Viewer Log: X-Men: Evolution ep 46

 Who's ready for a good old fashion game of cat and mouse? 

Last time on X-Men: Evolution, the Brotherhood boys did something stupid. Yes, I know that sums up pretty much all of season one, but this stupid thing had greater than average consequences. Wanda, emotional after her father’s death and Pietro being a dick, caused a slight subway car accident. The Brotherhood accidentally helped save several people from the crash, were rewarded for it, and immediately turned to faking accidents for cash and publicity. Things spiraled out from there, with Pietro convincing Wanda to use her powers to force the X-Men to cause some property damage and be thrown in jail. When the Brotherhood decides to quit their con, Pietro convinces them to go out with one last job, stopping a runaway train. But Mr. Does Everything Fast forgot to check the train schedule and sent the train they were going to “save” hurtling toward another. The X-Men are released and stop it, with a little help from Lance who is the only Brotherhood boy with a conscience these days. The Brotherhood lose all their fame and credibility and things go back to normal. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it.

 

Wolvy is not gonna have a good day.

The episode opens with Logan reading the newspaper with Bobby, Ray and Jamie begging him to come in and teach their Mutant class today. They’re dreading this new one as it’s the first class being taught by Scott and Jean, and it sounds insanely boring. “The Application of Physics within the strategic use of Mutant Powers” is a very dumb name, not going to lie. Logan isn’t interested as he’s busy and he thinks that his old pupils might have something to teach the new ones. He goes to his motorcycle but smells something is off. Someone is watching him from a distance and seeing to his metallic skeleton. He follows the scent to a back alley where someone is watching from above. He then gets jumped as metal whips break through a wall, grab him, and slap a disk that shocks him on his forehead. Oh, hey, Omega Red is in this one!

 

We cut to Jean and Scott as they head to the classroom to teach their class. Jean is excited, Scott apprehensive. Scott is ultimately proven right as the door opens and he’s hit by a cannonballing Sam as he rockets around, and the rest of the room is in chaos.

 

A very odd couple indeed.

Logan, meanwhile, wakes up in a cell, handcuffed to the ground. He slices himself free of the chains and makes an exit out the side of the room he’s in, only to realize at the last second that he’s in a low flying plane. Two HYDRA goons come in and shoot him. You can tell they’re HYDRA goons thanks to the obvious HYDRA logos on their uniforms. Logan is launched from the side of the plane and has a comedic over the top fall that would kill anyone without healing powers. Two HYDRA goons land a short time later, they’re Omega Red, a large blonde Russian man with extendable whips in his arms, and Gauntlet, a bald man with either a cybernetic eye or monocle goggle over a normal eye. They start tracking Logan.

 

Logan drags himself from the river he ended up in. His healing powers kept him alive, but he’s so badly beaten up that his recovery speed is substantially lower than normal. Gauntlet takes a shot at him and Logan stumbles away. He tries to hide in a hollowed-out tree, but Omega Red finds him via his cables and drags him out. He says he’s ‘Been waiting for this a long time, Weapon X.” When Logan doesn’t recognize him, this pisses Red off. He says he won’t fall for Logan’s “games” this time and this time he’ll leave Logan broken and suffering. What an intense backstory we’re being fed here. Gauntlet keeps Red from killing Logan, saying they have a job to do. Suddenly, X-23 leaps in and kicks both their asses before pulling her sort-of-Dad up and running with him. Gauntlet and Red get up, Gauntlet radioing to HYDRA command that X-23 is in play.

 

X-23… okay, I’m just going to call her Laura, because saying X-23 repeatedly is awkward. She isn’t named this in Evolution, but it’s her comic canon name so I’m using it. Laura pulls Logan along, throws him to the ground and then demands to know what he’s doing here. Logan says he’s just as surprised to see her and asks what’s going on. Laura tells him to get out of here and starts storming off. Logan follows his progeny. A short walk later, Laura points out he should be healed already, but Logan’s body has taken a severe beating, so it’s not surprising it’s taking a while. As they walk, Gauntlet and Red are still tracking them. Logan asks Laura why she left the institute that night and reveals he looked for her all night. She says she left to protect him, to keep him safe from HYDRA, and SHIELD. She knows they want to use her, and she doesn’t want her sort-of dad and his friends getting hurt. They smell their pursuers on the wind and Laura finds the tracker they left on Logan’s boot. She tells him to run, but he’s not leaving her again.

 

Meanwhile, Scott and Jean try to teach their lesson, but they have trouble teaching kids that are just barely younger than them. The plight of all student teachers. The kids cause a ruckus, the tip of the iceberg being Jean discovering that Bobby left an ice sculpture in his place, and everyone runs off to “find him.”

Father-daughter relationships are complicated 
at the best times, and this is certainly not that.

 

Logan and Laura do their best to outsmart Red and Gauntlet, staying just ahead of them. There’s a funny bit where Red grapples with something in the bushes, which turns out to be A wolverine not THE Wolverine. Logan realizes that they’re being led into a trap. Laura doesn’t believe it. Logan tries to convince her to trust his instincts and experience if she wants to stay free. Laura admits she knows she can only be free if she’s dead. Logan tells her that he’s living proof that you can get passed the kind of messed up stuff being a living weapon does to people, but Laura doesn’t have much hope. They walk a while longer, and into a trap. The trail they followed had led to a small canyon of some kind. Laura apologizes for not listening to Logan and Gauntlet takes a shot at them. They get forced into a canyon as HYDRA soldiers arrive. They’re surrounded. Laura tries to go for Gauntlet, but he hits them with a sonic blaster that knocks them both out.

