Rogue deals with a living nightmare.
Back to X-Men for a bit, we’ll cover
Agatha All Along in October and November.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, a new time traveler entered the arena. It’s revealed that Bishop,
the mercenary from Genosha, is in fact a time traveler from the far future. He
witnesses a time storm that begins erasing things due to Bishop interfering with
the flow of time in 1993. Cable attacks the X-Men several times trying to stop
Bishop but is unable to stop events from unfolding. He uses his computer to get
a refresher on the X-Men and their powers, intentionally skipping Cyclops and
Jean for some reason, and gets an idea when he’s reminded about Wolverine. He
attacks the X-Men again during the senate hearing and kidnaps Wolverine just as
things turn into a fiasco. He knocks Wolverine out for a bit, but then brings
him along when the X-Men face off against Graydon Creed and the FoH scientist
that’s really Apocalypse in disguise. Cable throws Wolverine into the tank of
the virus, using Wolverine’s healing factor to create a perfect immunity to it,
thus stopping Apocalypse’ plan and also exposing everyone to the virus that
will one day stabilize the Mutant Genome. Bishop and Cable return to their
respective futures. In Bishops, his ally Forge doesn’t know anything about any
plague now, and Cable is reunited with his son Tyler. Alls well that ends well.
Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
We open with a woman walking in the
rain. A man tries to steal her umbrella. She covers herself with it and then reveals
herself in a monster form, screaming at the man and making him run. Okay, so
this is Mystique. Mystique enters an old apartment building and lights a candle,
saying the person inside said they had a gift for her. It’s revealed to be Mr.
Sinister. His gift is to tell her that Xavier is currently missing and that
without their professor to look after them it might be easy for her to reclaim
her daughter. Mystique runs off and Sinister laughs evilly.
We cut to the Brotherhood of Mutants,
Avalanche, Pyro and Blob, causing a scene at a carnival. The X-Men arrive, and a
fight ensues, for some of them. Pyro says that their job was to just lure them
out and since they did that they could bail, but Avalanche and Blob want to stay
and fight. Rogue bounces off Blob’s bulbous belly and crashes into a booth. She
makes a crack about having just washed this uniform when she suddenly sees a
blonde woman standing over her. This seems to trigger something in Rogue’s mind
as she starts seeing mental flashes of the woman and screaming bloody murder. She
passes out and has a very trippy dream seeing all of the people she’s absorbed power
from floating in bubbles and the blonde woman as a lizard creature.
Rogue wakes up in the X-Mansion infirmary
with Gambit and Scott looking after her. Scott asks her what happened, and
Rogue tells him that she’d been seeing that woman in ‘flashes’ lately. We learn
that Xavier had been working with Rogue with some kind of past trauma, he’d used
his powers to repress memories she couldn’t handle but bring up during their therapy
sessions. She can’t remember what they were working on since, ya know, the
professor isn’t there. Jean comes in with a portable computer and disk
recording, saying she used the Mansion’s system to run an image search on the
blonde. She’d appeared at a lot of incidents they’d been involved in recently,
like she wanted them to see her. Gambit shows Rogue the photos of the woman and
asks if she recognizes her. Rogue doesn’t but seeing her triggers another mental
pain spike. Rogue says she’s fine, just needs some air. She flies out of the
mansion and finds Logan chopping wood with his claws. She then sees the blonde
superimposed over Logan, saying “You can’t keep me bottled up forever.” She
screams at this thing to leave her alone and she punches through the log Logan
had been using to hold up the lumber. This knocks Logan back and he’s very
confused. She hears someone say “Way to go, Rogue-y-roo” Gambit arrives outside
and tries to get her attention but she lashes out and knocks him back. She
tells them all to leave her alone and flies off.
She returns to the mansion, looking
for Jean. Scott finds her first and he asks her wants wrong, but then Rogue sees
the Blonde again. She starts screaming in pain and drops to the ground. She’s pulled
into the lower depths of her mind by the woman, who says she wants Rogue to see
what Rogue had put the woman through. She accuses Rogue of taking away her
life. She turns giant and attacks Rogue,
who tries to fly away and screams at the woman to leave her alone. She crashes
into Cyclops. He’d gotten Jean in the last minute, and they ask Rogue what’s wrong.
