Time travel is a tricky thing.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, we got some history on a Cajun. Gambit is called back home to the
Bayou to take part in the Tithe. The Tithe is a ritual done by his Thieves
Guild and their rival Assassins Guild to appease a being called the External in
exchange for more power. Ten years prior, the Thieves guild was minutes late
with their Tithe, so their chosen one was banished from time and space and they
were given the warning if they’re late again they’ll be destroyed. The current
Chosen One is his brother Bobby, who has been kidnapped by the Assassins.
Gambit goes to the Assassins and trades himself for his brother. It’s revealed
that leader of the Assassins is Bella Donna, Gambit’s ex-fiance. She orchestrated this in order to get him back.
And by back, I mean to stick a ring on his finger that causes him pain if she
so chooses. She also reveals she gave Bobby a fake Tithing box so the External
will destroy the Thieves Guild tonight. Rogue, Jean and Wolverine follow him to
the bayou and make it to the Tithing. A huge fight breaks out, the thieves are
almost punished but Jean telepathically shows the External what the Assassins
did to frame the Thieves. The External asks what the Thieves think is an
appropriate punishment. Bobby says kill them, but Gambit steps in and says to
take Bella Donna’s powers from her. She does and Gambit returns with the X-men.
Enough Recap. Let’s get to it.
The episode opens in the dystopian
far future. No, not 2055, but 3999. At this point in human history, the Mutant time
traveler Cable is battling what look suspiciously like Terminator style robots
in the ruins of New York. Using his massive gun he destroys several before an
ally of his tells him that Apocalypse’s forces are too strong and that their
position is being overrun. Cable says to counterattack because they’re not
retreating. They blast through several more bots and lead a charge of their
allies. Apocalypse, watching from above, says they’re only delaying the
inevitable. Over 2000 years later and the dude still has a massive god complex.
Which probably isn’t too surprising as he was like 3000 in the 90s. He’s
distracted from the fight by a ‘temporal storm’ in the sky that shows Bishop
falling through space time. The storm causes several people to vanish, both
friend and foe. Tornadoes of energy form and start sucking everything up. Cable
dodges away and asks his computer what is happening. The device tells him that
Apocalypse isn’t doing this, this is the result of the timeline being shifted.
Someone changed something in the past and now the time stream is realigning. He
asks what he can do, his computer tells him nothing can be done. Cable runs
from more robots. His computer tells him this all started with a time traveler
from the 21st century with a mullet.
We cut over to Bishop’s POV as he
returns to 2055 after being forcibly ejected from the past by Rogue. Bishop
tells Forge that they did it, but Forge says nothing has changed. While looking
over Wolverine’s skeleton in a tube I must add. Bishop says he stopped the
assassination, so Forge thinks something else must have happened to keep the
Days of Future Past timeline on track. Forge says that a plague still rages,
and Bishop has no idea what he’s talking about. Turns out in this slightly
altered timeline, an artificial virus is raging across the planet. It first
infected humans and then Mutants, the effects getting worse as it shifted
targets. Bishop asks if the X-Men couldn’t stop it, and Forge doesn’t know what
the X-Men are. Bishop demands to be sent back, and Forge does so, warning him
that messing with time has ramifications.
Bishop arrives in 1993. He grabs a
paper that has the plague as the frontpage story. He’s infuriated to see that
Mutants are being blamed for it just because there’s no obvious cause of it. He
tosses the newspaper away and runs to warn the X-Men.
We join Jubilee and Storm as they
do some shopping at the local mall. Jubilee is getting a new CD player and
Storm’s getting a book. While Jubilee is alone, a man starts following her,
he’s got a wristwatch that has pics of several known Mutants including Jubilee.
The employee at the electronics shop, Adrian, takes Jubilee’s CD player in back
to have a look. The man follows Adrian and uses a gun that disperses smoke on
him, covering his own mouth with a rag. Adrian comes back, telling Jubilee her
CD player can’t be fixed. He starts coughing loudly and weird circuit board
patters appear on his skin. The man accuses Jubilee of being a plague carrying
Mutant, and it doesn’t help in her startled confusion she blows up some TVs.
Storm hears the commotion, causing a fog to hide them and then the two fly out
through ha window.
Back at the Mansion, they do a full
medical scan on Jubilee. She comes back clean according to Beast. Jean tells
her that the plague has everyone on edge, and that’s why she’s being blamed.
Bast decides to check things out, he breaks into the hospital Adrian was taken
to and looks up his file. He sees the artificial plague attacking cells under a
microscope. He’s horrified but fascinated by it.
In the War Room, the bulk of the
Team see a news story about Mutants being quarantined due to the virus
spreading. During the report, a man starts screaming about taking Mutants backc
to where they came from, Storm recognizes him from the mall. The team decides
to investigate. At the sight of the quarantine, Bishop is already there and
trying to defuse the situation. Until someone shoots him, then he uses his
powers to try to drive them off. Storm and Rogue fly in and report that Bishop
is at the scene. The others touch down, Wolverine going to wrestle Bishop but
is thrown to the mob instead. Storm calls up a storm and drives most of the
protestors way. Cyclops starts yelling at Bishop, until Bishop says he’s trying
to save the Future, again.
