Love Hurts, as do giant alien Cockroaches.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, Corsair stops by to get some help. The space pirate is on the run
from a Shi’ar Commander named Raknar that accuses him of kidnapping a witness.
Scott and Storm are initially hesitant to help Corsair as they don’t want to
piss off the Shi’ar, but then Scott learns Corsair is in fact Christopher
Summers, his supposedly long deceased father. Scott agrees to help him just to
get more info on what happened and Storm just kind of rolls with it because she’s
a good wingwoman. As they escape Raknar to get to the rest of Corsair’s Starjammers
and the witness, Corsair tells us about his and Scott’s past. The Summers
family had been returning from an Alaskan camping trip in their personal cargo
plane when it was attacked by Shi’ar. Their parachutes had been destroyed, all
but one, and Chris and his wife Rachel elected to strap their sons together and
use it to try to save them. They sent Scott and Alex off with it, just getting to
see the parachute catch fire just before being teleported onto the Shi’ar
vessel. Corsair says they were going to be kept in a Shi’ar zoo, but he escaped
thanks to the Starjammers. Rachel was unfortunately killed just before his
escape, however. They head to South America and get separated, Storm going ahead.
Raknar arrives and tells Scott that Corsair is doing this for the money, saying
that the witness knows where the Shi’ar Lord Chamberlain’s hidden horde is.
Corsair does confirm that he wants to get paid but insists he's doing this out
of the goodness of his heart. Scott captures Corsair and turns him over. He’s almost
immediately betrayed by Raknar, who is indeed trying to kill the witness for
the Chamberlain. He’s freed by the ship’s navigator, who was the one that
tipped off Corsair, and they both free Corsair and flee. Storm and the
Starjammers set a trap for Raknar, setting up a refraction device and hiding it
in fog. Corsair dives under it when Raknar’s ship fires, the beam gets sent
back and cripples the vessel. After, Corsair and crew are all set to take the
witness to court… but elects to stay a few hours to catch up with his son.
Enough recap. Let’s get to it, shall we?
We open on the X-Mansion as Scott
and Jean head out for a date. They share brief a kiss and we shift focus to Rogue
watching them from her bedroom window and sighing with longing. She mutters
that they don’t know what they’ve got and laments the fact that her powers keep
her from being able to touch people, she snaps one of the posts of her four-poster
bed in frustration before crying.
We head out into space for a minute
to see a… giant…space…whale? Okay. A giant space whale enters the solar system
and then crash lands on Earth in New Mexico. Coincidentally, Logan is there.
The episode doesn’t explain why, he’s just on one of his Lonewolf walkabouts I
suppose. He examines the crashed space whale, which opens up and unleashes
these cyborg lizard creatures with Doc Ock tentacles. He fights these lizard cyborgs
but gets overwhelmed as it’s like 25 to 1 and they’ve got stunning weapons. The
lead alien, you can tell because he’s wearing a red hat, is impressed by Logan’s
vigor and orders him brought onto their ship to be kept as a specimen.
Jumping back to the X-Mansion,
Rogue is reading a book in her room when Gambit pops by. Remy LeBeau is a
determined fella, as he’s here to try to sweet-talk Rogue out on a date. The
whole ‘if she touches you, you might die,” thing never seems to faze him, so
good on ya, mate. Rogue gets a call and answers it, it’s Cody. If you don’t
recognize the name, he’s the boy that Rogue kissed and put into a coma when her
powers kicked in. She hasn’t seen him in (guessing her age around 28) around a
decade, so she’s excited to see him.
She gets dressed and flies out to meet
him at a movie theater. She sees him and is obviously smitten from first sight.
