Last time on X-Men: Evolution,
Apocalypse began his master stroke. The X-Men learned via an unwilling but abandoned
Mesmero that Apocalypse plans to use a three Pyramids set up around the world,
powered by the Sphinx in Egypt, as part of a machine that would forcibly transform
any human with a dormant X-Gene into a Mutant. The process would be fatal to millions.
Xavier, wanting to try a peaceful approach, headed out with Storm to speak with
Apocalypse. The ancient Mutant had just finished a full body makeover, using
the ships technology to turn himself into a full cyborg. Apocalypse claimed that
he is a tool of destiny and that he’ll do what he deems the world needs. When
Charles objects, he and Storm are destroyed. Nick Fury attempts to stop him
using Sentinels, a small squad to distract Apocalypse and several large ones to
attack each of the Pyramids. Apocalypse, rather annoyed by this, summons his
Horsemen and orders them to protect his Pyramids. The Horsemen are Charles Xavier,
Magneto, Storm, and Mystique, they’d each been given cybernetic upgrades to
enhance their powers and control their minds. They make short work of the
Sentinels. Logan orders his people assemble teams. Four groups of X-Men and their
allies head out to each of the Pyramids to face the Horsemen and Apocalypse to
save the world. Enough recap. Let’s get to the finale!
Go team!
The episode begins with each of the
teams heading toward their Pyramid. To recap, those teams are Jean, Piotr (Colossus),
Jaime (Multiple), Tabitha (Boom-Boom) and Amara (Magma) vs. Charles; Logan, Scott,
and Kurt vs. Mystique; Hank, Ray (Berserker), Bobby (Iceman) and Spyke vs.
Storm, and Kitty, Roberto (Sunspot), Alex (Havok), Warren (Angel), and Wanda
(Scarlet Witch) vs. Magneto. Logan gives his people a pep talk via the radio, basically
telling them that it’s do or die time. He says they’ll stop Apocalypse,
regardless of who they must go through.
Jean begins by trying to
telepathically reaching Charles, but the tech controlling his mind is too much
for her to overcome. Amara and Tabitha throw bombs and lava at Charles but he’s
too powerful to stop.
In China, Spyke tries to talk to his
aunt, but she also can’t be reached. Her weather manipulating powers are
matched by Bobby’s ice and Ray’s lightning blasts, but she’s significantly stronger
than both.
In Mexico, Wanda also tries to
talk, but let’s face it, even if he were in his right mind, Magneto would probably
ignore her. Magneto pulls Sentinel parts and uses them to try to bash his daughter,
but Kitty grabbed her and phased them through it. He then assembles a scrap
metal Sentinel and sends it at them.
Back at the Sphinx, Logan, Kurt,
and Scott enter the chamber beneath it. Logan tries to sniff out Mystique, but
her enhanced powers are too much for his senses to… well, sense. Kurt notes that
something big is powering up at the Pyramid, just as dear ol’ Ma shapeshifts
from a pool off water into her human form and grabs him. Yeah, that’s a major
power boost for her. She throws Kurt at Logan, knocking them both down. Scott
tries to optic blast her, but she just forms a hole in her stomach to dodge before
shapeshifting into a swarm of bats. Damn. The boys swat at the bats as best
they can
As this is going on, Apocalypse is
in the Eye of Ages and begins to power up his device. As he touches a
holographic display, all the Pyramids start glowing.
Back in Mexico, Magneto is holding
off the X-Men team well. Wanda, still not 100% on board with the whole “fighting
dad” thing, gets a pep talk from Kitty that she has to fight or they will
die. Why did no one try to break the mental block on her? Kitty gets hit with
debris, which gets Wanda to fight back. She blasts Magneto with her powers,
which stops his puppet, but the Pyramids start glowing and the tops of them
take off into the sky. In China, Hank explains to Spyke that he believes that
the Pyramids need to be in low orbit to have the effect Apocalypse wants.
The Pyramids enter low orbit and break
up into smaller pyramids, forming a grid around the entire planet. As Apocalypse
watches, three Sentinels fly into orbit and attempt to disrupt the web they
formed. On his Helicarrier, Fury is informed of this before going into a
private room that has Rogue waiting inside. Ominous. The Sentinels attack one
of the lesser Pyramid pieces.
