He's back from the past and looking for payback.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, the battle with the Sentinels came to a head. Magneto kidnapped and
attempted to execute Senator Robert Kelly to kick off the Human-Mutant War.
Magneto believed that he needed to strike now, while Mutants were powerful, and
Humans were divided on how to handle them. Kelly is saved by a group of
Sentinels, who overwhelmed Magneto due to their new plastic construction. The
Sentinels took Kelly to Dr. Bolivar Trask, who set up shot in an old mine for
his Mastermold. While Kelly was grateful to Trask and willing to put the
Sentinels in charge of Mutant policing if/when Kelly was elected president, the
Mastermold decided that wasn’t going to work for it. It ordered Trask to remove
Kelly’s brain and replace it with a computer that the Mastermold could then control.
Mastermold also plans to expand this procedure to all world leaders. The X-Men
find Magneto and recover him, and then use Cerebro to scan Gambit’s mind to
find Henry Gyrich. He met Gyrich in Genosha and he’s the last connection to
Trask. They jump Gyrich just as he gets in contact with Trask and Trask tells
him about the Sentinel revolt. The X-Men learn where to go and head out. The
team battles the Sentinels. Storm, Rogue, Jubilee and Xavier in the Blackbird
keep the Sentinels distracted in the sky, while Wolverine, Gambit, Jean and
Cyclops take out the ones in the mines. They’re able to free Kelly, and Trask,
horrified by Mastermold’s plan, sets off the Propane gas to destroy the mine.
Mastermold survives the explosion, but Charles and Magneto team up to ram the
Blackbird through Mastermold’s chest to destroy it. The X-Men celebrate their
victory, Beast is released from prison, Kelly decides to pull back on the
anti-Mutant rhetoric, and Scott and Jean get engaged. The season ended with Mr.
Sinister watching Scott and Jean and saying their future is in his hands.
Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
We open in a misty cavern. Cyclops
is in full gear, while Wolverine is dressed in a suit and tie. He announces
that Scott Summers is his and the two of them start fighting. We then cut to a
church where the rest of the team are watching Scott and Jean getting married.
AH, so Logan is letting out some aggression on a Danger Room robot and not the
real Scott… That’s… not healthy but better than the alternative, I guess. As
they say their “I Do’s,” Wolveirne drops a pillar on Robot Scott and then
decapitates it. Wolverine announces he’s feeling much better now, but then
another Scott-bot blasts him. It transforms into a Cyc-Sentinel and blasts him.
Wolverine decapitates the Cyc-Sentinel, but gets blasted one more time, and
passes out calling out to Jean.
At the wedding, things are going
well. Gambit hits on Rogue but she tells him to buzz off, the reverend
congradulates Scott, but says he’ll be missing the reception. He makes a weird
look before quoting Robert Frost, “I have promises to keep, and miles to go
before I sleep.” Jean tells Scott how happy she is and they share a kiss.
Outside, the reverend almost immediately shapeshifts into… Morph! He isn’t
looking well; his skin is Jaundice Yellow, and he has thick dark purple circles
under his eyes. He laughs evilly to himself about the “promises” he must keep.
We cut to the televised swearing in
off Robert Jefferson Kelly as the President of the United States. Guess
pivoting on his platform didn’t hurt his polls too much. We pull back to see a
man dress in blue clawed gloves and wig. How ominous.
Back at the wedding Jean throws the
Bouquet and Beast catches it as he’s walking by with their gift. Charles asks
him if he has news from President Kelly to which Beast says he has very rosy
news. We cut to Kelly making his first Presidential decree, to grant Dr. Henry
McCoy a full pardon from his crimes. I’m pretty sure this is the first time the
show has said his full name. Neat. As he speaks, we cut over to a man in a dark
red suit with a Friends of Humanity Button on his lapel. Oy, this guy. The man
orders ‘something’ to happen into a collar mic. The man in Mutant garb runs in
and causes a ruckus. Kelly shouts that he’s just trying to help, and the Man in
Red says that he was elected to protect people from Mutants. The “Mutant”
escapes out a window. The man in Red, Creed, announces stage one of their plan
was a success and that they should begin stage two.
