And now there are space pirates, because why not?
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, we had a couple family reunions. Charles Xavier’s new lady friend
Lilandra of the Shi’ar was kidnapped by his step-brother Juggernaut and
Juggernaut’s new partner Black Tom Cassidy. Juggernaut, wanting to end things
with Charles, hurls him out a window. He’s saved from drowning by Sean Cassidy
via his ability to fly while screaming. Because the baddies cleared out before
they could get back to Charles’ room, and weirdly that Miur Island doesn’t have
security cameras, both Moira MacTaggart and Sean believe Charles just had another
psychotic episode. Charles calls the X-Men in to prove him right. While the
team is skeptical, Cyclops agrees to send them over because they at the very
least need to check it out. At Muir Island, Logan quickly confirms that three
other people were in Charles’ room and one of them doesn’t smell human. Turns
out Juggernaut and Black Tom were hired to capture Lilandra for Eric the Red,
and after he tried to stiff them on the bill he arrives to collect her. Lilandra
is able to get a psychic message out to Charles which included an image of a
Stag and Dragon crest that Sean recognized as his own family crest and deduces
that Black Tom is held up at their family’s castle as the two are brothers. The
X-Men plus Sean Cassidy in his Banshee costume arrive at castle Cassidy and do
battle with Eric the Red, Juggernaut and Black Tom. Their fight is interrupted by
the arrival of Gladiator, the captain of the Praetorian Guard of the Shi’ar
Emperor. He makes quick work of Juggernaut as he’s basically blue Superman, and
tries to take Lilandra so she’ll take him to the M’Kraan Crystal. Lilandra
calls out psychically to Charles who calls out psychically to the X-Men,
inadvertently waking up the Phoenix within Jean Gray. As the Phoenix, Jean
flies to castle Cassidy and humbles Gladiator by hurling him back into deep
space. We learn that the Phoenix is the guardian of the M’Kraan crystal from
Lilandra and that she needs its help to stop her brother. Gladiator stops just
in front of Emperor D’Ken’s ship as it comes out of hyperspace. Enough recap.
Let’s get to it.
We return to Castle Cassidy and see
Black Tom is really hoofing it out of the castle. We jump up to the roof of the
castle where Charles assures Lilandra that his X-Men will help protect the
crystal. She says she needs to get back to her ship ASAP, but her transporter
isn’t strong enough to take two people. Phoenix gets up and says that she can
do it, but Logan points out that she don’t look it. Phoenix says that her body
is young and strong, and it recovers quickly. They’re distracted from her
condition and odd word choice a second later when the Blackbird flies in, I
guess Cyclops, Beast and Storm must have sprinted to it when Jean left and broke
the sound barrier to get from New York City to a castle on the coast of Ireland
in like 45 minutes. Scott runs out and demands to know where Jean is, Charles
pointing him to where she’s floating. He runs up beside Wolverine who is watching
her float, saying that as best he can tell she’s searching for something. We
see Phoenix using her powers to locate D’Ken’s ship and look within it, we see
he’s appearing before (assumedly) his Praetorian Guard and one member sense Jean’s
mental probe and tries to track her.
Scott gets Phoenix’s attention and
asks her what’s up. Phoenix says she’ll need his help to prepare the others for
the battle that is to come. Beast introduces himself to Lilandra and says that
he’s looking forward to learning more about her people before Phoenix comes
over and says it’s time to go. She teleports all of them skyward and releases a
psychic shockwave that is felt all the way in London. It at least gets the
attention of Captain Britain (Not England’s Captain America, he’s more of a
magic Superman) and Emma Frost of the Hellfi- Inner Circle Club. They edited
the name of the group but not Emma Frost’s outfit of a coreset and thigh high
boots? The 90s were weird. Oh, and Dr. Strange felt it in New York too. Back at
the Castle we see that Phoenix just took the adult active duty X-Men, leaving Charles,
Jubilee, Moira and Sean on the rooftop. Charles begs to come to, but Jubilee says
she’s not coming back, and that the way Phoenix said goodbye makes it sound
like none of them will.
