Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, a final confrontation with Mr. Sinister began. Cyclops, Wolverine and
Jean tracked down Morph to Branson, Missouri and confronted their former teammate
to find out what happened to him and what happened to Xavier. Mr. Sinister and
his Nasty Boys attacked them. The X-Men put on a valiant effort, but Jean is
kidnapped. Meanwhile, Charles and Magneto were being taken to the Citadel by
the Mutates, the two old friends being controlled by hypnosis. They’re saved by
Ka-Zar, a Tarzan like Wildman, and his sabretooth tiger companion Zabu. Ka-Zar
demands the two help him break into the Citadel to save his wife Shanna who had
been kidnapped at the end of last episode. The four do make it to the Citadel,
but only to discover the Mutates waiting, as their master had found Magneto’s
secret back entrance when he took over. Ka-Zar and Zabu flee, but Charles and
Magneto are captured. Mr. Sinister then arrives and is revealed to be the
Master. He also explains that he’s using a device derived from Sauron’s tissues
to repress Mutant Powers. Morph tries to break out of Sinister’s control but
get’s his mind fried for disobedience. Sinister has Sauron use his hypnotic
powers to take control of Charles and then have him contact the X-Men and lure
them to the Savage Land. The X-Men noticed that Charles seemed odd in his message,
but they had no real other option. They headed out to find their missing
mentor. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
We open on the Citadel as Sinister
brings his captives (Jean, Charles, Magneto and now Morph) to their prison cell
in the bowels of the building. He tells them not to worry, as they’ll only be
in their until the X-Men arrive. And he promises them that their genetic material
will live on in his armies of Super Mutants. Real comforting words, there,
Nate. He slams the door on them. Magneto rushes to the door, shouting at Sinister
that his plans are doomed and that he underestimates the X-Men. Magneto’s an
excellent hype-man. Charles then comes out of his trance and groans about
leading his X-Men into a trap.
Shifting focus, we see the
Blackbird touch down in the Savage Land. They find Charles’ jet, Wolverine
snarking that that wasn’t the prof’s best landing, and Cyclops orders the team
to search. Gambit and Rogue try to investigate the plane, but quickly discover
both of their powers aren’t working. Bet Beast is a little annoyed that he’s
still Blue and Furry, but before they can analyze their feelings at being powerless,
they’re attacked by the combined forces of the Mutates and Nasty Boys. Ruckus tells
them to surrender and maybe Sinister will let them live. A hugely one-sided
fight breaks out, as they’re effective humans fighting Mutants and Dinosaurs.
Beast does pretty well, as he’s still an incredibly fit animal man, and is able
to take out a pterosaur rider before being captured. Wolverine faces off
against a white wolf man and Hairbag. Hairbag says it’ll be a pleasure to tear Wolverine
apart now that he doesn’t have his powers. Wolverine extends his claws and says
there’s nothing Mutant about that power. … Yes, at this point in the comics Wolverine’s
claws were 100% something the Weapon X Program added to him, it was only after the
movies that they retconned it, so Wolverine has natural bone claws. He fights
them off, but Vertigo uses her mind-bending powers to disorient Wolverine. She
tries to make him surrender, but because this is James ‘Logan’ Howlett, he does
the insane but stubborn thing of leaping off a cliff down a waterfall to escape
them. He pulls himself from the water, grumbling that he could use his healing
factor right about now. He limps away from the fight and Ruckus sends Pterosaur
riders after him. Ruckus tells the others to cooperate with Mr. Sinister and
they might live longer. Cyclops tells him to screw off, more or less, but they’re
taken away.
Wolverine spends a not fun time
running from Pterosaur riders and their bow and arrows. Thankfully the Canuck
is still incredibly fit and he’s able to dodge them until he loses them in the
forest. He gets a moment to breathe before a dinosaur attacks him. He starts fleeing
again, escaping the raptor when a T-Rex starts chasing it. He runs for a bit
and is tracked by Ka-Zar and Zabu. He’s able to sniff them out… somehow and
confronts the Wildman. Ka-Zar assumes all Mutants work for Sinister and demands
that Wolverine take him to his master. Wolverine tries to blow him off, but Ka-Zar
attacks him. He fights Ka-Zar and Zabu of, angrily saying that he has no
master. Ka-Zar asks him if he truly doesn’t work for Mr. Sinister, and Logan
says he’s here to tear him a new naval. They’re attacked by the Pterosaur
riders again, but they’re able to fight them off and steal a Pterosaur to ride.
Wolverine officially introduces himself to Ka-Zar as they mount up. Ka-Zar
tells Zabu that he’ll have to stay behind, and if they fall, he must avenge them.
Tall order to give your cat, bro.