Rogue answers in the voice of the blonde, asking where she is and who these
people are. Jean tries to reach out to her but in her normal voice tells them
to get away. Jean uses her powers on Rogue to stop her, probing her mind and
trying to figure out what’s happening to her. She senses another presence in Rogue’s
mind. Rogue sees the Blonde as some kind of goblin in her reflection. The woman
dives at Rogue, and they wrestle before Rogue flies up and through the mansion,
startling Jubilee, Logan and Ororo as she goes. They’re all on different
floors. Scott tells Jean to tell Storm to follow her, they need to be prepared
for the worst.
Storm follows Rogue to New York
City and then to the Statue of Liberty. She lands on the torch and Storm
follows her. Rogue admits to being scared and not sure what to do. Storm offers
to help her but Rogue is sure that the Professor’s the only one who could help
and he’s gone. Storm wants to try anyway. Rogue is about to accept when she
sees the Blonde again, who says that Storm is lying, and that Rogue is hers
now. Rogue flies at the Blonde, and Storm follows. The Blonde tells her to come
to her, in the hospital where Rogue put her. Rogue says she’s going to, and that she’ll
shut her up when she does. Rogue lands on a building, rips the lock off the
stair’s entrance and goes inside. Mystique appears, saying that she’s finally
ready to return to her. She shifts into Rogue’s form to draw Storm in, and then
has Blob attack her. She knocks Storm out with a spray, then take on her form
and radios in to the others, telling the X-Men to assemble at the General
hospital.
Rogue goes deeper into the
building, which seems to be a long-term care facility. We see the Blonde is in a
coma. A pair of nurses are looking after her, the more experienced nurse telling
the newer that this is their Jane Doe that they refer to as Sleeping Beauty.
She’d been brought to them a few years ago and she’s had almost no brain activity
since they hooked her up to the monitor.
Cyclops, Wolverine and Gambit meet
up with “Storm” and are immediately attacked by the Brotherhood. Mystique
reveals herself after Blob and Avalanche trap the boys in rubble, saying they
stole something important from her and she’s going to get it back. Avalanche
starts to gloat, but then Cyclops hits him with an eyebeam. It’s like they
forgot 2/3rds of this group are ranged specialists. Cyclops breaks them free,
and a brawl begins, Pyro creating a flame lion to attack them. Mystique tells
her team to keep them busy and runs off. Storm wakes up and catches the three
Brotherhood boys in a hurricane and hurls them into a building to knock them
out. She says they’re a distraction and that they need to search the hospital
for Rogue and Mystique.
Rogue is searching through the hospital;
Mystique takes on the Blonde’s form to lure her deeper into the building and up
into the Blonde’s room. Mystique reveals herself and says that she did all this
to lure Rogue to the Blonde to help her remember the past Xavier purged from
her mind. She asks Rogue to touch her to learn the truth. Rogue does so, knocking
Mystique out and turning blue before getting flashbacks.
She remembers how her powers first
manifested, when she kissed her boyfriend and put him into a coma. Her father
disowns her for being a Mutant and Rogue runs off on her own. She had nowhere else to go, so when she met a
kindly older woman looking to take her in, she was happy. This was obviously Mystique,
she retains this older woman’s form the whole time Rogue knew her, to cover up
the plot hole of how Rogue didn’t recognize her or the Brotherhood boys before.
Another one opens where it’s revealed that Mystique trained Rogue to use her
powers using the Brotherhood, a group that seemingly didn’t exist in universe before.
Remember, in episode 9 ‘The Cure’ Pyro was introducing Avalanche to Mystique,
and yet here we learn they’ve worked together for years. Whatever, Rogue drained
their powers to train. The training was for ‘the most important day of her
life.’
The Brotherhood attempt to steal a
fighter jet from an Airforce base, Rogue draining the pilot to learn how to fly
it. Their theft is interrupted by Carol Danvers aka Ms. Marvel, who quickly takes
out Blob and the others as Rogue takes off. As Ms. Marvel chases Rogue in the jet,
Mystique says evilly that her daughter has a surprise for Ms. Marvel. Ms.
Marvel catches Rogue and breaks into the plane. She tries to land the plane,
but Mystique via an earpiece tells Rogue to grab her and not let go. Rogue does
so, draining and holding onto Ms. Marvel despite how weird it feels. Ms. Marvel
flies out of the plane to try to get away from Rogue but she won’t let go. Ms.
Marvel crashes to the ground on top of Rogue, the latter making a deep dent in
the ground.
Rogue asks Mystique why she made
her hang onto Ms. Marvel like that, asking why her love wasn’t enough for Mystique.
