The Sentinels shall bring order, by any means necessary.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, Gambit is accused of being an assassin. He’s left behind with
Bishop and Wolverine as the rest of the team tries to figure out who is going
to be assassinated and how to stop it. We learn that the actual assassin is
Mystique, the shapeshifting Mutant. She’d been ordered by Apocalypse to kill
Senator Robert Kelly, aka Senator I Hate Mutants, and frame Gambit to kick off
a war between humans and Mutants. Her boys Blob, Avalanche and Pyro keep the
main team distracted long enough that she almost gets away with it, but
thankfully Gambit intervenes. He escaped Wolverine and Bishop’s watchful gaze
to stop the assassin and clear his name. He and Mystique are almost both taken
out by Bishop, but Rogue flies in and breaks his time band and sends him back
to the future. She lets Kelly leave and interrogates Mystique, only to discover
that she was Rogue’s adopted mother. Mystique uses her emotional leverage on
Rogue to make the southern belle free her, and she claims she’s helping
Apocalypse and nearly brainwashed Rogue because she thought it was the only way
to get her back. In the aftermath of the fight, Kelly wants to speak with
Xavier, but he, Cyclops and Jean arrive in his office to find it ransacked and
Kelly missing, Charles noting his watch had been magnetized. Enough recap.
Let’s get to it.
We open on a news report of
protests and riots breaking out after Robert Kelly’s kidnapping. In the War
Room with the X-Men, Wolverine in particular is disgusted that they’re getting
this much hate when they just saved Kelly’s life. Chrles says they need to find
Kelly and quickly or a new wave of Anti-Mutant sentiment could sweep the
nation. Cyclops points out that’s a tall order, but Charles says they know
Magneto did it, so he can use Cerebro to find Magneto.
Meanwhile, Kelly is being held on a
rusted old warship by Magneto. Kelly is clearly terrified at being at Magneto’s
mercy and asks what he wants. Magneto explains he’s the Mutant version of
Kelly, the one with power who has decided that Humans and Mutants can’t survive
together. He claims the war between them has to begin now while Mutants are
strong, and humans are still divided. Magneto had somehow been tipped off that
Kelly was to be assassinated and flew to DC to watch. Imagine his disgust when
the X-Men prevailed. Because of their interference, Kelly’s death falls to
Magneto. He prepares to crush Kelly under some machine parts. Kelly begs for
his life, and Magneto says that as a boy during the
“not-said-out-loud-but-totally-was” the Holocaust that he witnessed women and
children executed nightly and every night he swore never again. Just before
dropping the metal on Kelly, a Sentinel arm tears into the ship. Magneto isn’t
impressed and tries to us his powers on the Sentinels, but the lead machine
says that this series are made of plastics, not metals, and are thus immune to
his powers. They blast Magneto, knocking off his helmet and knocking him
unconscious. Kelly thanks the Sentinels, but they grab him. Magneto wakes up
and says the ship is his weapon. He throws metal through one of them,
destroying it, but the other Sentinel flies off. More Sentinels arrive, Magneto
does his best to beat them back as they start to overwhelm him.
The X-Men fly towards Magneto’s
signal in the Blackbird. They see a fire burning in the distance and go
investigate. By the time they arrive the ship is ripped to shreds with Sentinel
parts scattered about. Rogue and Cyclops hear Magneto’s groans and uncover him
in some rubble. He’s badly beaten up, with his skin bleeding so heavily I
almost didn’t realize the stomach of his armored shirt had been ripped open.
Damn.
The Sentinels fly Kelly to their
secret base, hidden in an old mining town. Kelly meets with Dr. Bolivar Trask
and thanks him and his Sentinels for saving him. Trask says that he wants a
presidential order that the Sentinels will be put in charge of policing
Mutants, and Kelly agrees. Trask orders a freshly built Sentinel to return
Kelly to his Campaign headquarters, but it refuses. Trask yells at Mastermold
that this Sentinel is defective, but Mastermold reveals IT is giving the orders
now. It orders Trask to remove Kelly’s brain and replace it with a computer. It
also reveals that Kelly is but the first to get this treatment, as we’re shown
a montage of Sentinels kidnapping world leaders to undergo this treatment,
Mastermold saying this will be a vast improvement to world governments.
