Bishop to Queen Four, Queen Four being 1992.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, Apocalypse revealed himself.
The Ancient Mutant used his machine and the shapeshifting Mystique to
recruit three additional Mutants to work with Archangel to serve as his
Horsemen. He unleashed his Horsemen to attack a UN Disarmament Peace Summit and
ended up really killing the mood. The X-Men fight back the Horsemen in Paris
while Rogue goes back to Dr. Adler,
Mystique’s assumed identity that was touting a Mutant “cure.” She forced
Mystique to reveal herself and Apocalypse’ base of operations, a bunker under
Stonehenge. The ret of the team found the location by following Archangel and
the Horsemen when they retreated. The X-Men fought Apocalypse and his minions
to a standstill, Rogue grabbing Archangel and draining the evil out of him with
her touch. With Archangel’s help, they drove Apocalypse and his Horsemen back.
Archangel wished Rogue good luck carrying that darkness she drew out of him.
Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
The episode opens in New York in
the year 2055. The city is burnt out ruin with Sentinels patrolling the skies.
We see a group of Morlocks leaving the sewers scrounging for supplies, led by a
very old and half crazed Wolverine. The group is ambushed by a pair of
Sentinels, but the two new Mutants take them out in a few seconds, a third
nearly gets them but old Logan leaps at the last one and takes it out.
Wolverine complains that he’s finally getting old just as a Mutant Tracker
arrives. This is Bishop, a Mutant currently working for the Sentinel occupation
force. It’ll make sense later. He’s got an M branded over his right eye to show
off his Mutant status. He attacks the group, using his energy rifle to take the
two kids out and then Logan. He announces that he’s “scratched three rebels” as
Wolverine passes out.
We cut to Bishop driving his
captured bounties to an internment camp. Wolverine wakes up and asks if he
knows Bishop from somewhere. Bishop has no idea what he’s talking about and
tells him to not try to butter Bishop up for special treatment at the camp.
Wolverine tries to tell Bishop that he’s just accelerating the inevitable, that
the Sentinels will start wiping out the Mutant collaborators once they have the
rebels taken care of. Bishop says that the Sentinels treat everyone else just
fine, they just want to wipe out the rebel. Bishop gets his ID card out and
demands he get his payment. The Sentinels on guard announce that Bishop has hit
his Mutant capture quota and is now going to be executed with the others. Damn,
that was a quick turnaround.
Bishop and Wolverine are forced to
carry the unconscious kids along with them. Wolverine asks Bishop what he
thinks about the retirement policy and Bishop tells him to shut up. Wolverine’s
teen starts waking up, but he tells her to play possum. They reach a row of
headstones for the X-Men. Most of the team made it to the 2020s and beyond,
except Jubilee who died in 2010. Wolverine growls, and Bishop shakes hiss head
at the Legendary X-Men. The Sentinels order that they get moving and Wolverine
and company attack. They fight the Sentinel’s back, Wolverine shouting at
Bishop to help them. Wolverine is nearly crushed to death, but Bishop unleashes
his power, redirecting energy blasts to free him. Wolverine thanks Bishop, but
things go from bad to worse as Nimrod arrives. The advanced Sentinel hunter is
bad news. Wolverine wants to stay and fight but is told to complete their
mission by his team. He and Bishop fall back while the other two hold Nimrod
off.
FYI, Nimrod is a biblical legendary
hunter. His name only became synonymous with stupidity in the Looney Tunes when
Bugs Bunney would use the word to describe Elmer Fudd. The more you know.
Bishop and Wolverine fall back to
another part of the ruined city. They reach Forge, an old Native scientist.
Forge has the Mutant ability to build any sort of machine that he can imagine.
Apparently in the Sentinel ridden post-apocalypse, he turned his sights onto
building a time machine. The part that Wolverine got for him was the last piece
he needed to finish it. Forge gives him a wristband that will anchor him in the
point in time he needs to go to, the early 90s, otherwise he’ll be pulled back
to the correct time. Why the 90s? Because that’s when the show takes place. But
more specifically there’s an assassination that takes place then that the
Rebels believe was the big domino that set this timeline in motion. Wolverine
tells Bishop to make sure Forge pulls the plug on the machine when he’s gone,
to make sure no one follows. Bishop really grills Wolverine on whether he
thinks he can do this, saying that stopping the assassin means killing “him.”
Wolverine says he’ll do it, just as an alarm starts blaring, warning of
Sentinel. Bishop stops Wolverine, taking the wrist band and saying he’s going.
He’s younger and stronger than the currently 200+ year old Wolverine, and he
and Forge think that will help. Wolverine is obviously pissed but that’s his
usual factory setting. Forge and Wolverine try to hold off the Sentinels as
Bishop jumps through the portal. He is nearly through when Nimrod arrives and
nearly grabs him. He falls through a rift in time and crashes into an abandoned
building. He initially thinks the portal didn’t work, until he sees people just
living their lives in the daylight. Neat, time travel works. Unfortunately, he
took a nasty hit to the head as he traveled, and the resulting concussion has
him unable to remember why he’s in the past. He sees a newspaper talking about
a speech Professor Charles Xavier is going to give and thinks he needs to talk
to Charles.
We cut to Rogue and Gambit vising
Beast in prison. They’re bringing him books to keep him entertained while he
awaits his trial. Rogue seems pretty chill with the situation, but Gambit
starts getting antsy, offering to blow a hole in the bars to get Beast out.
