Gambit is on the hunt?
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, Bishop started partying like it was 1992. In the far future of
2055, Sentinels rule the world and are hunting down Mutants for extermination.
Wolverine, the last surviving X-Man, is captured by the Mutant bounty hunter,
in this case meaning both a bounty hunter of Mutants and a bounty hunter that
is a Mutant, Bishop. Bishop, smug and initially confident in his usefulness to
the Sentinels, gets a wake-up call when its discovered he’s captured enough
Mutants to hit his quote and is thus being retired. Yes, to be retired is to be
executed. Wolverine frees himself and Bishop, leaving two teammates behind, and
we learn they were stealing a piece for a time machine designed by Forge.
Wolverine was going to go back but Bishop forced him to bow out to the younger
Bishop. Both because Bishop isn’t over 200 and because he will be able to stop
“him,” the man that assassinated someone and kicked off this timeline. Bishop
travels back in time but is pursued by Nimrod, the Sentinel’s top hunting
model. He arrives in 1992 but gets a concussion and forgets many of the details
of his mission. He heads to the X-Mansion and fights most of the team before
being captured. He’s interrogated by Xavier who learns about his future just in
time for Nimrod to come through the breach.
The entire team fights Nimrod, breaking his body into pieces but he
starts regenerating. Bishop destroys Nimrod’s time band, sending him back to
the future. Just at things are winding down, Rogue and Gambit return, and
Bishop pulls his gun on Gambit, remembering the Cajun is the assassin. Enough
recap. Let’s get to it.
We open on Rogue and Gambit driving
her convertible driving back to the Mansion. Rogue is something of a reckless
driver, but Gambit likes it given his shameless flirting. Dude is trying hard
to earn the favor of a woman whose kiss will literally suck the life out of
him. Rogue parks the car and flies off when he makes another pass at her.
Later, they go down into the sublevels and reach the War Room as the others are
discussing who the assassin is. Rogue comes in first, stopping the
conversation, and then Gambit follows, at which point Bishop pulls the gun. He
fires at Gambit, but Rogue jumps in the way. He keeps firing and knocks Gambit
on his ass. The other’s stop him, and Rogue and Gambit demand to know what’s
going on. Charles explains Bishop’s deal, Gambit saying that the time travel
story must be bullshit. Bishop starts screaming that Gambit is the traitor and
that he’ll turn everything the X-Men love and stand for into ashes. He says
that it starts with a single death in DC that snowballs into a full-scale war.
A Mastermold is commissioned, and it produces thousands of Sentinels. They
capture Mutants like animals and take them to detention centers. We see some
Mutants fighting back, Cyclops with his brother Havok, and Sunfire (the Asian
Mutant from Genosha) but they’re all taken out. But, like all ethnic cleansing
attempts, it doesn’t stop with just wiping out the Mutants and eventually the
Sentinels take over the government. Bishop comes out of his flashback saying
that he’s hated Gambit his whole life for what he did. Charles asks if stopping
the assassination would alter the timeline. Bishop says that was Forge’s
theory. They don’t know who the victim is that kicks this off, speculating that
it could be the President or Charles Xavier himself. Gambit asks if they’re
really going to trust Bishop, but Wolverine points out they know about as much
about Bishop as they do about Gambit. Gambit, feeling threatened, pulls out a
card and says they should take out Bishop. Wolverine says that if he tries,
he’s proving Bishop right. Storm says that she knows Gambit better than the
rest of them, but even if Bishop accused her, she couldn’t be sure it would be
a lie. She points out they’re all capable of committing such an act of evil.
Gambit complains that no one trusts him and storms off.
Later, Gambit enters the hanger.
Bishop flips on a light and demands to know where he’s going. The others also
come in and Gambit admits to them that he’s going to Washington to stop the
assassin. They obviously don’t think this is a good idea, saying keeping Gambit
from Washington is the only way to guarantee it doesn’t happen. Bishop is told
to stay behind as well and Wolverine volunteers to stay with them to babysit.
The others load up into the Blackbird and take off.