Wolverine pulls himself from the
wreckage of the Cyc-Sentinel. The simulation ends as Jean comes in. She says
they missed him at the wedding. He says he must have lost track of time and
apologizes for missing it. He tries to tell her something, but she says she has
a plane to catch.
We cut to a motel room where Morph
is sitting up. He’s muttering to himself that he can’t hurt them, they were his
friends, and that he doesn’t want to hurt them. I should point out that right
now his skin is it’s normal color and there are no bags under his eyes. He
flashes back to the Sentinel attack. He pulls Wolverine out of the way before
being blasted. We see the blast rips his jacket to pieces and leaves a huge
hole in his uniform but he’s otherwise okay. He keeps asking himself why his
friends left him to die. Mr. Sinister, a man in black, finds him and says that
Morph will destroy them all. In the present, Morph agrees, and he’s back to the
sickly look. He shapeshifts into Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine, vowing to
destroy them, before reverting to his healthy form and screaming to know what
is making him do this.
We cut to a fight out on the
streets. Several men in Friends of Humanity gear are harassing a Mutant man.
The Mutant tells them that he doesn’t have special powers, he just is… visibly
different than normal. The FOH chant no more Mutants while Creed watches from
above. We see the FOH chasing Morlocks into the sewers and destroying public
property. News reports have the FOH
saying they’re defending themselves from Mutant attacks. In the War Room,
Jubilee asks why things are getting worse. Charles explains that after Kelly
realized not all Mutants are evil and changed his platform, his anti-Mutant
followers felt betrayed and are now lashing out. Storm insists that if they
stand up to these people, they can stop them. Charles gets a call on his
private video line and goes to check it out.
He enters his office and watches a
video message from Magneto. He says something about terrible violence before
screaming, the background burning. He begs Xavier to hurry to his coordinates
at the bottom of the screen. Charles says that’s in Antarctica. As the video
cuts out, we see that Magneto was just Morph in disguise. He wishes Charles Bon
Voyage before cackling.
Wolverine, Beast, and Gambit are
playing pool and Wolverine is losing badly. A serving girl recognizes Beast and
starts chatting him up. The bar is attacked b y FOH members. They chant no more
Mutants. The X-Men retaliate, defending themselves. We see Creed with a camera
man, he’s clearly taking very specific video of these events. They scare off
the FOH members and Beast suggests they depart.
In the War Room, Charles sends a
video message to the X-Men, saying that he had to make an abrupt departure, and
that until Cyclops returns from his honeymoon, Storm is in charge. Jubilee runs
in and tells the others to check out the news. The new is reporting that Beast
was seen at a near riot, but the footage we’re shown was clearly doctored to
make it look like Beast was attacking unarmed civilians. Wolverine is pissed
and tries to storm off, but Storm stops him, saying they need to unmask this
new conspiracy, not add to the violence. He storms off anyway. Morph watches
him leave before announcing he’ll see if he can’t make everyone as angry. He
takes on Wolverine’s form and slips in.
Morph crosses paths with Rogue as
Wolverine, lying that he forgot something to explain why he’s back. Rogue says
she’s going to go take a nap in the rec room, and Morph says he’ll be as quiet
as a corpse before assuming her form. He enters the War Room where Gambit and
Jubilee are watching the news. Morph tells Jubilee to skedaddle so she can talk
to Gambit. He gives Gambit a flirty wink to make sure he goes along with it.
When alone, Morph says that Rogue has been lying about not being able to touch
people, and that Gambit should meet Rogue in the rec room in five minutes to
see what that means. Morph takes off a glove and touches Gambit’s face to
really sell the lie. Once alone, he switches to Storm’s form.
