Wolverine is pissed and I feel sorry for anyone he turns that rage on.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, we met the team. Teen foster child Jubilation “Jubilee” Lee was
outed by her foster father to the Mutant Control Agency (MCA) believing that it
was an outreach program to help Mutant teens. It was, instead, a means of developing
a database of Mutants to sic their new Sentinel security robots at. Jubilee is
hunted by a Sentinel to the local mall. She would have been captured there but
is saved by the X-Men, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, and Cyclops. She’s taken to the X-Mansion
after being knocked out and introduced to the rest of the team, Beast, Morph,
Jean Gray, Wolverine and Charles Xavier. She’s taken to the roof by Storm and
gets the standard spiel about Mutants, no one knows where they come from or
what causes them, they have fantastic powers, and the X-Men do their best to protect
Mutants and encourage human/Mutant relations. The X-Men prepare to attack the
MCA facility and destroy their database to protect Mutants from the Sentinels. Jubilee
runs off to check on her foster parents but is captured by Sentinels and their
handler, Henry Gyrich. The X-Men reach the facility, Storm, Morph, Beast and
Wolverine doing the main infiltration and the other’s hanging back for backup.
Things go well, but Cyclops is anxious. A feeling proven correct when an
armored troop transport rolls up and we see a battalion of guards waiting to
ambush the X-Men. Oh no. Enough Recap. Let’s get to it.
We open on the Mutant Control
Agency Building in DC. Cyclops repeats his worry as the transport rolls up and
the others walk up to the trap. Wolverine, though, smells the gun oil and keeps
Storm from opening the door. She instead throws a cyclone at it, blasting the
guards back. Beast mentions that he used to wonder how she got her nickname.
Outside, the troop transports open up and dozens of guards come out. Looks like
this was a set up. Cyclops blasts one of them, ordering the others to stop them
but not to hurt anyone. Gambit says he should really tell them that before
getting to work.
Inside, Morph tricks the guards into
leaving the station by shapeshifting into their commander and saying they need
to report to duty and then locking them out of the file room. Beast hacks the
computer to destroy the data and Storm and Wolverine break into hard files
filing cabinet to get the rest.
We flash to Detroit, Michigan,
where Jubilee is being held at a Black site. Gyrich is holding her hostage and
wants to know about the people who helped her at the mall. He wants her to give
him whatever information she has on the X-Men. He’s interrupted in his
interrogation by Bolivar Trask, the scientist developing the Sentinels. He
yells at Gyrich for acting too soon, saying that their plan was to wait until
they had 100 Sentinels prepared to strike at the Mutants. Gyrich says he’s
working too slow and needed a test case to show how easy it will be to capture Mutants.
They’re interrupted by Gyrich getting a call about the attack.
The outer team holds off the guards,
Rogue dumping a ton of them into a nearby river and Gambit and Cyclops blasting
others, when Cyclops radios into Storm to get a move on. Inside, they’ve destroyed
the hard copies of the files and are just waiting on Beast to finish the
computer files. He has a virus prepped, but Storm just blows it to pieces,
saying they don’t have time. She radios Cyclops and he calls for a retreat.
They make for the Blackbird. They
break a few guard towers and shatter a fence on their way out. Morph, rather
stupidly, says that it’ll be clear sailing all the way. Just before a Sentinel
jumps them. Weird how often these 2-Story robots keep doing that. Wolverine
goes to tackle one, and doesn’t notice
two others creeping up on him. Morph shouts for Wolverine to pull back and
jumps in the way-. We cut over to Jean and Charles, Jean is using the X-Men’s
supercomputer Cerebro to monitor the team when she screams in pain. Charles
asks her what’s wrong and she says it’s Morph. He grabs the helmet that
connects to Cerebro and puts it on, saying he can’t sense… anything.
That’s right, they killed off a
character despite the limitations of Fox Kids censorship. It’s wild.
The rest of the team return to the
X-Mansion. Storm ends up crying right away and Wolverine follows after Cyclops
to sock him in the gut. He says that next time he will use the claws. They
nearly fight but Jean comes in and stops them. He accuses Cyclops of leaving
Morph and Beast behind when they could be alive. She says that Beast is, but
Morph isn’t. Wolverine storms off in a rage as Jean hugs Cyclops. He goes to
his jeep and nearly drives off but gets out to slice the top off Cyclops’ car. Jean
goes to talk to him, and he says that he made Cyclops a convertible. She tells him
it's not Cyclops’ fault, or his but Logan storms off. He drives off and has a
flashback.
We see Morph knocking him out of
the way of a Sentinel blast. Another one hits Beast and knocks him into an electric
fence. Rogue tries to go after Beast but is shot down, and Wolverine gets
thrown back by more Sentinels. They get swarmed by Sentinels, Cyclops ordering
the group to pull back. Wolverine tries to refuse but Rogue knocks him out with
a touch to stop him. He has enough time to groan that they shouldn’t leave the
others before passing out. In the present, Wolverine finds a rock and vows vengeance.
Back at the facility, the Sentinel
tries to take Beast into custody, but the guards refuse to turn him over,
saying the Sentinels were sent in to help not take over. Beast sobs at the
death of his friend. He’s taken into custody. Gyrich tries to interrogate him
but Beast refuses, hanging from the ceiling and crying over Morph’s death.
