Saturday, October 26, 2024

Viewer Log: X-Men: TAS ep 27

 Wolverine always has the strangest exes. 

Last time on X-Men: The Animated Series, the X-Men finally tracked down Xavier. Sinister lured the team to the Savage Land and attacked the group with his combined forces of Mutates and Nasty Boys. The X-Men are easily captured as they’re powers are repressed, but Wolverine is able to escape thanks to his claws (they weren’t a mutation in this era) and his willingness to throw himself off cliffs to escape. He runs into and teams up with Ka-Zar to free his friends from the Citadel. Everyone else is brought to the Citadel so he can experiment on mixing and matching their powers with his men. He transplants Magneto’s strength into Vertigo, one of his henchmen. Wolverine attacks and is able to free Morph and the Professor. Vertigo unleashes a massive psychic blast to disorientate them, but Morph and the Professor smash up Sinister’s Mutation suppressing device. With their powers active, the X-Men quickly rout Mr. Sinister and his men. Cyclops attempts to finish the mad scientist off with his optic blasts. Sinister activates his control implant in Morph and tries to get him to shoot Cyclops. Xavier speaks to Morph telepathically and convinces him that he’s still a part of their family. Morph adds the laser fire to Cyclops’ beam, and they shatter Sinister into pieces. Jean then hurls the pieces into the air and incinerates them. After the fighting, Magneto says that it was good to work with Charles again but turns down an offer to join the X-Men. The teams fly off, with the episode hinting that Sauron will be up to something in the Savage Land and that Mr. Sinister will return. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

We open in New York as Leech of the Morlocks runs from some assailants. He’s chased into the sewers by these goons, but once in there he leaves them in the dust. It’s a mysterious woman, their boss, comes out and orders her men to find the boy using their motion trackers. She wants what he has, badly. It’s also revealed that the entire group is made up of cyborgs, everyone has either machinery attached to their chests and faces or full prosthetic arms. Their boss comes out of the shadows, announcing “No one steals from Lady Deathstrike, and lives.” Leech runs, carrying the bundle in his arms. He returns to the Morlocks and gives it to Callisto. The former leader of the Morlocks thanks him for his service, saying this device, a sci-fi looking blaster, will unlock a treasure great enough to let Callisto rule the Morlocks again. The cyborgs attack, Callisto tells them to stop the invaders to keep them from the hidden tunnel. The Morlocks are quickly captured, the cyborgs use energy nets to immobilize them. Deathstrike grabs Leech and demands to know why he robbed her. He says Callisto made him do it, as the tech from their lab would let them access a great treasure. He gestures down a tunnel and Deathstrike and her men go to investigate. They find the Morlock’s treasure, a massive spaceship. Deathstrike is impressed by the craft, claiming to feel it’s power. She hopes that this will help her exact her revenge. She touches the craft or tries to. She gets zapped by the ship’s shields. This sends a massive wave of energy out. It scrambles computers, and when it hits the X-mansion, it makes Xavier scream with pain at the immense power off the thing. Charles recovers a moment later and uses Cerebro to try to fin it’s origin.

 

Back in the tunnel, Deathstrike recovers, saying that the ship reacted to her cybernetic components. They felt like they were on fire. One of her men tries to shoot the ship to get it open, but she slashes him, saying that they might break it. Deathstrike reasons that the Morlocks were able to touch the ship, and while she can’t get too close, her adamantine claws were able to damage the hull when she tried to enter it. So what they might need is a human set of adamantine claws.

 

We cut to Wolverine playing basketball with Gambit and Jubilee. He spears the ball with his claws then Gambit tries to shoot, classic Logan. Their game is interrupted by a message on their video screen. They answer and see Leech on the other side. He says that he’s not looking for Storm, the leader of the Morlocks currently, but Wolverine. He says Yuriko told him to tell Wolverine that she’s in the Morlock tunnels. Before he can say more the message cuts out. Having done what Deathstrike asked of him, she has Leech bound in an energy net like the others and tells her men to prepare for Wolverine’s arrival. Back at the court, Jubilee asks who Yuriko is. He say that she’s someone from a long time ago. He storms off, saying that this is personal business. Jubilee says they need to go after him, Gambit disagrees, but she says she’s going alone if she has to and Gambit is forced to follow.