She calls out to him, and we learn that Rogue’s nickname back in Mississippi was
Possum as Cody greets her. Probably due to the white hair streak. He’s almost hit
by a car walking over to see her, but he leaps over it, and she catches him. He
is a good sport about the near-death experience, though, as he’s happy to just see
Rogue again. He teases her about not having a forwarding address and asks if
they can catch up over dinner. Rogue starts tearing up a bit at this reunion and
agrees. They catch up, Rogue telling him everything as he’s already aware that she’s
a Mutant. She makes a comment about how the team doesn’t get their knickers in
a twist about her like other people, and Cody seems a little hurt by that
remark. He says that she never gave him a chance and that she ran off before he
got out of the hospital so he couldn’t show her he was fine with her status. He
goes in for a kiss, but Rogue stops him, saying one coma a lifetime is enough
for most fellas. Somewhere, Gambit is annoyed. Cody says that he’s ‘figured it out’ as to how
they can be together. She tries to put him off, as she’s been hurt a lot, but
he insists, asking her if she still loves him. She nods. While her back is
turned, one of those lizard things comes up on the rooftop behind them and
blasts them with something. Cody doesn’t react but Rogue’s vision goes blurry
for a second. He then kisses her, and she doesn’t drain him. Rogue is obviously
overjoyed about being able to touch someone again but then passes out. Cody asks
himself what he did when the aliens come to grab them.
In the space whale, Logan wakes up
and frees himself from a floating table he was strapped too. He examines the whale
and realizes that it’s, ya know, alive. The aliens start rushing him, but Logan
cuts his way through them and exacpes to outside the space whale. He gets
chased by another of the aliens and gets stung but toughs it out and keeps escaping.
The Red Hatted one returns to the ship and tells his queen that Logan is
stronger than they anticipated. The Queen says that is good and that he’ll make
a strong addition to their colony, the first of many. She plays footage of the
X-Men doing X-Men stuff to highlight her point. She stops at Rogue, saying that
‘especially this one.’
We jump back to Rogue as Cody wakes
her up. She’s confused about how she slept all night in the park. Cody says he
didn’t have the heart to wake her. He asks her to run off with him, she’s hesitant
at first but then agrees, but says she needs to return home and tell the
others.
We find Logan at an abandoned gas
station in the desert. He quickly uses a payphone to call the mansion and ask
for backup before passing out. Beast is able to trace the call, and the team
prepares to head out, but then Rogue comes in to ask for some time off. Charles
is hesitant to let her go as the Logan situation just came up, but Rogue
insists she get the time. Gambit is feeling hurt that she’s dropping everything
for Cody, which pisses Rogue off, who then storms off. Gambit, again, feeling
insecure, asks why this guy just showed up out of the blue and what could he
want with Rogue. The others tell him to focus on less personal matters as they
need to save Logan. They get in the Blackbird and fly off. Rogue and Cody take
one of the minijets, Cody saying that their destination is a surprise.
The X-Men find Logan passing out
near the space whale. He is sweating profusely and tells them to stay back for some
reason, telling them they need to worry about these aliens. More of the aliens
come out, their queen ordering them to not hurt the X-Men. Rogue and Cody touch
down as the others are fighting these aliens, Rogue is shocked to see the
others, as is Cody, who says that they didn’t tell him about the others. Rogue demands
to know what Cody knows, and he says that the aliens promised him that they wouldn’t
hurt anyone and that this was the only way for them to be together. Logan suddenly
transforms into a green buggy-lizard form and runs off. Well… that’s weird. The X-Men are captured and Rogue accuses Cody of
working for the aliens. He says it was the only way. She starts to scream in
pain and both she and Cody turn green and grow horns like the aliens. Storm calls
out to the professor as she passes out.
Meanwhile, Logan finds himself in a
cave and basically wills the infection out of himself, morphing back into his
usual look.
In the space whale Rogue demands to
know why Cody did this to her. He insists it was the only way they can be together;
they can touch and kiss like this. The queen joins them, saying that Rogue can’t
fight this, she was dusted with their spores while she slept. The Queen
explains that they are the Colony, a race of parasitic insect-like aliens, they’ve
been watching Earth, the X-Men, and Rogue for decades. She claims that they’ve chosen
Rogue to be a queen like her, and that the colony will depend on her once the old
queen is dead. She also tells Rogue not to blame Cody, as they infected him and
used him to get to her. Rogue apologizes to Cody for getting him into this, as
without her, he’d be safe at home. He insists that he loves her and wouldn’t want
to be without her if he could help it. Logan slips in and attacks. Cody morphs
further into his Colony form and fights Logan. Rogue begs him not to hurt Cody.