Rogue continues to narrate her memories, saying that hanging onto Ms. Marvel so
long let Rogue steal her powers permanently, giving her Ms. Marvel’s super
strength and flight. But not her energy blasts, how odd. Rogue reveals that she
also had Ms. Marvel’s mind trapped in her own, and she started seeing visions
of Ms. Marvel accusing her of stealing Ms. Marvel’s life. Rogue pretends to be
fine when the first vision made her crash, but the next time she had a vision she
decided to run away. While flying away, Charles called out to her
telepathically, saying he could help. He said he couldn’t return Ms. Marvel to
her own body, but she could ‘quiet’ her, for both her and Rogue’s sake.
In the present, Mystique says that’s
how she lost Rogue to Xavier and that she’d sworn to get her back one day. She
hugs Rogue, but Rogue’s smarter than that. She knows now that Mystique was just
using her as a weapon. She shapeshifts into Ms. Marvel uncontrollably. Mystique
says that her power will fade soon, but until then Rogue will keep shifting
since she never learned to control it. Carol’s mind in Rogue exerts control,
forcing her to shapeshift into her costumed form, announcing that she’s taking
this body, and that Ms. Marvel is reborn. The X-Men arrive and see Rogue shift
between forms. Ms. Marvel takes control again, grabs Mystique and flies off,
Storm in pursuit. Storm can’t keep up, but Jean reveals she’s monitoring the situation
with Cerebro.
Jean reaches out into Rogue’s mind and
sees her and Ms. Marvel battling in Rogue’s subconscious. Ms. Marvel keeps shifting between her normal
form and a green monster form as they fight. Ms. Marvel believes that if she
can beat Rogue in the mind, she’ll be able to seize control of the body and get
her life back. Jean tells her that it doesn’t work like that and if Rogue dies,
they both do. Ms. Marvel says it’s better to end it then than live like this.
She keeps accusing Rogue of taking everything from her, Rogue apologizes
profusely as she truly didn’t know this would happen. She says that this ends
now, but Jean grabs her and captures her in a box. Rogue seals her up, crying
as she does so and saying she’s sorry. Jean reassures her that there was no
other way. Rogue returns to normal and puts Mystique down. Mystique tries to
get Rogue to come back with her, but Rogue knows she just used her before and
will do so again. She’s an X-Man now and isn’t looking back.
Later, we see Rogue in casual
clothes. Gambit is impressed and asks if she’d dress up like that for him. She
says she might, but today she’s going to spend time with an old friend. She heads to Ms. Marvel’s hospital room,
telling the Nurse that their Jane Doe is in fact Carol Danvers. She says they
were close as she brushes Carol’s hair. There’s a mental ping as she does so
that no one notices. She leaves with the
nurse. When alone, Carol’s brainwaves start picking up and she seems to force a
smile.
This sort of episode is a good
news, bad news sort of one. On the one hand, it’s interesting and fun to see
things like Rogue’s past explored. This is the origin of her flight and
superstrength in the comics as well, she started as a Brotherhood Mutant and
adopted daughter of Mystique, who was told to hold on and not let go of Ms.
Marvel until she absorbed her powers permanently. The only problem is that continuity errors
this creates with the first season. Now, this is true in comics as well. When a
medium reaches hundreds, perhaps thousands of writers over multiple decades,
you’re bound to have some wires crossed, things get confused, and errors
happen. The problem is that that’s normally for stories decades old, not one season
old. They do the same thing later when the writers decide the X-Men have been a
thing for a while before the first season and that it was the OG 5-man team
back in the day, even though no one recognized Warren (Angel/Archangel) in his
previous appearances. Probably wasn’t an issue in the 90s where a lot of these episode
get jumbled up so maybe they did show episode 22 before episode 9 or something,
but in the age of streaming it’s a bit odd is all I’m saying. I do like the
whole plot though; Rogue being haunted by the ghost in her mind and Mystique
trying to bring her back into the fold is a neat concept. As a late 90s kid,
this is how I learned that Rogue and Mystique have a history together and I was
shocked. Granted, lots of things shocked me in 1998, I was 7 for most of it but
it was still a big deal. The only other thing that really disappoints me about
this episode is that it’s a one and done. To my knowledge, they never bring up Ms.
Marvel again or show her waking from her coma. I know, they had a lot of stuff to
cover, but it would have been nice to see her wake up and make amends with Rogue
is all I’m saying. So yeah, fine episode. Next time is a Wolverine and Beast
episode. One gets mad and one acts smart and it’s not the ones you think. See
you then.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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