We jump to the dark side of the Moon
where Lilandra’s ship is parked. Her crew fires on the Phoenix as it
approaches, which is understandable. If I saw a firebird I’d probably fire on
it too. They dodge the shots and appear in the ship. The transfer visibly weakened
Phoenix but she bounces back quickly. We’re shown the M’Kraan Crystal for the
first time. It’s about the size of a big truck tire. Gambit asks the obvious question
of how a universe could fit in there, with Beast saying the faceted
configuration of the crystal allows it. Rogue jokes that she knew there was a
simple explanation and Gambit says he’ll get her one for Christmas if she likes
it. A ship arrives and starts firing on them. Lilandra orders evasive action,
but they get hit with a stun blast that disables everyone. The X-Men recover
quickly but Lilandra and her crew are out cold, Beast theorizes that the blast
was probably calibrated to specifically effect Shi’ar biology. The docking bay
hatch opens and we’re introduced to the Starjammers, alien pirates lead by
Corsair, a human. A firefight breaks out to get the M’Kraan Crystal. The X-Men
hold off the Starjammers long enough for Phoenix to read their minds and tell
the X-Men what their deal is. Corsair calls back to his ship’s pilot, Raza, and
tells him to recalibrate their stunners for Humans. Cyclops tells him to standdown
of he’ll shoot. Phoenix reads Corsair’s mind and sees two boys in his memory,
clearly a young Scott and his brother Alex. Phoenix realizes who Corsair must
be and stops Scott from shooting, but Corsair’s stunner gets through and drops
the X-Men. I’m a little shocked that it works on such non-standard humans like
Beast, but what ya gonna do? Corsair is grabbed by his crew who also get the M’Kraan
crystal and flee. Wolverine is the first to recover and grabs a woozy Phoenix
and helps her to a seat. She says they took the M’Kraan Crystal and Scott too.
He asks why she stopped Cyclops, to which she says she can’t tell him. But thicks
to complete the sentence, that Corsair is Scott’s father. We cut to Corsair’s
ship where they have Cyclops in shackles. Raza asks if they took him to be a
hostage, but Corsair says that he took Cyclops because he’s a weapon, the last
one they’ll ever need.
We cut to Gladiator as he’s hauling
Erik the Red (real name Davan Shakari) to D’Ken’s ship for Erik to be
debriefed. Onboard, D’Ken demands to know how his agents could be beaten by
lowly humans. Gladiator tries to tell him that the Phoenix kicked their asses,
but D’Ken insists the Phoenix is only a legend. Their meeting is interrupted by
a holographic message from Corsair, who Gladiator calls a traitor. Corsair reveals
he has the crystal and offers to trade it for half the imperial treasury. D’Ken
agrees, swearing a sacred oath to do it. Corsair promises to hand over the
treasure along with Scott for D’Ken’s amusement. When the transmission ends, D’Ken
orders Gladiator to dispose of Corsair and the Starjammers immediately after
they have the crystal. Gladiator is clearly not okay with this, as D’Ken swore
an oath, but must accept. He calls in the other Praetorian Guard and tells them
to execute the Starjammers and bring Corsair in to face the emperor’s
judgement.
We cut to the Starjammer ship. Corsair
meets with Cyclops. It looks like in the interim between scenes they stuck a
device on his visor, presumably to keep him from using it. He reveals that he’s
agreed to give D’Ken the Crystal. When Scott protests, asking him if he knows
what the mad emperor will do with the Crystal, Corsair says that D’Ken will
never touch the crystal as Cyclops is going to wipe out his miserable existence.
He says that the only way to get close to D’Ken was to offer him the crystal,
and while he might suspect an attack from Corsair, he won’t from the ‘helpless
prisoner’ Cyclops. He should be able to get off one full power blast at the
Crystal during the exchange which should kill D’Ken. Cyclops asks why he’s so
hellbent on getting D’Ken and Corsair reveals that D’Ken killed his wife. As he
leaves, Scott asks if one woman’s life is worth all the bloodshed, to which Corsair
says that she was to him. … And would be to Scott too if he knew your name is Christopher
Summers and your wife was Katherine, ya dingus.
