Jonathan Dobres

Air date: November 13, 1993

This show has always had a casual relationship with geography. Whether the trouble is downtown or on the other side of the planet, the X-Men’s various jets can get there in no time at all. Travel logistics aren’t exactly Saturday morning material, so characters just sort of arrive places as the script requires. This is especially apparent in “Red Dawn”, in which characters get to and from Moscow more easily than your morning commute.

Some hardline ex-Soviet generals want to restore the glory days of the USSR, and they’re going to thaw out their long-dormant secret weapon, Omega Red, to do it. If this sounds a little like the Winter Soldier, well, this came first. Omega Red debuted in early 1992, while Bucky Barnes wouldn’t get the Winter Soldier retcon until 2005. As for Omega Red himself, he’s a Soviet super soldier with “carbonadium” tentacles, invulnerability, energy draining powers, and (canonical to the comics but not mentioned in this episode) pheromones that can kill most people on contact.

What’s going on in the show’s version of Russia is pretty confusing. It’s either a military coup or a lopsided civil war. Either way, it should be global news, and yet no one outside of the Eastern bloc seems to know about it, to the point that Colossus travels to America to seek the X-Men’s help. Unfortunately, all the cool X-Men are busy, so Colossus gets Jubilee, and Jubilee only (having rescued her from another Friends of Humanity hate crime).

She and Colossus depart for Moscow immediately, leaving only this note on the fridge:

Hi.

Gone to Black Sea with Colossus to stop some guy named Omega Red. Dinner’s in the freezer. Have a nice day.

–Jubilee

And then they jet off to Russia (literally), with Jubilee in the pilot’s seat. This whole sequence is pretty cute, blending Jubilee’s “student driver but it’s a supersonic jet” with Colossus’s unfailing politeness (Colossus is still delightful).

On the ride over, we get a little of Colossus’s origin story and his strong connection to his family, which is his primary reason for seeking the X-Men’s help (never mind that his entire country seems to be in the midst of a full scale military invasion). At the same time, Omega Red is increasingly keen on restoring the Soviet empire and becoming its ruler, though again, why he’s the lynchpin and how all this is supposed to work with the trio of Russian generals is unclear. It’s a Saturday morning cartoon, so all that really matters is that bad guys are doing bad things.

Wolverine returns to the mansion, sees Jubilee’s note, growls “Omega Red!” and hops in a jet. But not before angrily crushing the note and throwing it on the kitchen floor, which is why it’ll take the other X-Men so long to show up. Wolverine arrives in Russia almost instantly. He and the others manage to fight Omega Red to a draw, but only after Colossus drops a tank on him and gives the team room to retreat (Colossus is still rad).

Colossus fireman-carries a badly injured Wolverine away from the fight.

Wolverine: I don’t…need…your help.

Colossus: Of course not! But you are guest in my country. Is good manners!

Regrouping after the fight, we learn a little about Wolverine’s history with Omega Red. There’s not much to it. This is just teeing up the deeper dive into the Weapon X program that’s coming next episode.

Finally, the cavalry arrives in the form of Storm, Rogue, and a completely silent Gambit (Cyclops and Jean are doing mutant relations work in D.C.). Despite participating prominently in the upcoming fight, Chris Potter doesn’t utter a single line. I might not have noticed, but it’s very out of character for Gambit to be so quiet. At least we get to hear Rogue say, “We’d have been here sooner but someone trashed your note.”

Anyway, the X-Men get to work causing an international incident. Thanks to a tip from special guest mutant Dark Star about Omega Red’s cryogenic weakness, Storm is able to freeze him solid. The only other notable thing here is that Colossus seems extremely willing to die with him, until Dark Star conveniently yanks him out of harm’s way at the last second. Colossus once again declines to join the X-Men, vowing to rebuild his country. Take a good look at him, because despite how fun he is, this will be his last featured episode.