 

Wolverine arrives in the city and cuts his way into the Morlock’s underground, leaving a fine trail for Gambit and Jubilee to follow. He has a flashback to Yuriko as they walk. He remembers a pretty, normal woman he had to leave some years ago. He says that he doesn’t want to go, but some guys in Canada are calling him out and they’re not the type to be ignored. He swears that he’ll come back for her. He then went on a mission with a special forces team. He’s separated from his copter and captured. He’s brought into a lab by the “Professor” (Not Charles) and a Dr. Cornelius, who put him through the Weapon X procedure. He draws his claws for the first time and cuts himself free. He wrecks the lab chasing after the professor, but he escapes. Wolverine runs out of the lab and into the wilderness. He returned to Yuriko’s house at some point, either during his time with Alpha Flight or sometime after, but found the house abandoned.

 

The cyborgs, the Reavers, get orders to take Wolverine alive. Wolverine slices through the Reavers, drawing Jubilee and Gambit towards him by the fight. As he slices through Reavers he demands to know where Yuriko is. Deathstrike comes out and faces off against him. He asks what she did to herself. She explained that she had redesigned herself, for revenge. She worked for years to make herself powerful enough to kill Logan, and that the Reavers gave her the best option. He begs to know why. Yuriko reveals that she’s the daughter of Professor Oyama, the scientist that developed the bonding process that let the adamantium stick to Logan’s skeleton. She claims that Logan destroyed him for what he did to Logan and she wants payback. The two fight, Deathstrike slashing at him and Logan defending himself. He says that he didn’t kill Oyama and that he loved her once. The Reavers catch him in a net. Deathstrike goes to finish him, but the Reavers stop her, reminding her that they brought Wolverine here to open the ship. She doesn’t care about that now, but the Reavers promise her that she’ll have Logan after the ship is open… or they can shoot her and be on their way without her. The villains move out, Gambit and Jubilee following at a distance.

 

They follow the Reavers into the bowels of the Earth. They see the captured Morlocks, but Gambit says they’ll help them after getting Logan. The Reavers wake Wolverine up, and Deathstrike says that he will open the ship or die. Wolverine chooses to fight, Jubilee and Gambit arriving to even the odds. They fight valiantly, but Gambit and Jubilee get captured. Deathstrike tires to kill Wolverine, but he dodges around her and throws her at the ship. She gets zapped by the field of the ship. Back at the Mansion, Xavier senses that the field is keeping something in and then shouts for them to not open it. Wolverine slashes the barrier to free Deathstrike. This causes a rip in the field that grows as everyone watches in horror. As the episode ends, Jubilee asks what happened and Wolverine says he doesn’t want to know.

 

This was a fine start to season 3. A bit of Logan’s origin story is always a crowd pleaser. Sure, it’s a little weird how to figure out when Logan would have had time to go back to Yuriko. From episode 18, we know that after escaping the Weapon X Lab, Logan lived in the wilderness for a bit before meeting the Hudsons and recovering. He then went on to join Alpha Flight. So, he either went to see Yurico again while a member of the group or sometime after he left. Depending on how long that was, a few months or a few years, I kind of get why Yurico might have left even before finding out about her dad. Imagine the bad luck of getting kidnapped, wrecking the workplace of the kidnappers, only to find out you might have killed your girlfriend’s dad in your escape. Second only to your ex-boyfriend being the only one to get you access to a treasure, I suppose. The ship is intriguing. Everyone wants in on it, which makes sense as the Reavers are all Cyborgs, but no one is asking why a ship might be buried beneath the planet. Ya don’t bury something that deep because it’s full of candy or something. We’ll see what happens when Logan slashes something that should have remained unslashed next time. See you then. 

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