 

Later, they’re brought via flying fortress to the HYDRA base. Logan is kept separate from Laura by Omega Red as he’s introduced to the leader of this branch of HYDRA. She’s called Madam Hydra here, but most Marvel fans will probably know her better as Viper. Madam Hydra tells Logan that Laura is back where she belongs, with HYDRA the people that own her. Logan asks why they can’t leave her alone. Madam Hydra reveals that Laura is the one that wouldn’t leave them alone. Our favorite little assassin has been on a campaign to destroy their bases. That’s daddy’s girl! She’s been dodging all their traps and methods of tracking until they used Logan as bait. They’re going to wipe her mind and reset her to killer setting. We see a video of her being wheeled to a lab with one of the shock disks on her forehead. Madam Hydra leaves to check on her project, leaving Logan to Omega Red per their agreement. In the lab, the scientist that is going to do that wipe notices that she has the shock disk on her forehead and complains that he told Gauntlet not to use that on her as it could interfere with the wipe. Omega Red, once alone with Logan, tells him that he deserves what’s about to happen to him. Him and all his Weapon X comrades. He lists off Logan’s old team, Sabretooth, Maverick, and Wraith, and that he’s going to kill them all. Logan goads him into attack, Red throws his chair around, allowing Logan to get free and knock him out. He escapes and stabs the door, locking Red inside.

 

The scientist calls Gauntlet to yell at him for using the disk on Laura, finds out Gauntlet did not, in fact, use the disk and Laura snaps her eyes open. Oh, she’s as dramatic as her old man. Alarms blare as Logan runs down the hall, following Laura’s trail of destruction. He finds her and tells her they need to run, but she reveals that she’d been trying to get in here the whole time. She wants to kill Madam Hydra for the whole coating her bones in metal thing. She tells him to leave, and they’re interrupted by Omega Red arriving to attack Logan again. She tells Logan to run, as he doesn’t have much time as she throws timed explosives everywhere. Madam Hydra is advised to leave as they see her rampage. Logan fights Omega Red for a few minutes, knocking him out by stabbing one of his carbonatium coils into a junction box, electrocuting him.

 

Oh, I hate her face.

Madam Hydra takes off in her floating fortress as Logan runs out. He sees Laura climbing up the side and goes after her. She asks him to let her go, he says it doesn’t have to be like this, and she says it has to and she kicks him free. Laura goes to confront Madam Hydra. She accuses Madam Hydra of making her into a weapon and that she’s going to get payback. Gauntlet comes in to try to stop her, but Laura throws a whole bunch of the bombs around and smirks at Madam Hydra as their timer clicks down. Logan, back on the ground, see the explosion going off and the ship crash.

 

…

 

They treat this like a tragic death thing… even though Laura is, for all intents and purposes, a clone of James Logan “I regenerated once from my skeleton” Howlett.

 

SHIELD Agents arrive. They take Omega Red into custody as Fury goes to speak with Logan. Fury asks where Laura went, and Logan says she didn’t make it. As he goes onto the copter to return home, though, he gets her scent on the breeze and smiles. We see Laura smile at the copter as it leaves and run off into the wilderness. See, that death fake out was kind of a pointless moment.

 

We cut back to the Scott and Jean teaching the New Mutants. Bobby points out that he’s practically an X-Man already, so why does he need this stuff? Jean and Scott demonstrate how knowing some physics might help with power use… by Jean levitating everyone and Scott using a focused optic blast that bounce off stuff and around the kids to slice an apple in half. That is impressive. Logan, watching from the door, smiles and walks off.  

 

I really enjoy X-23 episodes. Shame this is the last one. Laura does have a cameo appearance but this the last story about Logan’s female clone. The bonding a little while on a survival chase thing is a solid story for two characters that are living embodiments of wild people. Laura is as short tempered, angry, and generally pissed off as her old man, and it’s nice to have an episode where she can talk a little more. This episode also did a nice big of worldbuilding with the introduction of Omega Red and his ties to Logan’s past. Briefest of summaries, Omega Red is another Mutant enhanced to be a living weapon, the product of the Weapon X program of the former USSR. He and Logan have faced off and on for years and in this continuity, they battled while Logan was the Weapon X. Sabretooth is an established character, obviously, but Maverick and Wraith are other former members of that group. Red feeds us just information to know that 1. Logan has a colorful past, 2. He pissed off someone really powerful like Omega Red, and 3. He and Sabretooth used to get along. At least well enough to work together. We don’t get much more than that, unfortunately, but I’d like to think that if this season had had a higher episode count or they’d gotten a season 5 that more of Logan’s former team would have shown up. Oh, and the Scott and Jean teach a lesson story is just such a B plot. Like the worst one since Kitty and her pyramid hat thing. Just kind of a waste of time that might have been better served showing more of Logan and Laura together. It feels like it’s there because X-Men: Evolution isn’t allowed to have an episode focused solely on one of the adult heroes without it connecting to a teen X-Man. Or something. And that’s all I really have to say about that. Next time, the gang heads to Ireland to meet someone they’re not prepared to handle… David Haller… aka David Xavier… AKA Legion. Oh no. Have a good night. 

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