This episode has a lot of problems. Aside from the thin writing and disorienting relationship to time and space, it’s weird to see the X-Men getting involved in a contemporary geopolitical event. It’s the difference between a show that reflects the civil rights movement versus one that inserts these fanciful characters into the March on Washington, specifically. I also think the episode could have been much more creative. Omega Red and Rogue both have energy draining powers, and if they’d used those powers on each other simultaneously, anything could have happened. But Rogue never gets the chance.

Oh also, Magneto and Xavier are still in the Savage Land. In this brief installment, Magneto outsmarts a T-Rex, demonstrating that he’s a formidable opponent even without his vast powers. He questions why Xavier wouldn’t just let him die, which would certainly make his life easier. Xavier responds, “I do not yearn for an easy life, Magneto. Only a just one.”

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: vague fears that the recently dissolved Soviet Union might reconstitute itself were around, if not very plausible. More germane to this story, there was an actual attempted coup by a small group of Soviet hardliners in August 1991, though that was shortly before the USSR dissolved, not after. The coup lasted two days.

Stray observations:

• Beast is on the toilet for this one.

• Of the last episode’s three stories, the “Previously On…” recaps only the Morph/Wolverine plot, which tells you where the season’s interests are, or how lame the Shadow King story was.

• To the show’s credit, the Russians actually speak Russian for a few lines before switching to accented English.

• Colossus’s sister calls Colossus “Piotr,” so far the only person on the show, including Colossus himself, to use his given name.

Air date: November 6, 1993

There are three non-intersecting stories in this episode and only one of them is any good. “Whatever It Takes” is very whatever.

The A-plot concerns the return of the Shadow King. This is strange from the jump, because we’ve never heard of the Shadow King before. Rogue and Storm simply explain that Xavier fought him previously, and defeated him. It sounds like that would make for an epic multi-part story, but we’re never going to see it. In fact we’ll only see the Shadow King in one other episode, three years from this one. Anyway he’s back now, having emerged from a tear in the astral plane to possess Storm’s godson, MjNari. Storm agrees to become the Shadow King’s host, which frees MjNari and gives her the opportunity to attempt to kill the Shadow King (and herself) by flying up to where the air is too thin. MjNari, who in addition to his speedster powers can perceive the astral tear, then lures the King back to the astral plane and gives him the runaround until Storm physically pulls him out of the closing portal.

All of the action takes place near Mount Kilimanjaro. I’m going to go ahead and guess that the depiction of Storm’s home village as a simple agrarian people living in thatched roof huts is not exactly culturally sensitive. At least we get a little more background on Storm and what connects her to humanity (Rogue is there, too). The Shadow King is another Chris Claremont original, a deeply malevolent psychic entity that regularly tangles with Earth’s most powerful telepath, Charles Xavier. Here he’s a deep-voiced cackling ghost with vague plans for rebuilding his unseen empire. For a much more interesting portrayal, go watch the first season of Legion.

The B-plot is Wolverine’s quest to find and rescue Morph. Wolverine tracks them to Brazil (somehow), finding them in a random bar. Morph doesn’t want to be rescued and puts up a pretty good fight, first getting Wolverine off balance by mocking him as Jean, and then transforming into several other mutants and wild animals to overwhelm his would-be rescuer. Should Morph really be able to take down Wolverine this easily? Maybe, maybe not. But neither character actually wants to kill the other. Morph makes clear that they have to get through things by themselves, saying, “I have to get through this by myself!” (the writing in this episode is not subtle). It’s a shame this story wasn’t given a little more time. The brief fight is creative, and Wolverine’s simple motive of “This person is my friend, we did wrong by them, and I’m going to fix that,” deserved more.

And finally, we briefly check in on Xavier and Magneto in the C-plot. They climb out of the avalanche and note that they’re near a rainforest, which is pretty unusual for Antarctica. Magneto explains that this is the Savage Land, a place he’s a little familiar with for as yet unexplained reasons. Neither of them has their powers, but somehow Xavier can walk. Before they can process this, they are attacked by men riding pterodactyls, summoned by a mysterious figure at a surveillance console (sure seems familiar). Both men go over a waterfall, to be continued, etc.