In China, Bobby is able to hit Storm
and freeze her solid. Hank tells his students that it’s not over. While Pyramids
in the sky are bad, he reasons that if they can break the base units, that will
cut power to the sky pyramids. She breaks free, though, and while Evan tries to
spike her, she creates a tornado to throw them all about.
Mexico isn’t going well either, as
Magneto has a lot of metal to play with. He’s easily overpowering the X-Men with
his bits of metal, knocking Roberto down and out with some debris. But, while
he’s distracted, Kitty phases Alex through the ground to near the Pyramid base.
The younger Summers gets a blast off at it, but one of Magneto’s scrap
Sentinels see and begins to attack them.
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Jean's got her game face on.
In Eypyt, their team is trying a…
unique approach. Basically, Jaime has made dozens of clones of himself, each armed
with slingshots, Tabitha uses her powers to make little balls of explosive ammo
and he launches them at Charles. They’re basically trying to distract him to
death. Colossus makes a run at the Pyramid while they work. He gets several
hard his in, but Charles takes out the Jamie brigade and then Colossus and Amara
when she tries to defend him. Jean puts on the Cerebro remote helmet and goes
on the offensive. With her powers enhanced, she’s actually on par with Charles’
mental powers.
At the Sphinx, the boys outrun
Mystique’s bat form and block her out by sealing one of the doors. Kurt is
ordered ahead to scout. He teleports to the other side of the big doors hiding
Apocalypse’s ship… but is immediately found and knocked out by Apocalypse. Logan
orders Scott to blow the doors, but Mystique got in an knocked him out. She
then grows swords for hands and they start battling.
In orbit, the Sentinels are able to
destroy one of the relay fragments. This obviously pisses off Apocalypse, but
from his reaction this is a slight hinderance and not a checkmate issue for him.
He projects his face to and orders Magneto into space to take care of this.
Once he is gone, Wanda gets up, but she’s the only member of her group still
active. She tries to get Kitty to help her destroy the bases unit but she’s out
of it. As Magneto destroys the Sentinels, Wanda blasts at the beam of energy
that is powering the relays. Magneto quickly returns and prepares to crush Wanda
with Sentinel parts. Wanda begs for her life, but Magneto drops the debris anyway.
Thank God her twin has superspeed, as Pietro runs her out of the way at the
last second. The other Brotherhood boys arrive, Toad explaining that they stole
a jet, got lost but still arrived in time. Magneto tries to throw the jet they
stole at them, but Blob catches it. Seeing his on-again-off-again girlfriend
down really pisses off Lance, whom after an order from Pietro causes the ground
to basically eat Magneto.
At the Sphinx, Apocalypse is once
again laying in the Eye of Ages like he was found last season. He announces that
“And the Evolution begins.” He powers on the device and his Pyramid relays turn
black as they envelop the sky. Storms begin all over the planet as the machine
works. And from his cries, the process is rather painful for Apocalypse too.
Mystique overpowers Logan and tosses him through a hole in the ground.
Meanwhile, Jean and Charles battle
with their astral selves. Jean puts up a good fight but Charles appears to be
the strong for several moments. That is until Jean’s astral self turns into a
bird of some kind and overwhelms Charles. She forces his astral self back into
him and he drops. They both drop, but Charles gets back up to attack again.
In Mexico, Toad asks if they won
just before Magneto attacks them with the propeller of the plane. And in China,
Storm unleashes a massive lightning blast, Ray absorbs it and tries to redirect
the lightning, but Storm just increases the rain fall to short him out. Hank
radios into Logan that they aren’t going to make it, but Logan tells him they need
to keep fighting as they have one more play left. And then Mystique turns into
Cobras and leapt at him.
The play begins as a helicopter
drops down beside the one already outside the Sphinx. Rogue, along with Fury,
Sam (Cannonball) and the Leeches have arrived. Rogue absorbs Dorian Leech’s power
and then heads into the Sphinx, using Sam as a jetpack essentially. Inside, Mystique
changes into a panther and attacks Logan, but Rogue hits her with a wave of disruption,
turning her back to normal. Logan cuts her a way into Apocalypse’ chamber and
she runs in. He tries to follow but Mystique pulls him back in.
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| I'm sure we won't see him again... |
Rogue blasts the entire Eye of Ages
device with Dorian’s negation wave. It disrupts Apocalypse’ entire grid, and
the technology he was using to control his Horsemen. They each drop with
varying degrees of drama. Rogue, saying that he’s used them for the last time,
seals Apocalypse back into the Eye of Ages. Apocalypse, drained from attempting
his big play like he had tried thousands of years ago, only can flop around feebly.
