episode 38 and 40. The short stint where Rogue is incapacitated if you don’t recall.

 

Never trust Cruise ships. 

We open on the X-Men and New Mutants on a Cruise, Tabitha is doing the limbo with Bobby and Sam, but Amara is off on her own feeling seasick. Ororo tries to see if she wants to see the ship doctor, but she claims she’s fine, and Tabitha comes over and drags her off to try to have fun and forget her seasickness. Meanwhile, Jean and Scott are trying to have a romantic moment and enjoy not being the target of people’s ire, while Kitty and Kurt do the younger sibling “follow them around and snicker at them being so cutesy” thing. They go try to find a private spot, but then see a whole bunch of weird ice sculpture’s floating by, and immediately realize Bobby is being an idiot.

 

Bobby, at the bow of the ship, is making ice sculptures. He climbs on the rail and makes an iceberg, in reference to the Titanic. He slips when he hears Scott coming up to yell at him, and the ship takes evasive action to dodge the iceberg that just appeared out of nowhere. Bobby, the hell did you THINK was going to happen? Jean catches him when he almost falls and pulls him up. Amara tries to fire up and melt the berg but can’t power up for some reason. Scott eyebeams it and then yells t bobby for being an obvious idiot. Jean tells him to not take it too personally, but to think before acting. Zero chance of that happening in this or most other universes. The helmsman gets checked out for delusions, as he saw an iceberg in the Caribbean, and everyone knows that’s insane.

 

The next day, Amara is still feeling icky. She’s pretty sure that she isn’t seasick, having realized she felt this way before on the plane ride from Brazil, and deduces that being away from solid ground makes her ill after too long. She thinks she’ll feel better when the land, and Tabitha leaves her alone to wallow. Ororo goes to check in on Amara as she passes, and she warns Tabitha to keep a low profile.

 

This goes about as well one can imagine with a group of Mutants. Bobby stops Jaime from using his clones to scarf down waffles due to Scott being on pins and needles, and the others are still laughing at Scott and Jean being lovey-dovey. Tabitha, tired of a whinner one table over, throws a little boom-boom at her plate, causing the food to go everywhere and leads to a small fire. Jean uses her powers to lift a lobster tank to put it out, outing them all as Mutants. Jean, hun, there was a fire extinguisher not ten feet away, there were other ways to handle this. Lobsters get everywhere, Jaime accidentally clones himself and Kurt’s imagine inducer gets broken. The whole ship runs out of the dining area just as Ororo arrives. Whoops.

 

Later, the kids deal with return to pariah status and dealing with an angry Ororo. Tabitha is almost baited into attacking a dude who yells at them for daring to come out of their rooms, Bobby talks her down, she goes to check on Amara, and Bobby does a tiny cold snap into the pool, chilling everyone out. I must appreciate Bobby’s subtlety with that one. Jean and Scott get stink eyes as they walk about the lower decks. They get a message that there’s rough weather coming up, so they’ll be docking near an island to wait it out. Amara is super stressed by this, as she feels like she’s going to keel over and die if she’s not on ground soon. Meanwhile, Scott and Jean are getting the stick eye, and wish they could get away from the looks. Jean gets a bright idea, and suggests to Scott they take a trip on their trip. She flies them out to the island. Kitty and Kurt follow them because they like teasing their upperclassmen. And Amara, Tabitha and Bobby also decide to go to the Island to get Amara some ground time. They all run into each other, much to Scott and Jean’s frustration, and the oldest students suggest all the younger ones go and do something away from them.

 

Still an above average vacation for the X-Men.

Kurt, Kitty, Amara, and Tabitha hit up a hot spring to get Tabitha some healing water, Bobby is there for moral support. He makes a lounger out of ice and kicks back while the others soak in hot goodness. Amara swims down, transforms into her flamed up form, and seems to accidentally trigger something in the open fissure to the active volcano that heats the spring. Uh ho. The kids get out before they’re broiled and use Bobby’s ice to get down the slope. A massive quake triggers, causing destruction in the town. The X-Men and New Mutants use their powers to keep everyone from getting hurt and saving people trapped by the rumble. Afterward, the locals gather and start cheering their heroes. I guess Caribbeans get the whole “we should celebrate people that save other’s” thing WAY better than the US seems to. The locals are all impressed by the Mutant’s powers, and Kurt’s looks, and everyone has a grand old time being local celebrities.

 

Back on the ship, Jaime and his clones searched the ship for everyone on Ororo’s orders, and she’s rather annoyed to realize her charges on the island.

 

Base Jumpers wish they could do this. lol

The volcano starts rumbling again as everyone sits down to a banquet. Amara reveals to Scott that she thinks she might have triggered the quakes. But before he can react, the kids notice a Thunderhead flying toward them, realizing a pissed off Ororo is on the way. Thankfully, weird to say that here, the volcano erupts, giving everyone bigger fish to fry. A fissure opens near Amara, but she’s able to will it closed again. She goes to handle the volcano itself while the rest of the team handles the lava flow.

 

The X-Men use their various powers to save the Caribbeans, most impressively being Storm summoning rain to cool the lava and Jean psionically pushing the lava back, as Amara climbs the volcano. Ororo flies to get her. At the top, Amara transforms into her Magma form and realizes she can control the volcano’s magma to an impressive degree. Ororo arrives in time to see Amara dive into the volcano, to her horror. Amara is able to stop the eruption, cooling off the top layer of magma in the caldera. She doesn’t know what she did, but she was able to stop the volcano. Ororo scolds the kids for going off on their own, and they’ll talk about it on the ship. She flies off and it’s kind of an alls well that ends well moment.

 

While I think everyone can see why I chose to stop at the actual finale than do this episode, this was a fine filler episode. I’m all for episodes that expand on minor characters a bit. Its interesting to see some other character relationships outside the main cast. I like Amara and Tabitha as close friends, it’s a classic extrovert-introvert pairing that’s just fun to see. The fact that this was a bit of plot cul-de-sac, Amara was both the cause of and solution to the volcano plot, it is nice to have a comparatively low stakes episode for them to relax in. It’s short, sweet, and to the point. I kind of wish we could have gotten a few more episodes like this with the other New Mutants, would have loved to see Jaime be more than just a cloning sight gag, or what Roberto’s whole deal is. But it is what it is, next time, we’ll see how Kurt handle’s the death of his mother. Just a head’s up, not well. 

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