Enter Magneto.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, the X-Men suffered heavy losses. After successfully infiltrating the
Mutant Control Agency’s headquarters and destroying their files on Mutants registered
with the group, their escape was complicated by Sentinels. The giant robots seemingly
killed Morph and captured Beast while the other X-Men fled. Jubilee, meanwhile,
was kidnapped by Henry Gyrich, one of the men in charge of the Sentinel program
and taken to their assembly line in Detroit for questioning. After shifting
blame around a bit, the X-Men regrouped and chased after a damaged Sentinel to
find their base. The X-Men scare off Gyrich and Bolivar Trask but the two evade
capture. They free Jubilee, who ends up moving to the Mansion full time. Enough
recap. Let’s get to it.
The episode opens at the prison
that is currently holding Beast. He’s doing as well as one can, catching up on
his reading as guards jeer at him. They’re stopped by all the lights in the
facility blowing out. One is left to watch Beast while the others go to
investigate. Holes are blown in their perimeter fence. The guard orders Beast
to call his ‘Friend.’ Beast assumes its
Wolverine until a hole is ripped into his wall and all the metal is pulled
towards the hole. We’re introduced to Magneto. Beast acts like this is his first-time
meeting Magneto, but I believe this is retconned later on when showing the
original team in flashbacks. But more on that some other time. Magneto tells Beast
to move quickly, but Beast refuses. He and Charles decided it would be better
for him to wait for his day in court and pitch his case. Magneto is baffled by
this, saying that Charles will leave him to rot in prison. Beast is confident
that they’ll win and get a victory for Mutant rights. The guards start shooting
at them, Magneto throwing up an electromagnetic barrier to stop them. Beast
insists the trial is necessary. Magento says that the humans must be crushed
and he has the power to do it. He uses his magnetism to throw up another barrier
around himself and then to obliterate their tanks.
We cut out to Charles and Jubilee
watching the attack, as it’s going to be played on the nightly news. Jubilee
asks who he is. Charles gives him a brief (edited) version of their history.
After a (vague, but definitely WWII) war, Charles and a man named Magnus worked
at a hospital working to help the civilian survivors of the conflict. Charles
covertly used his mental powers to help patients with PTSD. Remnants of the rebel
army (Nazis) survived and attacked the hospital in an attempt to retake his
small country (Poland). They saved the patients they could and revealed their
powers to each other. Magnus didn’t stop at helping the civilians, he aimed to
kill the soldiers (Nazis) because he lost his family in the conflict (WWII, the
Holocaust). Magnus calls Charles a fool for looking into peaceful coexistence,
he says they can’t even peacefully coexist with other humans. He redubbed himself
Magneto and began waging a war on mankind. Charles drove him back, but it seems
like now he’s returned. You’ll notice that Charles freely uses his powers
against Magneto. Like the Xavier School not being an actual School until after
the 2000 movie, Magneto’s helmet was a fashion choice at this time, only
becoming a shield against Charles’ mental attacks after the movie. Jubilee says
that the X-Men are here now and will stand against him.
At the courthouse, Beast is brought
in, Scott and Logan watching from the crowd. The District Attorney pushes to
deny Beast bail, but his attorney insists that they are only asking for that because
he’s a Mutant. Beast pleads his own case, saying that Mutants only want to live
in peace and quotes Shakespeare to prove his point. “If you prick us, do we not
bleed?” The judge tells him to get to the point. Beast says that two days
before the “incident” at the MCA building, eleven Mutants were captured after registering
with them. He doesn’t say this was in retaliation for those kidnappings, but
the implication is there. The District Attorney says that Beast is just trying
to justify his actions. The Judge orders Beast to be held without bail, given
the violence of his original offense and then the escape attempt. The bailiff
begins to take Beast out of the courtroom, Scott stopping Logan from causing a
scene when a scene is in fact caused by another angry Mutant, Sabretooth. Sabretooth
demands they let Beast go but he’s blasted by guards. Scott goes to stop him,
saying they’ll kill him. Logan just says “good,” and crosses his arms. Scott
saves Sabretooth with his optic beams.