Logan shoves Cody aside and grabs Rogue, telling her to absorb his power and force
the infection out of her. Cody begs her not to, as they can be together like
this, but she forces the infection out.
Rogue and Logan find the others
hooked up to pods like Logan was originally. They try to leave but Cody returns
with the Queen. She says that they don’t have a future without her. Rogue tells
her that they don’t have a future, then, as they didn’t even bother asking her
to be a part of this. The Queen refuses to let them go, ordering the whale to
take off. Logan and Rogue run, a semi-conscious Storm calling out to Charles
for help. He is revealed to be using Cerebro to do just that, but the Colony’s
minds are impenetrable to him. But he’s able to sense another mind, the space
whale! He says it’s called an Acanti, it’s a normally free-floating space whale
but the Colony captured it to use it as their ship. He uses his powers to free the
Acanti’s mind, asking her to help him. Rogue and Logan fight the Colony but are
quickly disabled by their knockout tentacles. The Queen orders Rogue to be
reinfected by spores and to get rid of Logan as he can purge their spores. The
Acanti starts singing, the space whale’s voice hurting the Colony’s ears. The
freed Acanti swings back to Earth and lands, dropping the X-Men off. Rogue tries
to get Cody to come with them, thinking the professor could cure him, but Cody just
snarls at her. He’s been assimilated. Gambit tells her to leave it, and they
fall back. Logan thanks the Acanti before it flies off. He tells Rogue that she
did all she could. She starts sobbing and Gambit does her best to comfort her.
This episode was a bit surface level,
but it was interesting to see Rogue interact with someone from her pre-Mutant
days. Cody in just about every other version of Rogue’s story that I’ve seen
pretty much is just there for her to have that ill-fated kiss, knock into a
coma and then to be the main reason she starts running. Anna Marie’s dear papa
didn’t take kindly to his baby girl being a Mutant or knocking out the
quarterback. I think it’s partly because Cody only exists to give Rogue a
tragic backstory that he comes across as such a nothing burger in this episode.
Think about it, look back over my write up and count how many of his lines are
just about how much he loves Rogue and how he wants to be with her. It's 90% of
his dialogue. And that 10% of other stuff is him turning into a bug monster. That’s
just not a lot to go on. Think they could have at least included a football
reference to remind us he played. But, like, I can’t be too mad at the episode
because it does just sort of sum up the ’first crush’ so very, very well.
Unless you’re completely uninterested in relationships or were unfortunately never
in a place to be in one, I think any and all of you can think of that one
person from your past that made your brain take a day off and you’d have done a
lot to be with. Would it be smart? No, but everyone’s got that person me thinks,
and Cody is very much that to Rogue. An argument could be made that that might
be due to her absorbing his mind and some lingering part of him in her psyche
draws them together… but that’s a metaphysical and psychological discussion I’m
not equipped to handle. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree after all. The Colony was
an interesting group of alien antagonists, mostly based on their space whale
ship and design, since I have seen better versions of the infectious alien
monsters. The Last of Us sort of forced everyone to fight for second place
after all. Their partially organic, partially tech bodies were really gross to
look at and I have got to applaud their choice in future matriarch. What? Rogue
would kick ass as a Queen bee and you all know it, heck I think that’s her
current job in the most recent Marvel run. I assume that even in a Colony form
Rogue would keep her powers, just because it’d be a bit weird to target her
specifically if any female of the dominant species of a planet would do. I
liked the Acanti a lot… but then I like whales a lot so that should come as no
surprise. I do have to question how any animal could work better as a ship than
an actual ship… but this is a space whale we’re talking about, sometimes ya
just got to accept the rule of cool. It’s sad that they couldn’t save Cody, but
I agree with Logan that Rogue did her best to save him. And at least she was
able to have one good night with him, it’s a little thing but it’s something. And
that’s all I have to say about that. Next time, Juggy is back and he’s actually
in need of his brother’s help. How odd.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/125264242/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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