Stray observations:

• Storm is so given to Dramatic Pronouncements that it’s starting to feel like she can’t invoke her powers without them. She is especially dramatic here, bringing the rains, wind, and lightning when called for.

• There’s no reason for Rogue to accompany Storm to her village, and there’s not much for her to do there. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to take a telepath like Jean along to investigate a psychic phenomenon? The best explanation I can think of is that Storm and Rogue are friends.

• Catherine Disher has a lot of fun voicing Morph-as-Jean, and it’s nice to hear her branch out just a little from what has been a pretty flat role so far. “Whenever I’m with you, all I can think about is how much I’m in love with Cyclops!”

Part 1

Air date: October 23, 1993

In comics, no one stays dead. Implausible escapes, newly discovered powers, intentional fake-outs, divine intervention, and all manner of retcons ensure that death is temporary unless your name is Ben Parker. There are notable exceptions, of course. One of the record holders for Longest Time in a Grave is the X-Men’s own Jean Grey, who was canonically dead between 1980 and 1986 (sexy clones notwithstanding), and then again between 2003 and 2018.

Morph was never going to stay dead, but the show committed pretty hard in season one. Nobody so much as mentions them after “Night of the Sentinels”. But the writers didn’t forget. I missed it on first watch, but the “Previously On…” reminds us that in the season one finale, Cyclops charges back into the Sentinel facility, saying he’s not leaving anyone behind, “not this time.”

Morph reappears under the influence of arch villain Mister Sinister, who, in a retcon to the events of “Night of the Sentinels”, rescued them after that botched mission. Sinister is very possibly my favorite X-Men villain. Formerly Dr. Nathaniel Essex, he is a 19^th century geneticist obsessed with creating a race of superior mutants. If this sounds a lot like Apocalypse, well yes, they have an on-again, off-again thing going on. Through Apocalypse’s help and decades of self-experimentation, Sinister has achieved immortality and an imposing array of abilities, including an inhuman voice that I think sounds cool to this day. He’s a cackling master manipulator with Dr. Frankenstein’s agenda and Dracula’s aesthetic. The man is so committed to the bit that he goes by Mister Sinister despite being an actual, credentialed doctor. His henchmen are called The Nasty Boys. The Nasty Boys. What’s not to love?

Morph returns to us with a sallow complexion, sunken eyes, and a fragile mental state. Sinister has brainwashed them into believing that the X-Men deserve to be destroyed, and the thing is, the team made Sinister’s job pretty easy there. They did leave Morph behind, and everyone’s been carrying that around for a year. Mister Sinister may be skulking around in the shadows, but the real villain here is survivor’s guilt.

Part 1 of this story is mostly about reintroducing Morph and watching them use their shapeshifting powers to pull the X-Men apart like a rotisserie chicken:

• As Magneto, Morph video phones Xavier, claims he’s in mortal danger, and gets the Professor to rush off to Antarctica to help his ex. Xavier nonsensically leaves by himself rather than taking one of his trained warriors with him, but love makes you do crazy things. In any case, everyone who could have instantly unmasked a shapeshifter is gone (Jean is on her honeymoon and Wolverine has already stormed off to tear up the Friends of Humanity).

• As Rogue, Morph convinces Gambit to meet up in the rec room and kiss her (Morph knows the real Rogue is already there, sleeping). This takes Gambit out of action and makes Rogue much less effective, since she doesn’t know how to control Gambit’s powers.

• As Storm, Morph exploits Jubilee’s desire to prove herself, and her respect for Storm, to send her into a trap.

• Morph-as-Beast assures Storm he’ll be there to help her quell some anti-mutant violence. They then trap the real Beast in the Danger Room and turn all the dials to Kill.