Logan helps her seal the Eye and then Rogue turns the power back on. The ship
takes off, Logan slashing the controls in an attempt to keep it from coming
back. They’re hoping that that’s the end of Apocalypse, but Rogue isn’t sure
they’re that lucky. They all limp from the Sphinx, Scott asks Logan if they
stopped him in time, and Logan says he thinks so. Mystique attempts to
rationalize her actions to her children, but both Kurt and Rogue aren’t going
to listen to her anymore. They tell her to leave them alone, and they teleport
off supporting each other. That’s sweet.
Everyone begins to recover. In
Mexico, Magneto is helped up by his children and they make for the jets. In China,
Storm and Evan hug it out while the others nod in approval. And in Egypt, Charles
gets the collar off his neck just as Jean levitates him to his full height so she
can hug him. That’s really sweet.
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No good comes from huge squads of robots.
We cut to everyone gathered at the gazebo
back at the X-Mansion. Charles congratulates everyone for their accomplishment today
but says it’s not without its cost. He reveals that he was able to see some of
the future while he was tied to Apocalypse. He lets his team know that they’ll
face challenge, more adversity in the form of public outcry is a big one. But,
he did see that “some who had been our enemies become friends” and we see
Magneto leading a training session with the New Mutants. Neat. He then
continues, “And with a heavy heart, I saw the dearest of friends become the most
terrible of enemies” and we see Jean transform into the Dark Phoenix. That is significantly
less neat. We’re shown a moment with the X-Men, that Laura (X-23) will join up
with them, and somehow Rogue gains the flight that her comic counterpart is
famous for. The Brotherhood plus Pyro will go on to work for SHIELD. And the
Sentinels will be a problem in the future, lead by Nimrod (that used to mean great
hunter before Bugs Bunny, he’s really scary). Charles says that his X-Men will always
be there, ready to face what is to come, and that he’s proud of them. The final
shot is of the X-Men, New Mutants, Angel, Havok, Gambit, Colossus and X-23 in a
big group shot. I’m tearing up a little watching it.
Okay, that was a great finale. The
action was top notch, the fights well designed and the tension high. We
logically know that Apocalypse will be stopped, but there’s a while there where
you don’t know who may or may not make it. Granted, kid show, so the odds of
permanent death are also low… but I’ve seen kids shows with body counts. Watch Beast
Wars sometime if you don’t believe me, they killed at least 10 characters
by the end. The Jean v. Charles fight I thought was particularly well done, as
it became a battle off souls, as it were, and that it’s the first hint of the
Phoenix in Jeans future. The show runners have said that had they been renewed
for another season, the next big bad would have been Dark Phoenix. And while
Jean is… insane… Scott and Rogue would have tried to see where their
relationship could go. Shame we didn’t get to see that play out. Apocalypse’s
end I thought was also well done. The foreshadowing here was well done. The
last season finale set up that Apocalypse would be weakened by using the device,
as even his substantial power is pushed to the limit to affect the whole
planet. Dorian is introduced a few episodes back and is shown to have the
extreme potency to stop things like a rampaging Mutant or highly advanced
technology. And Rogue has been used pretty much since episode 3 onward by someone
or something, so obviously she’d be itching to beat the one guy that used her
the worst. Some might think that just sort of… banishing Apocalypse is a copout…
but honestly, you don’t beat Apocalypse. Unless you’re Nathan Summers aka
Cable. Everyone else just must hope to survive him and find a way to delay him.
The flashforward from Charles I think was a very nice way to end it all. It
ties up a few loose ends, gives us an idea of where the characters go from
here, and some hope that, while we won’t see it, that the X-Men: Evolution
team will just keep going. It’s a nice note to end on.
And with that, we’re done with X-Men:
Evolution. I hope you see why it was that I decided to devote a few years
and 52 posts towards this show. It was a fun spin on the X-Men that I near and dear
to my heart. I think X-Men: The Animated Series is remembered more fondly
by most, but this show was nothing to sneeze at either. It had some unique ideas,
a few fun twists on old stories, and a final confrontation worthy of that name.
If you have just been reading along with me, I highly recommend you trying this
series out on your own. There are some things that just come out cleaner when
viewed and not typed. Have a good night everyone.
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