Morph's back and so are the Sentinels.
I decided to break up the Wheel
of Time marathon into two separate months because, honestly, ten plus pages
of episode summary per episode gets to be a bit much day after day after day. ‘Can’t
you just try to sum it up more and do less scene-to-scene stuff?” I hear some
of you asking. To which I say… No. I honestly can’t. I’ve tried. So, we’re going
back to the X-Men: The Animated Series well for a bit. And oh, we’re
coming back to a good one.
Last time on X-Men: The Animated
Series, the Shadow King returned. Charles Xavier suffered a mild concussion
before the episode began and that weakened him to the point where the Shadow
King could begin to return. In flashbacks we learn that he was once a crime
lord in Cairo and used a young Ororo “Storm” Monroe as a pickpocket. Charles
was disgusted to see this man abuse his powers, he’s a powerful telepath as
well, as well as harm children. They had a psychic duel which ended with
Charles trapping him in the Astral Plane forever. Shadow King was obviously
upset at this turn of events and attempted to essentially switch places with Charles
when he realized he had this opportunity, hurling Charles’ mind into the Astral
Plane and stealing his body. The X-Men took exception to that. Jean sent her
mind into the Astral Plane to help Charles and the two psychics together
finally overwhelmed Shadow King and pushed him back into oblivion. Enough recapping.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
We begin on Muir Island with Dr.
MacTaggart giving Morph a check-up. He’s been on the island for physical and
mental therapy for a while now, he elected to go there after freeing himself
from Mr. Sinister’s influence. Moira gives him a clean bill of health,
something really highlighted by his slightly redesigned look. They gave him
brown hair instead of black and a slightly darker complexion, I think implying he’s
getting lots of sun. She says that he’s showing no signs of lingering physical issues
but does feel the need to remind him going back to active duty as an X-Man will
put an above average strain on his mind again. Morph shows his good humor by
cracking jokes about what it takes to be an X-Man, Blue fur (shapeshifts into
Beast) or designer eyewear (shifts to Cyclops). She laughs and gives him the go
ahead but tells him to try to take it easy for a while. He’s got all the time
in the world. There’s a nice scene transition where we see an excited Morph on
the plane ride back to the states and we’re off to the races.
Meanwhile, we cut to Zydex
industries. They’re working on some kind of robotics project when the facility
is attacked by Sentinels. The giant robots bombard the place and steal all of
the 80-micron metallic sheeting. I have no idea what they are using it for
specifically but when Robots steal metal and other materials, it’s to make more
and better robots.
We jump over to the X-Mansion where
the alarms are blaring and Storm, Scott, Hank and Logan all rush to the War
Room to deal with whatever the emergency is. But once they arrive it’s revealed
that the Professor just wanted them to rush down to welcome Morph back with a
surprise party. Morph comes in and shapeshifts into Logan to show him what his
face looks like in the moment. The others greeted him, everyone seemed excited
to see him. The moment is ruined, though, when Jean sees a news report about
the attack at Zydex. They don’t know Sentinels were involved, so everyone is
blaming Mutants, because that’s what you do in an X-Men story. Beast explains
that the company is working on a form of plastic sheeting that is as thin as
paper but stronger than Steel. Charles also isn’t sure who would steal it but
knows that this is a ‘it’s bad if anyone has it’ sort of things. Wolverine volunteers
himself and Morph for the mission. Morph is super excited to be on the mission,
but Charles gets him to promise to take it easy first.
Logan and Morph take a mini-jet to
the base and scout the area with a drone. They use Morph’s shapeshifting and Wolverine’s
claws into the facility. They almost get spotted by a helicopter but just
barely dodge it. Logan takes a moment to tell Morph that he always knew he’d make
his way back to the X-Men someday. Morph laughs and asks if Logan’s getting
mushy on him, which Logan fervently denies. They investigate the area and find
it utterly trashed. Scott tells them that the drone’s cameras are showing increased
security, and they should hurry. Logan’s nose picks up on the Sentinel smell,
which clearly spooks him. He knows that this’d be a lot for Morph and tries to
get them both to run. It almost works but Morph sees the giant footprint of the
Sentinels in the dirt outside. He instantly knows Logan was trying to hide this
from him and angrily tells his friend to not baby him, saying he’s either on
the team or he’s not. Logan sheepishly says to himself that he thought that
this would be an easy first mission back.