Back at the War Room, Bishop
explains how the timeline has shifted so that 40 years from now People haven’t
even heard of the X-Men. It’s like they never existed. He tells them the virus
was cooked up in a lab and they need to stop it before it’s too late. Beast
comes in and confirms what Bishop is saying about the virus. He also says it’s
not lethal now but could become so when it mixes with the Mutant population.
Cyclops says they’ll figure out what’s causing this, but they need to calm
plague hysteria first. And he wants to go to the president for help.
We shift over to the Friends of
Humanity Headquarters. Graydon Creed is watching a news report about how Beast
is going to be called in to a senate hearing on the public health crisis. He
thanks the man from earlier for his plague scheme, saying that it’s working
better than he’d hoped. The man says they need to hurry if they want to
capitalize on it, as people will start recovering in a few months. Creed agrees
it’s time to infect the Mutants. Their plan is to infect Beast and use that as
a catalyst to ruin Mutant-Human relations. Once alone, the man’s eyes begin to
glow an eerie purple as he announces that it’s fitting his plague will cleanse
the Earth of both humans and Mutants.
We cut to DC as the hearing begins.
Creed is the first person to testify, claiming he has a document of 5000 people
who have been infected by contact with Mutants. It’s weird seeing the team in
their full gear just in the front of a senate hearing. Fun easter egg, among
the groups watching this hearing are War Machine and SHIELD. They’re blink and
you’ll miss it scenes, probably because the X-Men team technically didn’t have
the rights to use them. The chairman of the hearing cuts in to say that a
report from the president shows no case of infected Mutants thus far. Creed
says it’s a coverup and that Kelly is a Mutant lover. Senator Goode calls Creed
from the stand and orders Beast to it. As they switch places, Creed keeps a
cloth up to his mouth, which totally doesn’t look suspicious at all. As Beast
begins his remarks, Creed tries to infect Beast but Bishop was watching for it
and he tackles Creed. A fight breaks out, with Senator Goode ordering the
chamber be cleared. The X-Men toss some FoH goons around before they’re ordered
out. Creed starts showing signs of infection and does his best to blame the
Mutants on it.
In the Blackbird, Bishop explains
that Creed had a device he was going to use on Beast. It went off during the
fight and infected Creed. Beast had the computer on the Blackbird to watch the
transmission of the hearing for clues. They’re able to see the dispenser for
the virus. Cyclops realizes that with Creed infected, he’ll go somewhere for
Treatment, so they’ll track him.
In the future, Cable demands to
know more about what happened. About Creed specifically, but his computer
insists that Bishop is the key.
The X-Men begin investigating the
FoH headquarters. Cyclops has Jean scan for Creeds mind. She finds him under
the building itself in a secret lab. She sense not only him but an incredibly
powerful mind, the doctors, before getting psychically blasted by purple
energy. Jean tells him they need to hurry before it’s too late. The X-Men
attack the compound, making quick work of the guards. Scott blows a hole
through the ground to the lab as Creed begs for the cure. The Doctor reveals
himself to be Apocalypse, chastising Creed for bringing the X-Men here and for
Creed claiming dominion over him. When Creed calls him a Mutant, we get one of
Apocalypse’s best lines “I am as far beyond Mutants as they are beyond you.”
The X-Men attack, but Apocalypse is powerful enough to take them all on. He
claims to be bringing the purity of oblivion to the is world. All the
containers of virus are destroyed in the scuffle. The X-Men flee, taking Creed
with them. Apocalypse, incredibly pissed off at this, grows to super size and destroys
the X-Men.
In the future, Cable is furious to
learn of Apocalypse’s involvement. His computer tells him that because of
Bishop, millions of lives were saved from the Virus. But the unintended
consequence is that Mutants were never infected, so humanity never developed
specific antibodies to the virus that also stabilized the Mutant genome. Without
those antibodies, uncontrollable Mutations occurred and lead to widespread
death and massive changes to the timeline. The computer tells him that in order
for Cable to save his world, the Mutant plague has to happen. Cable is
horrified to learn that he needs to destroy a past world to save his future
one.
This was another good two parter.
Cable’s future sure looks rough. The death and destruction that Apocalypse is
going to cause millennia in the future sure is crazy. The framing device of the
bulk of the episode being Cable’s supercomputer telling him how the timeline
changed was neat. I enjoyed getting more of Bishop. The other Time Traveling
Mutant is a fan favorite for a reason. Seeing him learn that his time travels
fixed one problem but cause another sure did suck. But that’s the best kind of
time travel, where even when you win it’s not that simple. I honestly forgot
how many time the X-Men get called in for senate hearings, this is like the
third one in two seasons. The fact that the plague is a Friends of Humanity
plot but actually an Apocalypse plot to kill off everyone is a nice twist. If
Apocalypse is as powerful as he claims, then making him the puppet master of a
greater scheme is usually a very good call. I’d forgotten that the scene plays
out up to when Apocalypse kills the X-Men. This show can get dark real quick,
which is why people love it. The final reveal that the Plague is necessary for
Mutant’s long term is depressing as hell. Especially because it means Cable has
to make sure an Apocalypse plan works. He hates that ancient Mutant with a
passion. So next time, we’ll see how Cable works around it. See you then.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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