Beast, sensing Gambit’s nerves, bends the bars for Gambit so he can run out
real fast. Turns out the Cajun is uncomfortable in prisons, interesting. Rogue
wonders what that was about, but Beast intuits Gambit’s probably been in prison
before.
We shift over to Bishop hiding out
in a ruined building. He’s watching videos on his wristband about the X-Men and
trying to remember his mission. He hears some kids running by saying they’re
going to play their new “Assassin” “Cartridge,” which tickles something in
Bishop’s brain. And includes a fun little Easter Egg of the Punisher on the
cover of the Assassin game. The wristband tells him he needs to take out the
Assassin. Bishop thinks that the entire X-Men team are the assassins, and he
needs to take them out. He grabs his future blaster and heads out. He boards a
bus, clears it out and drives to stop the assassin. Totally inconspicuous mode
of Transport, B.
Bishop drives into the X-Mansion,
bursting through the door with the bus. He starts attacking X-Men, shouting
that he’s doing this for the future. He’s able to hold off Cyclops and Storm.
Jubilee nearly knocks the gun from his hands, but he keeps a hand on it and
knocks them all down. Wolverine tackles him and says he’ll remember the
‘rookie’s’ face before going to cut his throat. Bishop remembers old Logan
tries to stop him. That doesn’t work, but Xavier rolls up and does stop Wolverine,
saying a dead Bishop won’t answer his questions. Xavier orders Cyclops to check
for injuries and to get Bishop to the War Room. He’s sure they’ll need Cerebro
to figure this out.
They strap Bishop down and try to
figure him out. Jubilee can’t figure out how to connect his wristband with
their computers, and Jean and Scott say his weapons are super advanced. A
reading of one of the cartridges of his gun is right off the scale, it’s good
it was set to stun. Xavier goes over to Bishop and puts o Cerebro to read his
mind. He gets jumbles of images, and we see a brief outline of Bishop’s
timeline. It looks like, Anti-Mutant sentiment hits a fever pitch, the
government mass produces Sentinels and captures all the Mutants. The Sentinels
then turn on the Government, killing them and beginning to exterminate all
sapient life on Earth. Xavier is obviously most freaked out by the gravestones.
Everyone is skeptical of the situation. Wolverine is the hardest to convince,
saying that this is all very convenient.
A Terminator from the Future has come back to kill an X-Man to stop the
apocalypse, yeah, I could see not buying that. Bishop’s wristband starts flashing
and he tells them that means someone followed him through the portal. Xavier
orders Bishop be released and that the team help him put together what is
happening.
The head back to the ruin that
Bishop appeared in. Cyclops uses Bishop’s blaster to look at the doorframe and
it does detect something. Bishop says it’s detecting the residual energy of
temporal displacement. Bishop realizes that Nimrod came through, just as the
machine blasts them. Nimrod is extremely powerful and can detect the weaknesses
in his opponents. He drops a wall on Storm to make use of her Claustrophobia
and shoots Jean before she can throw up a psychic barrier. Cyclops uncovers
Storm and she whips up a blizzard to try to stop Nimrod, Bishop encouraging
her, saying that maybe they can freeze Nimrod’s super structure. She freezes
Nimrod, and Bishop and Cyclops blast it to pieces. The robot starts to
reassemble itself almost immediately, but Bishop runs over and shoots it’s
temporal transceiver, sending it back to the Future. He explains how the transceiver is keeping
him in this time, and the others all agree he’s telling the truth now.
Back at the War Room, Wolverine
asks who the assassin is, then. Bishop still can’t remember, concussions suck,
so the others start to try to figure out who might do it. Before they can get
into arguing about it, Rogue and Gambit arrive, and Bishop says that Gambit is
the assassin. He shouts “Traitor! Your future ends now!” and shoots him. Damn.
This was a fine introduction to
Bishop, the Time Traveling X-man. He’s one of my little brother’s favorite
X-Men. His future is one of the bleakest in the MCU, right up there with the
Age of Apocalypse, the Age of Ultron, and the countless future’s where Galactus
has eaten the lifeforce of Earth and left it a baren husk. Not great. Using him
to be the time traveler to stop the Days of Future Past timeline is smart, as
Kitty Pryde was cut from this show entirely and two Wolverine’s can be too
much. Love his 90s look too, by the way, it takes a real man to rock a mullet.
Him getting a concussion the moment he arrived and forgetting the details of
his mission is a little cliché but it lead to a fun fight scene between him and
the X-Men. Nimrod was a little bit of a letdown. He’s an extremely powerful
X-Men villain (and is tied to the X-Men ’97 story line) so to have him
appear for like 3 minutes before being taken out is a bit lame. He could easily
have appeared at the same time as Bishop and Bishop could have spent the
episode alternating between fighting Nimrod and X-Men at the same time is all
I’m saying. The reveal the X-Man he’s hunting is Gambit is a good one, too, but
was probably better back in the day. Why? Because Gambit as a character was
only introduced in the comics in 1990, and this episode premiered in 1992. Two
years in not a long time to set up a character as part of a large ensemble cast.
Gambit was still largely a mystery, so Bishop accusing him of being an assassin
seems way more plausible. With the hindsight of nearly 35 years of Gambit being
a scoundrel with a heart of gold, it’s just hard to believe he’d kill someone.
All I’m saying. So yeah, a good start to the Days of Future Past. Next time,
we’ll see how the future shifts. See you then.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103178189
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
No comments:
Post a Comment