Magneto is brought back to the
X-Mansion to recover. Jean is sitting with him and will be on hand to
interrogate him as to what happened, once he’s recovered his strength a little.
Wolverine insists they start tracking the Sentinels, but Rogue asks how. Storm
proposes an idea, Gambit saw Trask in Genosha, maybe Xavier can see Trask in
Gambit’s memories and then track him from there. Gambit agrees to having his
mind scanned. He puts on Cerebro’s helmet to help focus his minds eye. On the
computer screen we see several faces: Bishop, a blonde woman, Rogue, Ghost
Rider for some reason, and then finally Henry Gyrich. Guess they’re targeting
him over Trask. They identified him from public records and had out.
In New York, Gyrich is attempting
to get in contact with Trask but his phone won’t connect. He knows something is
up. Storm summons a blizzard to cause Gyrich’s car to crash. Rogue grabs
Gyrich’s driver, but Gyrich runs off, firing a blaster at Cyclops when he tries
to intervene. They chase him to the Lincoln Memorial, Gyrich calling Trask for
back up, when Wolverine leaps onto him from the Lincoln statue. Cyclops stops
him from gutting Gyrich, and they hear over Gyrich’s phone from Trask about the
brain replacement plan. Right before Trask is cut off by his Sentinels. Cyclops
demands to know where Trask is, but Gyrich insists that there’s nothing they
can do, as Trask has mass produced thousands of Sentinels at this point.
In the War Room, Gambit is not
happy at the thought of throwing all their lives away to save Kelly. Charles insists they need to save him or risk
civil war. Magneto limps in, saying that Charles’ dream is a foolish one and
they’ll all die if they try to save Kelly. Charles asks the X-Men if he’s
right. The whole team except Gambit agreed to go help. Jubilee is almost forced
to stay behind by Wolverine, but she gives an impassioned speech about being an
X-Man and how much that means to her, which convinces Gambit to go along as
well. As they fly off, Magneto stands on their lawn and calls them all fools,
heroic fools, but fools. He says to himself that ‘The brave are always the
first to die.”
The Blackbird flies into the mining
camp. Mastermold senses their approach and orders the Sentinels to be made
ready. The bulk of the group, Cyclops, Wolverine, Gambit, and Jean take the
coal elevator down into the mine while Rogue, Storm and Jubilee wait up top.
The elevator touches down, though, with nothing but a flashing Ace of Spades.
This causes the Sentinels to scramble, flying out into the sky to find the
X-Men. Outside they meet Storm and Rogue, who show off why they’re considered
the cavalry. Rogue decapitates two Sentinels by hurling another train car at
their heads and Storm summons up a gale to knock them into some The others had
escaped into another shaft part way down. Jubilee helps buy drowning a Sentinel
in an exploded water tower, and Charles pilots the Blackbird, using it’s
weapons to keep some more Sentinel’s attention.
In the mine, the group splits up,
Jean and Cyclops, Jean and Scott, to try to cover more ground.
The Sentinels start to overwhelm
the heroes topside, as there are hundreds, maybe thousands of the damn things.
The Blackbird gets shot down and almost crashes, but Magneto arrives and uses
his powers to let it land safely, asking Charles if he really thought he’d let
him die alone. More Sentinels fly in, and I hope these aren’t the plastic
models.
Wolverine and Gambit find a group
of Sentinels. Wolverine tells Gambit to fall back, locking him out of that
shaft so he can take a few of them out. Gambit eventually busts the door down
and then lobs some exploding cards at the remaining Sentinels. I think they
both forgot what the other’s power was for a second, as Gambit would have known
not to worry about Wolverine due to his regeneration, and Wolverine would have
remembered Gambit’s exploding cards.
In the heart of the mind, Trask
says this isn’t right, as he built the Sentinels to protect mankind from
Mutants. The Mastermold points out the logical fallacy here, that Mutants ARE
humans, and thus to protect Humans they need to be protected from themselves.
Cyclops and Jean run in, Cyclops tells Jean to pull Kelly out using
telekinesis, but the Mastermold sees, and so they need to try more drastic
measures. Namely grabbing Kelly and running. They’re helped along by Trask, who
at least accepts this version of Sentinel is a failed project. He turns a laser
drill on a propane tank. The resulting explosion chases Cyclops, Jean, and
Kelly from the room but they outrun it. Cyclops tells Jean to get Kelly topside
and he’ll get Gambit and Wolverine, saying he won’t leave anyone behind again.