At the Mansion, Storm laments that this
was Morph’s first mission back. Beast suggests that he’s not unlike Ahab being
forced to come up against Moby Dick, and hopes he’ll have better luck against
his white whale. Xavier gives a brief summary of the Sentinels for anyone who
may be rusty on them, giant robots, designed to destroy Mutants, and he’d hoped
they’d eliminated them last time. He wonders aloud who could have brought them
back.
We cut to a cave in the mountains where
it’s revealed that the Master Mold is leading the Sentinels. The mobile
Sentinel factory has been reduced to just a head, but it is still active enough
to control its troops. It has had the lesser sentinels build a new body to
replace the old one, using the polymer as its indestructible skin. The Master Mold
has decided that it likes poetic justice and orders the lesser Sentinels to
bring it the right witnesses to it’s rebirth, namely Bolivar Trask, Henry Gyrich,
and Xavier. The Sentinels inform it that they aren’t programmed to capture
non-Mutants, but the Master Mold overrides and updates their programming to do
just that.
At the Mansion, Charles tries to
advise Morph not to take everyone treating him gently too personally. He
reminds Morph that Wolverine took his supposed death hard, so the thought of losing
Morph again might mess with him more than most. Morph insists he’s fine, but
they’ll never know if he is if they keep babying him. Charles agrees that’s
true in theory and agrees in practice, but insists on benching Morph for this.
He wants Morph to get his self confidence back, but it is asking a lot to have
someone face the thing that literally killed them until a retcon brought him
back.
The Sentinels make their
appearance, spooking Cyclops, Storm, and Jean who are driving on the highway as
they fly over. In the War Room, Beast seems to be examining the Master Mold’s schematics
when the power cuts off for the hologram projector. He and Wolverine get an alert
about multiple inbound hostiles. Beast radios Xavier about the hostiles, he
tries to sense for them, but obviously Sentinels don’t have minds to scan. The Sentinels
touch down and identify Charles as their target. Wolverine and Beast try to
help, but the Sentinels anti-Mutant slow them down. Charles pulls a blaster on them,
but it gets knocked out of his hand. They destroy his hover chair and grab him.
Wolverine and Beast try to stop them, but the Sentinels escape with Charles. It’s
only after things calm down that we cut back to Morph, who is hunched over,
cradling the blaster and saying he froze.
Using Cerebro, they were able to
track Charles to a general southwest location. Unfortunately, they just lost
the signal. Jean is trying to reach him telepathically but he’s either unconscious
or shielded. Morph is beating himself up for freezing. Wolverine tells him that
no one is blaming him, but Morph says that no one has to, he had a shot and he
blew it. Scott tells them to shut up and focus. Beast is able to bootup one of
the Sentinel heads they… acquired and scan its memory banks. The internal
memory was damaged when it was decapitated, but he’s able to pull up two sets
of coordinates, one for the mansion and one for another location. They
determine the second location to be where Trask and Gyrich are held up, as they
assume the gruesome twosome are behind this. Scott tells the team to move out
but asks Morph to stay behind in the War Room in case the Professor tries to
reach them. Think of a better lie, Summers. The group leaves a dejected Morph
behind. As they leave, Morph mutters to himself that he’s not useless.
We cut to Gyrich and Trask living
in a hut in South America. They’ve been on the run since they tried to kidnap
the President and Master Mold turned on them. As they argue who’s fault it is,
the Sentinels arrive. Trask tries to get them to power down, but they refuse
his orders, saying they only obey the Master Mold now. The X-Men arrive and
destroy a few Sentinels, but can’t stop them from grabbing Trask and Gyrich. They’re
a bit perplexed that they were just kidnapped by their own machines but do
their best to follow.