At the Citadel, Sinister has all of
his prisoners brought to his lab so he can experiment on them and gloat. He chastises
his prisoners, telling them that they’d rather waste time sniveling to the
Humans to reach coexistence or fighting an unwinnable war. Well, an unwinnable
war unless they’re able to push their powers to the next level. He’s extremely
creepy to Scott and Jean for a minute to say that he’s been waiting to ‘create’
with them. Weirdo. He then unveils his gene-splicing machine, saying that with
it he can add Mutant genetic sequences to other Mutants, combining their powers
in unique and unpredictable ways. He has Vertigo strapped in first and chooses
to use Magneto’s DNA in his experiment. Magneto tells him to just shut up and
do it. The device painfully drains Magneto and pumps up Vertigo. She announces that
Magneto’s strength now flows through her, and to show off her powers she uses a
massive hypnotic blast on the X-Men, dropping the whole group as Sinister laughs.
Wolverine and Ka-Zar land on the
citadel and break in. In the lab, Sinister orders Rogue to be taken next. She
tells Gambit that she’s scared as she doesn’t know how to fight without her powers.
He tells her to be brave and says that he’s never told anyone this before, but
he loves her. They get a quick kiss in before Slab and Gorgeous George grabs
Rogue for Sinister. Wolverine and Ka-Zar split up, the Wildman going down to
where his people are being held and Wolverine towards the lab. Wolverine busts
in before they can experiment on her. Wolverine tries to free his friends but
the villains throw him around pretty easily.
Meanwhile, Ka-Zar reaches the cells.
He is able to signal Shanna, who distracts the guard for a second so Ka-Zar can
knock him out. Vertigo keeps blasting Wolverine, telling him to surrender or be
destroyed. Wolverine refuses to be a slave. He’s saved by the Savage Landers
charging the lab, distracting Sinister and his crew long enough for Wolverine to
free Morph and Charles. Vertigo blasts them all, but they’ve got enough coordination
to smash some of the lab equipment, disabling the anti-power field. Another one
sided fight commences, but this time it’s the X-Men and Magneto outclassing the
Nasty Boys and Mutates. Sinister blasts Magneto, saying that if he rejects Sinister’s
future, then he won’t live to see it. Cyclops blasts Sinister from behind,
saying that he warned the mad scientist to leave them alone. Sinister says that
we won’t, ever, as he needs both Scott and Jean for his plans. Cyclops takes
this as an excuse to keep blasting. Sinister has enough time to hit the device
on his wrist to trigger Morph’s control implant. Morph grabs a blaster on Sinister’s
order and prepares to shoot. Charles reaches out to Morph’s mind and reminds
him that he’s an X-Man. That’s enough to get him to change targets and shoot Sinister
along with Cyclops. They obliterate Sinister, breaking him into pieces. He says
that the future can’t be destroyed so easily. Jean says Bet. She uses her powers
to hurl Sinister’s pieces into the air and then blow them up, saying that he
won’t recover from that for a while. We see Sauron’s scaly green arm flip a switch
and the Citadel implodes. The X-Men and Magneto are able to hold it together
long enough to escape.
Returned to his hover chair,
Charles muses that while he didn’t have fun on this excursion, it did prove the
X-Men can handle things without him. We see the Savage Landers start to rebuild
their homes as Charles says that when they get home, they’ll remove the control
device from Morph’s brain. But he thinks the psychic damage of his enslavement
will take much longer to recover from. Magneto admits it was good to fight alongside
Charles again. Charles offers him a spot on the X-Men, but he refuses, saying
they have their own destinies to pursuit and only time will tell who’s is
right. He creates an electromagnetic barrier and flies off and the X-Men take
off too. As they leave, we cut to Sauron, who announces that the Savage Land
has been cleansed of outsiders and it’s true destiny can begin. As he flies
off, we see the fragments of Sinister body coalesce into his face and laughs
evilly.
This was a solid finale for season
2. The X-Men got to reunite with their long-lost mentor, and we got hints of
what Sinister’s designs were. He wants to push Mutant evolution to the limit
and doesn’t care what happens to anyone to reach that goal. He’s weirdly
obsessed with Scott and Jean, that’s a plot point that will come up in future
episodes, as I’m sure many of you are aware. Seeing him cross Mutant DNA was neat
in theory, though I wish we could have seen something weirder than just making
Vertigo stronger. Like, maybe we could have seen what happened when ya add Beast’s
DNA to Amphibious. Like does amphibian plus bear equal like a furry frog? A
scaly bear? Or something? He could have given Slab explosive powers or
something. No? Just a power boost? Great. I do wish that this could have been a
three parter, just to give us more time with Wolverine in the Savage Land. The
man loves wilderness survival, so even without his powers I imagine he would
have had fun out there. Plus, he and Ka-Zar could have been a fun team up. The
final fight with Sinister was satisfying, getting to see Scott vent his frustration
against the jerk was cathartic as hell. And I like that they let Morph be a
part of the win, as he’s easily been the most screwed over by Sinister in this universe.
So the team has been reunited and Sinister has been disabled for now. Things should
be calm for the X-Men for a while. But something is on the horizon for them…
Phoenix Force. But more on that next time. See you then.
No comments:
Post a Comment