That evening, Gambit, Bishop, and
Wolverine are playing poker. Bishop calls Gambit a traitor one too many times
and Gambit throws a card at him. Bishop shows off his power, energy absorption,
to take in Gambit’s bioenergy, and throws it back at him, Wolverine
sarcastically saying that Bishop is ready to raise Gambit. Wolverine draws his
claws, telling them to shut up and play.
The next morning, Storm and Rogue
are in position to monitor what’s happening at the Capital building. Jubilee is
with Rogue, though she’s still asleep and having a nightmare about Gambit
betraying them. We cut over to a hotel room occupied by Mystique and her brotherhood
of Mutants. This incarnation consists of Mystique, Avalanche, Pyro and Blob.
Blob and Pyro agree it’s a lovely day for an assassination, Mystique coming in
to say if they screw this up, they’ll be the ones to die. On the TV both in
their room, and the X-Mansion, a news report is talking about this Senate
Subcommittee on Mutant Affairs that everyone is interested in, highlighting
Senator Robert Kelly. Wolverine yells at Gambit to get back to the table so
they can keep playing. Gambit does so… but only to set off some explosions so
he can run off. Wolverine shouts at him to stop but he obviously doesn’t. They
ran after Gambit just in time to see him fly off in a small jet. Bishop is
furious at this, saying that this is why Wolverine let him go back, because he
keeps screwing things up. Wolverine, interestingly, says he still doesn’t
believe this.
In DC an anti-Mutant protest is
going on. Pyro, Avalanche and Blob are plants in the crowd and are about to
start a distraction. Inside, Charles is answering Senator Kelly’s questions
when a quake starts. An aide looks at her watch and mutters right on time as
the Senators run out of the room. Pyro and Avalanche burst into the hall and
start wrecking the place. Jean and Scott disable the two of them and Charles
puts out a mental call to the others to assemble at the hall. As they do,
Gambit touches down and infiltrates the building.
The main team chase after Pyro and
Avalanche. Blob leaps out to join them and the fight is on. Pyro fires a flame
bird at Storm and Rogue. They let it chase them into the upper atmosphere until
it dissipates. Blob is tough enough that Cyclops’ eyebeam can’t hurt him, and
he announces how powerful he is… as Wolverine’s ship lands in the background,
he gets out and dives on Blob’s face, distracting him long enough to knock him
into the reflecting pool. Storm flies in and freezes the water, trapping him.
Cyclops runs over and asks where Gambit and Bishop are. Bishop blasts Pyro,
answering that question. Avalanche starts churning up the ground, but Bishop
absorbs his vibrational energy and throws it back at him. He misses, though and
knocks over a building. Jean slows the building’s fall, enough so everyone save
a little girl can get clear, but Rogue flies in and grabs the kid. She drops
the kid off with the others before flying up again. Storm wants to chase Pyro
and Avalanche but Cyclops asks where Bishop is. Rogue spots him entering the
Senate build and follows him, but he ducks behind her.
Inside, the mysterious Aide from
earlier leads Senator Kelly into a back room. Inside, we see the aide tied up
on the floor. Yep, the lady that led Kelly here is Mystique. She shifts into
Gambit’s form, saying that Kelly is about to make history here. Mystique takes
the aide’s blindfold off, saying that she’ll be a witness to what happens to
people that cross Mutants, but especially Gambit and the X-Men. The actual
Gambit comes in then, asking if she’s surprised to see him. Mystique shoots at
Gambit, Gambit knocks the gun from her hand and the two wrestle around. They’re
interrupted by Bishop, who shoots the real Gambit. It’s only then that he
realizes that there’s two of them. Mystique accuses Gambit of being a
shapeshifter. Bishop elects to side with caution and just shoot them both, but
Rogue flies in and smashes his time band to send him back to his era. She tells
Kelly and the Aide to leave the rest to her. When alone, Mystique returns to
normal and says that Rogue is going to help her escape. Rogue asks why she’d do
that. Mystique then takes on the form of an older blonde woman that Rogue
immediately calls Mama. As I’m sure you’re aware, Mystique is Rogue’s foster
mother and she looked after Rogue for years before she joined the X-Men. In
this continuity I guess she just never showed Rogue her usual blue form.
