Last time on X-Men: Evolution,
everyone was still reeling from the revival of Apocalypse. Magneto, having for
the first time faced a Mutant that outclassed him as much as he outclasses 90%
of other Mutants, took it especially hard. Things came to a head when everyone
discovered that Apocalypse had encased the Mayan Pyramid in Mexico in an energy
dome. The X-Men went to examine it. Magneto, on the other hand, went to settle
the score. The Master of Magnetism pulled out his full power against the Pyramid,
raining debris made up from the Mexican Army’s tanks and weaponry on them, and
dropping satellites as artificial meteors on it. Apocalypse just floated out of
the Pyramid and destroyed Magneto with a flick of his wrists. Damn. Meanwhile,
Rogue was still dealing with the PTSD of being mind-controlled and used for
evil for like the fifth time. Kurt kind of complicated matters by trying to
work out her, and some of his own, issues with Mystique. He retrieved her petrified
form from the Brotherhood and asked Wanda to get him in contact with Agatha Harkness
to see if Magic could help. Agatha couldn’t help, but said that Rogue could, as
a moments touch would drain Mystique just enough to kickstart her powers again
and let her free herself. Kurt asked her to do it, to both save their mom and
to help Rogue deal with the anger and pain she felt towards Mystique by proving
she wasn’t like dear ol’ Mom. Rogue, not ready to deal with this, screams,
shoves the statue over the side of the cliff they were standing on and shattering
the statue into pieces. Damn, hell of a way to end an episode. Enough recap,
though. Let’s get to it.
The episode opens on a subway
track. Wanda and the Brotherhood boys are riding the rails to somewhere. Pietro
notices that Wanda is depressed and locates the source being the frontpage
story of a Newspaper the one other passenger is reading about Apocalypse’s
attack and their father’s untimely death. Remember, Wanda’s memories have been
scrambled so she remembers Magneto as a kind loving father and not the asshole
that abandoned her at an asylum because he couldn’t handle her. He zooms over
and crushes the Newspaper. He tells her that Magneto was a bully that went
after a bigger bully, and to just get over it. Pietro… no, wrong impulse. Pietro
tries to tell her the truth about the memory alternations, causing Wanda’s
powers to go out of control and cause a major subway crash. She bends the
tracks and cause the subway train to jump onto the platform.
Lance, the only good one.
Outside, the X-Men see the smoke
and head over in Scott’s car to see if they can help. In the busted-up subway,
the Brotherhood kids realize that the car is going to blow as Lance spies
exposed electrical wires near a gas main. They freak out for a second, before
Pietro tell Blob to make a door. Fred rams his way through the subway cars,
creating a path for the others to follow. Lance, being the only member of their
group that is at least occasionally a good person, slows down to help escort
the other passengers from the cars. Toad tries to grab a dropped wallet; an old
man grabs onto him asking for help and he frog hops them both out of there. Lance
also stops to help an old lady. The X-Men arrive as the Brotherhood boys and
the others make it out. Lance carries out the last passenger as the cars go up.
The Brotherhood boys love the attention they’re getting from this good PR, but
Wanda walks off with a huff.
.png)
Pietro and Toad are happy, they should be concerned.
We cut over to Principal Kelly, who
is reviewing his campaign ad for Mayor of Bayville. Eddy is running on the “Mutant’s
Are Bad” platform. He wants to register Mutants and monitor them and doesn’t
for a second see how he’s literally advocating for Nazi tactics being used on American
citizen. The ad ends and it cuts to a news story about the heroic Brotherhood
Mutants. Kelly’s campaign manager immediately wants to drop the anti-Mutant
platform, but Kelly thinks they just need to change the public’s thinking.
Later, Kitty and Scott are both
annoyed at the Brotherhood’s good press. Xavier isn’t too concerned when Scott
brings the paper with the story to him, as he thinks any good press for Mutants
is good for them all. Scott points out that good press will end the moment the
Brotherhood does something stupid. Xavier still is calm, because Xavier, and
hopes that the Brotherhood boys can see the benefits of being good guys for once
and stay out of trouble.
The Brotherhood, meanwhile, has a
bunch of reporters on their front lawn and Pietro is scheming about how to make
the good press last longer. Pietro wants Wanda to talk to the press, but Wanda
(the only one with an active conscience in the group) doesn’t want to take
credit for saving people from a wreck she caused. Pietro tells her to not think
about it and step out and enjoy the ride for once. Wanda does go out but runs
back in when she gets asked a question. The old lady that Lance saved gives
them a check for $10,000 for saving her, and because her family has a big
construction company, they’re going to fix up the boarding house for them.
Rather that learn a lesson here about the rewards of good deeds, Pietro immediately
decides to turn this into a scam and rake in some cash. How a schemer as smart
as Magneto raised an idiot like Pietro… wait… no, Magneto was not an active
parent, never mind.
Later, the Brotherhood head out in
their costumes. Lance doesn’t want to do Pietro’s plan, until he points out that
it’s a gold mine and that the best part is the X-Men are going to hate this. Lance,
I’m sure still sore over the breakup with Kitty, knocks a big gargoyle off the
roof of a building which Blob catches. We get a montage of the Brotherhood causing
major and minor accidents before jumping in to save the day. Pietro tosses a
beehive at some kids, Toad eats them; Lance causes a bus to careen out of
control, Pietro and Fred save the bystanders, etc. Their house gets fixed up
with all the money they’re earning, and Scott is getting extremely frustrated about
this.