• Finally, when it’s clear that the rioters can’t take down Storm, Morph-as-random cop instructs some nearby officers to shoot her out of the sky, putting her in the hospital.

No other antagonist has come so close to outright destroying the X-Men, and all Morph did was say the wrong things to the right people. The most dependable are made to look unreliable, friendships and intimacies are exploited, trust is violated, and the whole team gets taken out. As anyone in information security will tell you, the biggest vulnerability is people. Morph’s campaign is incredibly damaging and very convincing. Smart writing throughout.

To fulfill this episode’s Saturday Morning Action Quota, we are introduced to the Friends of Humanity, who will harass the X-Men twice in these twenty minutes (along with harassing other random mutants). They’re an anti-mutant hate group with pretty suspicious branding. Their leader, Graydon Creed, wears a red and black blazer, their logo is an eagle, they’re fond of armbands, you can’t not see it. As Xavier explains, the FOH arose in a backlash against Robert Kelly’s (now President Kelly’s) public support for mutants. The episode does a great job interweaving the FOH’s rash of violence with Morph’s campaign against the X-Men. It’s not clear how Morph knew to send an unwitting Jubilee to FOH headquarters, but it’s not exactly a secret society, and given how effective Morph is here, the off-screen reconnaissance was probably trivial.

Also in this episode, Scott Summers and Jean Grey tie the knot. Or do they? It turns out Morph was masquerading as the priest, which, as we’ll learn in Part 2, invalidates the marriage? Wolverine is so upset about the wedding that he can’t bear to attend, and spends the morning ripping apart Cyclops-themed holograms in the Danger Room (including a cool looking Cyclops/Sentinel mashup). This angst may explain why he’s especially eager to punch the FOH later on.

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: Commencing his campaign of discord, Morph rubs his hands together and giggles, “Makin’ copies,” a jarring reference which implies that both Saturday Night Live and Rob Schneider exist in the X-Men universe. This gives Cyclops’s NOT joke from the debut a run for its money as the Most ’90s Thing Possible.

Stray observations:

• We briefly see the swearing in of President Robert Jefferson Kelly. In the comics, his middle name is Edward, so “Jefferson” was definitely meant as a very ’90s reference.

• Gambit finally uses the bo staff we always see him with in the opening.

• Rogue’s difficulty with Gambit’s powers is mostly treated seriously. There are great details like her not wearing her usual gloves or awkwardly wrapping her arms around things instead of using her hands. Lenore Zann gets in a very fun line after she makes a coffee cup explode.

• Either Jean or the Professor could have sensed that the priest was Morph, but then again, they had no reason to be on alert for threats at a wedding.

Part 2

Air date: October 30, 1993

Part 2 suffers from much lazier writing, so much so that I’m surprised to find that both parts were written by the same person.

Scott and Jean get to enjoy their honeymoon for about thirty seconds before one of Sinister’s Nasty Boys (again, The Nasty Boys) wrecks their yacht. The ensuing fight, if you can even call it that, is remarkably lazy, but it does give Sinister the chance to properly introduce himself and slap some power-suppressing collars on the newlyweds. Scott and Jean have the exact right genetic material to create, in Sinister’s words, “The master bloodlines for an unbeatable race of mutants.” So he’s a lot pickier than Apocalypse, is my takeaway. Sinister extracts something from Cyclops, which looks painful, but that’s about all we see of this plan.

Meanwhile, the team starts pulling themselves back together and they begin to notice that everyone’s been acting very oddly lately. It doesn’t take long for Beast to escape the Danger Room, for Wolverine to rescue Jubilee from the FOH, for Rogue’s borrowed powers to wear off, and for Gambit to regain consciousness.

I was going to put this in the Stray Observations, but it’s too important. When Rogue angrily says to Gambit, “You snuck a kiss and got what was comin’ to ya!” his response is emphatic: “Gambit don’t never go where he’s not invited.” It’s 1993, and we’re just coming off an era when taking advantage of semi-conscious women was still considered boyish hijinks. The writers go out of their way to make clear that Gambit would never have tried to kiss Rogue (or anyone) without their consent. Listen up, ten year-old boys: Gambit is one of the cool ones, and cool people don’t do that.