Topside, the others are rallying,
but it’s a good thing the Mastermold has sent out a distress signal and the
Sentinels go to save it. The propane gas lines explode just as the last one
flies in. Magneto throws up an electromagnetic barrier to protect them from the
shockwave.
In the mine, Gambit and Wolverine
have torn through a lot of Sentinels. Wolverine’s costume has been completely
shredded in the fighting. He tells Gambit to let him save him next time.
Cyclops blows a hole into their shaft and asks if Wolverine is going to get
moving or if this is his day off. Cyclops blows a tunnel in the rock for them.
Jean reaches the surface with Kelly and tells Rogue that Cyclops is looking for
Gambit and Wolverine. Rogue says she’s going down after them, but Cyclops’
eyebeam opens a path for them right there. Gambit teases that he thinks she
missed him. Rogue hugs him, puts her gloved hand over his mouth so she can
symbolically kiss him and then says she hates him. Gambit says he’ll never
understand this woman. The top of the Mountain suddenly explodes and Mastermold
rises out of it, saying it cannot be destroyed. The Blackbird flies in, we see
inside that Charles has loads the ship with as much TNT and explosives as he
can. He says “You are the living embodiment of all that is Evil and unjust in
mankind. You MUST be destroyed.” Magneto
flies along side the Blackbird, throwing up a barrier around it to protect it
from Mastermold long enough to hit. Charles ejects at the last second and we
see everyone run from the explosion. As Charles parachutes down, Magneto flies
along side him. He says they’re even now that Magneto has saved him, but they
will meet again.
We cut to Senator Kelly giving an
address to the nation. He says that he knows Mutants can be dangerous, but that
in humanities attempts to control dangerous Mutants, they shouldn’t oppress
those that would use their powers to help others. In the spirit of that, Kelly
put in a good word for Beast and has gotten him a full pardon. How nice.
Meanwhile, Scott and Jean have a
picnic and Scott asks her to marry him. She says yes and that there’s nothing
more hopeful than the beginning of a new day. The uncertainty gives hope for
the future. We pull out to see the two of them are on camera, the mysterious
Mr. Sinister cackling to himself that he knows what their future holds.
And that’s season one done.
Overall, a solid season finale. We got to see some character highlights, the
team working together to stop the Sentinels for now, Magneto returning to complicate
and then save the situation, and lots of explosions. I’m glad that the writers
knew that the Sentinels and Mastermold had to be the end boss of the
first season. Magneto is always attractive to close out an X-Men season, but
when a quarter of the other episodes this season either directly or indirectly include
the mechanized stormtroopers, ya gotta close out that plotline. I do question
the Mastermold’s logic that it thought it could kidnap dozens if not hundreds
of world leaders, replace their brains with computers, and put them back
without anyone noticing… but it was Mastermold’s first evil plan. I’m glad they
included the line that Humans and Mutants are interconnected and that to
protect humans from Mutants, they have to be protected from Humans as well. Is
that a robot cliché, that they need to rule us to save us from themselves? Yes,
but it works better here because of the whole “are Mutant’s human?” argument. And
I give them props for Softening Kelly’s stance without having him outright flip
his message entirely. Does he think Mutants are still a threat? Absolutely. But
he now knows and accepts they aren’t an outside force coming into this country
to ruin it, and that there are good people mixed in with the costume criminals.
It’s a good logical progression for the character. But it also leaves him with
enough suspicions about Mutants that he could be persuaded back into thinking
they’re all monsters out to get him. Letting Charles be the one to take
Mastermold out, to let him kill this manifestation of the rhetoric and fear he
so despises was a good one. Nice symbolic victory for him. Like Gambit getting
the sort of kiss from Rogue. Just a nice little win for him above and beyond
the big win of defeating the Sentinels. And the Mr. Sinister tease was a nice
one. For those who don’t know, Mr. Sinister is a major antagonist for this
series and will be a major headache for Scott, Jean and the X-Men going
forward. So just having him come on and cackle evilly to himself as Scott and
Jean make plans for their future is just a nice nod that he’s going to be a
pain soon. Next time, we’ll see how. Have a good night.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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