.png)
Angry Scott.
At the X-Mansion, Kurt teleports in
to show a new poll says the Brotherhood has a higher approval rating than the
police chief. Kitty bemoans the situation. Charles comes in and puts the obvious
situation together, that the Brotherhood are causing the accidents that they save
people from. Scott points out that something is going to go wrong, and Charles
suggest that they need to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Kurt tracks them that night, following
the Brotherhood to Kelly’s campaign office. He trashed them in an interview, so
they trashed his campaign office. The four boys tell Kelly to back off or else,
but before they can deliver the threat, the X-Men and New Mutant’s come in. Realizing
it’s like 3 to 1 odds against them, Pietro has the group retreat. Kelly, being
an asshole, yells at Scott, saying he’ll drive Mutants out of Bayville, one way
or another. He storms out.
Back at the house, Lance causes a
quake, breaking up their redone living room, because he’s angry at the X-Men. Pietro
draws his attention to bigger news, that they’ve been bumped to the third page
of the newspaper. … Okay, I grew up in the 00s when this show was coming out,
and the Newspaper was definitely not this important anymore. Pietro, not
wanting the gravy train to end, goes to manipulate Wanda into helping them with
their next event, a ribbon cutting ceremony at the new zoo. He uses the whole “the
X-Men didn’t help dad and now their coming after us” idea on her.
At the ribbon cutting, the X-Men
arrive to make sure the Brotherhood don’t mess things up while Pietro gives a
scathing speech about them. When he says “X-Men,” it’s a cue to Wanda to start
using her powers on the X-Men to causes their powers to go out of control. She
steals Scott’s glasses so he optic blasts everything, cause Bobby to freeze the
ground and that sort of thing. The situation caps off with several tigers
getting loose and the X-Men getting locked up for public endangerment or
something. Charles tells them to stay in their cells while he works this out.
.png)
The. Only. Good. One.
Fred and Lance think that it’s
probably time to call it quits, but Pietro wants them to pull one last job
first. It’s going to be another wreck, this time a train. Pietro runs along
side the train and fries the controls. Their plan was to run and stop the
runaway train… but I guess Pietro didn’t check the railway timetables or whatever,
and so they’re all completely shocked when they hear they set the passenger
train on a collision course with a second train carrying 8 tankers of gasoline.
Whoops. Pietro, Fred, and Toad bail, but Lance stays. The X-Men are freed, and
Charles let his people know that, yes, the Brotherhood messed up and now the
Mayor needs them to fix it. Swell.
Scott, Kitty and Kurt phase into
the passenger train. They lead the driver to the back car and Scott optic blasts
them free of the engine. Kitty stays on the engine to help. Jean personally
stops the cargo train with her telekinesis. She tries to stop the other one but
doesn’t have enough time. So, Kitty Phases the engine, trying to phase it
through the whole train. She can only get through about 3/4ths of the way,
though and the train re-solidifies and causes an explosion. Jean is able to
force the explosion back for a bit, but it’s too much energy to contain.
Thankfully, Lance arrives and buries the whole thing in a sinkhole he makes. He
tells the X-Men that is the last of the heroics and walks off.
The Brotherhood lose all their
fancy stuff and we learn via a news report an investigation is opening to
determine if they’re the cause of all the recent accidents. Pietro, still being
a dick and an idiot, suggests they take the new subway into the city. Everyone
gets mad a t him and start trying to kill him with their powers. “A simple no
would suffice!” he screams as the credits roll.
This is a fine filler episode. It showed
us how tensions are raising between Humans and Mutants and how Charles is
looking for any kind of win to help tip the balance in their favor. I like that
the show tried to remain consistent that Lance, overall, is a good person with
an attitude and a bad support system, so he genuinely helped the lady that rewarded
him, that he needed to be coaxed into doing these attacks consistently, that he
wanted out before things escalated too much and that he stayed behind to help
when Pietro screwed up royally. It’s a little thing, but I like that he hasn’t
gone full asshole. I also like that Wanda is 100% not into this either. It seems
to be a side effect of her mind getting reprogramed that she isn’t as
aggressive as she used to be and genuinely doesn’t want to use her powers to hurt
people or take credit for helping people she endangered. I have to say, after
the first three seasons, it’s weird seeing Pietro be the one to completely drop
any loyalty and love for his father the second he’s gone and Wanda being the
one in mourning. Yeah, I know, families are complicated, and Wanda literally
had her brain rewired, but I don’t know, I expect some tears or something from
Pietro. It was also interesting to see the start of Kelly’s political campaign.
It’s a long road from high school principal to US Senator, but you can see the
start. He’s a human supremist and is constantly lashing out at the one group of
Mutants that hasn’t actively tried to kill him because they won’t kill
him. Asshole. So yeh, a fun little minor consequence episode. Next time, the
return of Wolverine’s… rambunctious little clone, X-23. Have a good night.
No comments:
Post a Comment