At the Mansion, Morph is tinkering
with the Sentinel head, muttering to himself that Beast went easy on it. He
overclocks its system, getting the third set of coordinates out of the Sentinel
before its head blows. Morph thinks about radioing the others this new information
but decides that no, he needs to do this alone.
We jump to the Sentinel’s mountain
base. The Master Mold decides to do a bit of Monologuing, saying that he’s going
to use Trask and Gyrich’s more dexterous hand for his next big project. He
wants to become Cerebro. Sort of. He believes they can give Charles an implant
that will connect his psychic brain to the Master Mold’s cybernetic one, under
its control. He’ll then use Charles’ psychic powers to find all the Mutants and
eliminate them. Charles tells the Master Mold that it’s insane, but the machine
claims that’s a human failing. The X-Men arrive and start attacking the killer
robots. The killer machines and Mutants are close to evenly matched, but the
Mutant hunting robots get the upper hand after they start separating the
Mutants. Morph arrives and starts shooting at the Sentinels. Master Mold is
unimpressed and orders Morph eliminated. Morph gets to show off his powers a
little, quickly shapeshifting into Omega Red and using his strength to knock
over a pair of Sentinels. He gets grabbed but them morphs into Sasquatch, a
buddy of Logan’s and a member of Alpha Flight, to break its grip and rip its
head off, and then into Angel to catch Jean and carry her to the ground. He
turns into Longshot and uses his super agility to get his gun back, but the
Master Mold chases after him on retractable spider legs. Morph shoots at some Stalactites
and impales the robot’s head on the rock, destroying it. The X-Men and gruesome
twosome run as the building collapses.
Everyone congradulates Morph for
coming through in the clutch. Morph thanks them for the compliment but admits
that he realized that he really wasn’t ready to come back. He came through
today but is worried that this might happen again. He elects to return to Muir
Island for more therapy and healing. Logan tries to stop him, but Charles tells
him to let Morph goes. He trusts Morph’s judgement about his own health and
says that he’ll be back when he’s ready. He announces Morph will always be an X-Man
as he flies off.
This was a nice episode to both
catch up with Morph, giving us a status update about him, while also letting us
know that he’s not going to be a regular on the show anytime soon. And of all
the reasons to keep a minor character written off, I guess recovering from
Trauma is one of the better explanations. While it sucks that he had to face
off against one of two villains that would cause him to reasonably freeze up
(the other being Sinister), I suppose it’s better for it to happen sooner
rather than later. If he froze fighting someone who plays for keeps, he’d die a
second time for sure. And it was nice that Morph got to work with Wolverine if
only for a little of one mission. Everyone who has seen the show knows that Wolverine
is fond of Morph, but they really haven’t gotten that much screentime together
up to this point. I think it’s just been the first episode before he was killed
by the Sentinels and then those times when Logan was one of the ones hunting
after him. There is not a lot of time for character interactions when you’re
running away from your friend. But they clearly work well together, with Morph being
smart and good at improv so they can outsmart some enemies, and Wolverine can brute
force any situation that needs more than finesse. It’s a good system. I liked seeing the Sentinels again. The great
thing about evil robots is that you can destroy them over and over again, but it’s
totally in the realm of possibility that they get rebuilt to menace the heroes
once again. And the Sentinels are great at Mutant menacing. The Master Mold is
a great villain even if he has to spend most of the episode hovering because he’s
just a disembodied head right now. And I think this is the first episode where
the Master Mold doesn’t just ignore its own orders but starts actively
rewriting the programming of the other sentinels. Ask Bishop how much fun it is
when the machines can start altering their programming whenever they want to.
It’s not fun. So ya, fun episode. Next time, Cyclops heads out to the Ol’ West.
Should be fun.
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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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