Recovered, Lilandra’s ship heads
out to chase after the Starjammer’s ship, the Starjammer. As they fly, Beast
checks out the ship specs while Wolverine paces and Gambit tosses cards into a
Shi’ar helmet. Wolverine kicks the helmet in frustration and asks how they can
fight something they can’t reach, to which Gambit says they’ll fight little
green men soon enough. Lilandra begs Phoenix to transport them into the
Starjammer like she did with Lilandra’s ship, but Phoenix says she’s too weak just
yet. She needs a little more time to recover. She claims to grow stronger with
each use of her powers.
Corsair returns and asks Scott to
help him stop D’Ken. Scott says that they both know he doesn’t have a choice.
After saying goodbye to his crew, and ordering them to flee if anything goes
wrong, they head out. On the trip crossing ships, Corsair reveals he’s from Earth
but says that the story is too long to tell. He asks Cyclops if he has kids, to
which Cyclops says no, and Corsair says he wouldn’t recognize his own if he saw
them, but does remember his oldest had his mother’s eyes. Of course he does.
Back on Lilandra’s ship, Phoenix reveals
that if she can get in contact with Scott’s mind she can use it as a beacon and
transport them all to him. Corsair and Cyclops arrive in the throne room as
Phoenix connects to him. Phoenix flies them towards Cyclops in her phoenix form.
Corsair presents the crystal to D’Ken. He orders Cyclops to shoot, but the Praetorian
Guard and X-Men arrive. Corsair runs to kill D’Ken but finds out the D’Ken there
is a shapeshifting decoy. The X-Men battle the Praetorian Guard and play keep
away with the crystal. Corsair tells them to fall back to the Starjammer. They
fall back but are outmaneuvered by D’Ken and Gladiator who grab Lilandra and
the crystal. He tells the X-Men he’ll have Gladiator crush Lilandra if they
interfere. Wolverine is obviously still up for a scrap, but Phoenix tells him
to stand down as this is her fight now. D’Ken does a chant and awakens the M’Kraan
crystal’s power. Phoenix tries to grab it, but he finishes the chant and starts
absorbing the energy of the Crystal. Phoenix says she wasn’t strong enough yet
to stop him and he’s taking in its power. Wolverine asks if that means the
power will get out, but Phoenix tells him it’s more like all of this universe
will be pulled in. Dun Dun DUUUUN.
Took a little while to get back out
into space but we’re here and things are heating up. I find it funny that Jean
as the Phoenix now has access to nearly infinite amounts of cosmic power but
she’s still constantly getting hit with dizziness and fainting spells as per
usual. The writers have one trick to keep Jean “Phoenix” Gray from just ending
things immediately. I’m trying to refer to Jean with her Phoenix power as just Phoenix
to differentiate her from her normal state. While she’s usually powerful, when
infused with the Phoenix she’s on a whole other level. And the Phoenix Force
itself is a fairly distinct entity from Jean herself, so treating the combined
version as something wholly separate from Jean alone feels right. The
introduction of the Starjammers feels a little sudden and out of nowhere but I
guess there’s literally no other time to introduce us to Scott’s dad. Don’t judge
him too harshly for not returning to Earth for like 15-20 years, he was…
dealing with some stuff. What with his wife being killed by the Shi’ar emperor
and such. Plus Scott and Alex were intentionally split up do to the machinations
of a insane 18th century geneticist, it was a whole thing and finding
his boys would have been tough. Before you ask, no, Christopher “Corsair”
Summers isn’t a Mutant, he’s vanilla human with fancy alien tech. But literally
every child he and his wife produced are, so odds of him having a dormant form
of the X-Gene is high. He certainly hasn’t aged enough to look like an at
minimum 55 year old man, but maybe that’s just the animation style. And in his defense
for not recognizing Scott, it is a fairly common name and most of the X-Men
call him Cyclops in the field. Obviously with a five part story, D’Ken was
going to get the crystal at some point in this episode so they can actually
face off with him in the finale… but it did seem a little contrived to just
have him get it during a scene change. At least show us how Gladiator got the
drop on Lilandra to get the crystal. Yeah, there’s no doubt in my mind that D’Ken
stayed back and let his literal superman do the dirty work to get the gem. So
he’s now filled with negative energy, this will go along swimmingly, I’m sure.
See you next time.
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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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