At the X-Mansion, Charles is using
Cerebro to find Magneto but comes up dry when Storm and Jubilee join him. They get Scott’s alert that they’re coming in
with an injured Mutant. They bring Sabretooth in, and Cyclops gives Charles what
he knows, just that he started rampaging when Beast was denied bail, and that Wolverine
hates him. They see Wolverine head for the infirmary and go to talk with him.
He tries to remove Sabretooth, but the others stop him, saying they need to
help any injured Mutant. Logan keeps insisting that Sabretooth can’t be trusted
and that he needs to be taken out of the mansion. Storm comes in and points out
that some of the others thought that about him too when he first arrived. She
points out his rage is like Wolverine’s. They get an alert that someone is
attacking a missile base. He orders them to go after Magneto, saying he knows Magnus,
and this is his MO. Wolverine leaves Sabretooth, but asks Charles why they have
to trash his enemy but spare Wolverine’s.
At the base, Magneto is wrecking
shop, saying that he’ll use Mankind’s greatest weapons against them. He heads
to the launch control and announces that Mutant Liberation begins. He hits the
facility with his magnetic waves and triggers the launch procedure. The X-Men,
Storm, Cyclops and Wolverine, arrive to wreck shop. The soldiers are ordered to
abandon the base when it’s revealed that Magneto is keeping the circuits connected.
He confronts the X-Men and says that he’s happy they’ve come to join him. They
refuse and the fight breaks out. He announces that it’s better for them to die
on their feet than to die on their knees. He tells them to tell Charles he’s
stronger than before and to warn Charles that his dream of peaceful coexistence
will become a nightmare. They rush to stop the missiles, but they go off. Storm
flies off, intending to blow up the missiles with her lightning. Charles
reaches out to her telepathically and tells her where to strike that will stop
them without killing herself. She uses a cyclone to redirect them to the water
and then shorts out the warheads with lighting. That much precise control seems
to overwhelm her, and she passes out. Wolverine catches her. They fall back. As
they fly away, Magneto watches and asks why Charles turned against their own
kind like this.
This was a great introductory episode
to two of the most well-known X-Men villains, more so for Magneto than
Sabretooth, but having the big furball throw a courthouse hissy fit is
memorable. Fun fact, Sabretooth in X-Men: The Animated Series is played
by Don “Iron Buffalo” Francks. He was the first person to voice Boba Fett for
some of the early 80s Star Wars animated projects and is the father of voice
acting super star Cree Summer. Trust me, if you don’t recognize the name, look
it up, because she’s probably played a memorable character from your childhood.
We don’t get a lot of him here, but we’ll see more of him later. The small dip
into Wolverine’s past. Granted, a lot of Wolverine’s history is a mystery even
to him but knowing that there’s this one guy that he wants dead enough he
almost went against Charles’ decision says a lot, me thinks. Onto Magneto. I
loved Magneto in this series. He’s the perfect representation of the character,
intelligent, eloquent, filled with justifiable hatred, all the stuff needed to
make a great antagonist. He’s played by David Hemblen, who gives all the right
charisma vibes when Magneto is making impassioned speeches. I also like the choice
to add a visual element to his powers for this series. See, every other version
of Magneto I’ve seen usually does just a sound cue or the visual of metal moving
to show when Magneto is using his powers. X-Men: The Animated Series is
the only one that I know of that will show the magnetic waves coming from Magneto’s
hands when he uses his powers, or the electromagnetic barrier he throws up around
himself for protection or flight. Is that true to life? No, but I think it’s a
good visual reminder that what he’s doing is different from telekinesis. The
show also captures the moral grey area that Magneto thrives in. Is he the
villain of the episode? Without question. But he only revealed himself to free,
whom he sees, as an unjustly imprisoned Mutant, and it’s only after another demonstration
of his people being subjugated that he decides to retaliate. He’s a shade of,
let’s say black-gray in their world. He’ll often stray to the more negative
side but the logic of ‘we need to get them before they get us,’ does make a lot
of sense, particularly for a Holocaust survivor. He’s a powerful foe and it’ll
be fun to see how the X-Men stop him in part two. See you then.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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