We cut to a news report from the
lady president, weird how that still hasn’t been a thing, reporting that renegade
Mutants attacked the MCA last night but were thwarted by “experimental robot
policemen” the Sentinels.
Meanwhile, Logan (Wolverine without
his costume) is playing pool at a bar when Robert Kelly comes on TV to comment
on the Sentinel attack. He tells the bartender to turn that stuff off, two locals
stop him from playing. He does the Wolverine thing of extending his claws to
threaten them. Before a fight can break out, Scott (Cyclops sans costume)
arrives and says they need to talk. The patrons go to fight him too, knock off
his glasses and Scott obliterates a pool table before they give them back.
Outside, Wolverine tells him to buzz off. Scott says that he doesn’t apologize
for command decisions, and instead asks if he’d be willing to find the Sentinel
Base. Logan says when and where.
At the White House, Gyrich goes
into a meeting with Madam President. She congratulates him and Trask for their
work on the Sentinels, but that he must suspend all work with the MCA for the
time being. When he asks why, she says the Mutants were willing to die to stop
him and asks if he thinks they had a reason for that. Gyrich storms out calling
her a fool and throwing his folder aside. He gets a call from someone, revealed
to be Jubilee’s foster dad, who is ordered to keep “him” there as long as possible.
“Him” turns out to be Scott, having
stopped by to inform them of what has happened to Jubilee. He’s shocked to hear
that his daughter might have been kidnapped by the Sentinels and tells Scott that
he called Gyrich, as he was told to do that if anyone came asking about
Jubilee. Scott tells him he did nothing wrong since he was looking after
Jubilee. Scott leaves the house and is immediately jumped by a Sentinel. It
orders him to surrender, Scott says “Of Course… NOT!” and then blasts off its
arm before running. The Sentinel loudly announces it’s falling back for repairs
and the X-Men follow it on the Blackbird’s radar. The Sentinel falls back to
Detroit, apparently never looking behind it the entire flight back.
We see Trask assembling another
Sentinel on the assembly line when Gyrich comes in. He tells Trask to shut it
down, as the President might be gunning for the Sentinels soon, they’re falling
back to an overseas assembly facility. He says this right as the damaged
Sentinel flies in for repairs, but it’s power cuts out and it slams into the
reactor. That shuts down the system holding Jubilee, allowing her to free
herself. She makes a break for it but gets cornered by Sentinels. Cyclops tells
her to duck and takes out a Sentinel. The X-Men all start attacking Sentinels,
their powers overwhelming the bulky machines. Wolverine stabs one to death,
shouting that this one is for Morph. They take out the rest of the Sentinels
and fall back.
We see Jubilee saying goodbye to
her foster parents. She loves them, saying they’re the best fosters she had but
the Xavier school is a better fit for her right now. She promises to visit them
though. At the mansion, Cyclops asks if he did the right thing leaving Morph
and Beast and Jean says he did what he had to do. The episode ends with Jubilee
arriving at the Mansion.
So, this is perhaps the first death
of my television viewing experience. The fact that Morph was killed, almost on
screen, was a big deal back in the 90s where Fox Kids once censored the
Sinister Six from Spider-Man: The Animated Series. This just wasn’t
something that was done back in the day. And before anyone points out that Morph
is clearly alive now in X-Men ’97, here’s a bit of history for ya. Kevin
Sydney aka Morph aka Changeling was a minor X-Men antagonist turned ally that
was killed in the comics shortly after his introduction. The entire
reason he was brought into this show was to kill him off to show that the show
was edgy or more ‘mature’ than other kids cartoon. But Morph proved to be such
a popular character despite his limited screentime that he was revived for
season 2, but we’ll get to that when we get to it. So yeah, Morph, so popular he
resurrected himself, twice, in two different media. Speaking of, Wolverine
having basically a fit that his friends were left behind is a good character
moment for him. It feels like other adaptations of the character prefer the
grumpy loner look and take much longer to get to the ‘reveal’ that he actually
cares deeply about the X-Men and gets upset when his friends are hurt. Beast’s
arrest was something of a surprise as well. Like, you don’t expect that kind of
real-world consequences to being a vigilante superhero in superhero shows. Beast
will be in prison for most of the first season, with his trial for the raid on
the MCA building being a major plot point. The Sentinels, while not defeated, have
been taken off the board for now and I think they tied the plot point up
nicely. Sure, Trask can and will just keep making more of the giant machines,
but the assembly process for those things seems to be a very labor-intensive
process. Why, one would need a designated factory or… some sort of… supreme… copier?
No, a Master Mold, who’s sole purpose was to churn out Sentinels to make as
many robots as they need. Also, referring to the Sentinels as “robot police” in
the year of our lord 2024 feels… prescient, now doesn’t it? Okay, so the
Sentinels are in retreat, Jubilee has been recruited, Morph mourned, now all we
need is to get Beast out of prison. Easy peasy. Or is it? We’ll find out next
time.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101140814
Twitter: @BasicsSuphero
No comments:
Post a Comment