Morph finds Jubilee and says that
there’s been a report a riot will break out at a Mutant halfway house. Morph
tells Jubilee to go check it out and report back what she sees. Jubilee agrees,
excited to prove she’s not a kid. After leaving, Morph reverts to his normal
form and says, “that’s for thinking you could take my place.” Damn dude.
In the rec room, Gambit comes in to
see Rogue past out on the couch. Still thinking Morph’s lie was the truth, he
goes in and kisses her, and immediately drops because she drained his powers.
Rogue gets up and accidentally blows up the couch.
Jubilee ends up at the halfway
house, the Veteran’s club, rings the doorbell and is greeted by Creed and the
FOH. Oh crap.
In the War Room, Storm is watching
news footage as Rogue comes in carrying a comatose Gambit. She says it serves
him right for being a fool, and the worse part is she keeps charging items up
by mistake. Storm says that Gambit couldn’t have chosen a worse time to be a
fool. Storm calls for Jubilee, but her room is empty. They look for Beast but
he’s thankfully in the Danger Room about to start a workout. He tells them to
fly ahead to the disturbance and he’ll catch up soon. And when the call cuts
out, it turns out Beast was Morph. The real Beast was already in the Danger
Room working out, swinging from wires. Morph shifts the difficulty to high and
the auto cannons start firing at Beast. Beast is knocked around by the weapons
but thankfully he’s agile enough to dodge. Unfortunately, the door is locked.
Crap.
The FOH march on the Mutant
Counseling Center. They throw a grenade into the center, but Storm and Rogue
arrive a minute later to stop them. Storm summons a thunderstorm to put out the
fire and he and rogue fight off the FOH. More bombs start going off, Storm
tells Rogue to go handle the additional bombings and not to worry as Beast will
soon join her. Morph is at the scene, egging them on. A police car crashes, and
Morph takes on the officer’s form and orders the others to shoot her down. They
do. Storm is taken away on a stretcher to a hospital.
We cut to Mr. Sinister, a pale
skinned man in black with a metallic voice. He’s watching these events from his
computer monitors. He tells Morph to enjoy his revenge, as he sure is.
This was a great start to the new
season. Morph is back by popular demand, and he’s pissed. As I believe I said
in the second episode write up, he was supposed to be dead by the end of that
episode. He was just there to set the stakes for the rest of the show. But test
audiences loved him, and the show runners couldn’t just leave him dead, so he
came back. Using his powers to sow discord among the X-Men was brilliant. It
shows his tactical thinking as he keeps finding ways to use the X-Men’s
weaknesses against them, Gambit’s romantic interest in Rogue clouding his
judgement, Jubilee’s desire to be seen as really part of the team clouding hers
and using Charles’ friendship with Magneto to draw him away, all brilliant. I
also liked using his shapeshifting to show how he’s not completely in control
of his actions right now. When he looks more like himself, he questions why
he’s doing this, why he’s hurting his friends, but when the dark circles are
there, he’s in full rage mode. A bit simple but when you have a shapeshifter,
you use shapeshifting. And knowing that he’s working for Sinister is troubling.
Nathaniel Essex plays for high stakes. And I liked the introduction to the
Friends of Humanity and Graydon Creed. In many ways this group is a much lower
stakes threat than, say, the Sentinels, but the damage they can do is more
nebulous. The Sentinels are big loud machines, they thunder around and cause
damage, it’s easy to drum up evidence they’re using excessive force on Mutants.
The FOH is more subtle, using propaganda and video edits to make the Mutant’s
seem like the real threat. And using video of Beast defending himself against
attackers out of context will be incredibly damaging on someone that just got
pardoned by the President. It’s good this story is happening in 1993, because
in the modern era they’d be huge on Facebook. So that’s the status of the X-Men. Scott and
Jean are on their Honeymoon, Xavier is headed toward the Antarctic on a lie,
and the X-Men are being terrorized by a friend they thought dead and new threat
in the court of public opinion. Next time, things will continue to escalate.
See you then.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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