Cyclops and Wolverine arrive in
time to see Kelly and the Aide leaving. They explain what happened here, the
Mutant hating Kelly clearly befuddled by the Mutants that helped him, and the
Aide explains about the shapeshifter. Cyclops realizes this is why everyone
thought Gambit did it and they go check it out. They find Gambit laid out on
the ground without his coat and they wonder what happened. Rogue, meanwhile,
drops Mystique off by the reflecting pool. Mystique says she’s in trouble now,
as her Master Apocalypse wants Kelly dead in order to cause chaos. Rogue tells
Mystique to leave Apocalypse, but Mystique is loyal to Apocalypse. Rogue asks
why she’s working for Apocalypse and why she tried to turn Rogue into his
slave. Mystique says it seemed like the only way to get her back. She leaves
and Rogue starts crying.
Bishop returns to the Future. It’s
still a shattered, ruined hellscape. Forge comes in, saying that he can try
again, and again, until they find a way to fix the future. Once the time
machine is rebuilt. Bishop tells Forge that he didn’t fail, he stopped the
assassination. Forge says that something else must have happened to keep the
timeline on this track. We see Wolverine’s skeleton, complete with claws,
floating in a tank of some kind, which tells us that Nimrod’s attack didn’t go
well.
Back in 1992, Cyclops asks Xavier
why Kelly wants to speak with him. Xavier is hopeful this means Kelly will be
willing to listen to his proposal for Mutant-Human cooperation. Jean sense
something is wrong in Kelly’s office and they burst in to find the office a
wreck and a huge hole in the wall. Cyclops thinks it’s due to the same gang,
but Charle’s isn’t so sure. Why? His watch has stopped… due to it being
magnetized. Damn it Magneto!
One thing that I’ve been reminded
of during this rewatch that X-Men: The Animated Series did better than
anyone else back in the day was the interconnected story telling. Every episode
of this first season either connects directly with the next one, like this Days
of Future Past multiparter or calls back to previous episodes, like Mystique operating
for Apocalypse. It’s all woven together so elegantly, I love it. Sure, it made
things harder to watch back in the 90s when your options were to watch the
episodes as they play in their timeslot or just be okay with the recap at the
start off the episodes to inform you what is happening. People today are so
spoiled by streaming, I swear. I also got to give props to Apocalypse for this
relatively simple plan. Use his shapeshifter to take on the form of one of the
more mysterious X-Men and use his image to trigger a war. Way less convoluted
than to kidnap Mutants to turn into his Horsemen and then just attacking
countries at random. I do wonder if the X-Men from the unaltered timeline
realized that Gambit wasn’t really to blame or if he was ousted from the group
once the Sentinels started touching down on Xavier’s front lawn. And like I
said last time, this probably worked really well in 92 as Gambit was such a new
character that no one watching could be sure if he’d kill Kelly or not. Less so
today, because, again, Scoundrel with a heart of gold. I imagine he’ll have
questions for Rogue when he wakes up from his little nap time, but we’ll see.
The reveal that Mystique is Rogue’s adopted mother was fine, too. At this
point, the fact that Mystique is Rogue’s foster/adoptive mother as well as Kurt
Wagner/Nightcrawler and Graydon Creed’s biological parent is fairly well known.
But I imagine a lot of kid’s jaws dropped right here in 92 when her identity
was revealed. ... I say ‘parent’ because, if you haven’t kept up with Marvel
comics buzz, it was revealed/retconned earlier this year that Mystique is
Kurt’s father. She… shapeshifted the required anatomy to impregnate her
longtime lover Irene Adler aka Destiny. Yes, Comics are weird. It’s
disheartening for Bishop to return to the Future just to learn that nothing
that he did make demonstrable change to the future. I could imagine just
feeling defeated to return to the future to learn that nothing you did worked.
But from a storytelling perspective it does give Bishop some additional reasons
to keep hopping back to the past. So, yeah, this isn’t the last we’ll see of
Bishop. And ending the episode with Kelly being kidnapped and heavily implying
Magneto did it was an excellent hook for the season finale. Magneto’s back and
he’s going to make sure people respect Mutants. Or is he? We’ll see next time.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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