Morph masquerades as Xavier to try to get everyone back on scheme, but at this point Wolverine returns with Jubilee and immediately sniffs out what’s going on. Morph makes a break for the hangar. Jubilee and Wolverine follow, leading to a great little misdirect where Morph doubles Wolverine and Jubilee has to decide which to shoot. “You’ll just have to shoot both of us,” says one of the Wolverines. Jubilee quickly shoots the one that did not make this noble suggestion, which unfortunately was the real Logan. It’s a subversion of the usual hero tropes that I found genuinely clever. Morph escapes in the stolen Blackbird, and Beast reasons that they’re heading to Cyclops.

Morph arrives at Sinister’s lair and menaces the Summerses. It doesn’t quite go the way they planned. Scott’s shock and remorse is at odds with the image that Morph has of him in their head, and it’s giving them something of a split personality. Meanwhile, the cavalry arrives and fights The Nasty Boys (Nasty Boys). It’s not a great fight, but the standout is Gorgeous George and the impressive animation of his liquid body. He attempts to choke/drown Rogue and she spins him away like Wonder Woman.

Sinister, having gotten what he needs for now, decides everyone but Scott and Jean are expendable. Morph has a change of heart and tries to attack him, but to no avail—Sinister heals the injury with an ability cribbed straight from the T-1000. Cyclops displays his first-ever emotion (anger, over the threats to his loved ones), rips free of his restraints through the power of lazy writing, and gives Sinister a good lasering. To everyone’s surprise, especially Sinister’s, this does real damage to him, and he and his henchmen slither away. Morph, still grappling with his split personality, makes off in the jet. Jean does nothing. The writers forgot she was there.

This leaves the team to grapple, briefly, with the aftermath. Cyclops is angry that he and Jean aren’t “really” married, since the priest was a fake. It’s kid logic, I know, but come on. Wolverine resolves to find Morph and bring them back, because they were, “the only one who could ever make me laugh.” It’s a softer side to Wolverine that we’ve rarely seen, and I really like it, as will the writers of X-Men ‘97.

Meanwhile in Antarctica, Xavier finds a perfectly healthy Magneto, who is equally surprised to see Xavier unharmed. Before they can sort things out, they’re buried in an avalanche!

Stray observations:

• Beast wears a fedora and trench coat out. As Marissa Tomei once said, “Oh yeah. You blend.”

• Chris Britton’s smooth, sardonic performance as Mister Sinister (a role he reprises in X-Men ‘97) is simply delicious.

• I would not say that Cyclops finally getting good and angry is cool, per se, but it’s something.

• Several glaring plot holes in this episode.

  • It’s implied that Morph sent Scott and Jean to their honeymoon destination, but why would they have listened to a priest for vacation tips? Was Morph masquerading as a travel agent, too? Seems like a lot of work.

  • I’ll assume that the team was able to follow Morph back to Sinister’s lair because they probably have a tracking device in the Blackbird. Would have been nice to see it, though! Maybe have Beast frown thoughtfully at a ’90s tablet when he deduces that Morph has flown off to get to Cyclops.

  • Wolverine says he’d been tracking Jubilee to the FOH rally, but how would he have known to do that, since he left the mansion before she did?

  • How the hell does Cyclops just rip his restraints apart, as well as his collar? The collars explode if you don’t turn them off first!

  • By 1993, marriage licenses were legally mandated in all 50 states, you know?

Worst Episode

“Come the Apocalypse”. Apocalypse has no real plan, the Horsemen’s character designs are hideous (don’t get me started on the robotic horses), and the final fight is trivial, which never feels good. Lenore Zann’s Rogue is the only thing worth watching in this one.

Other season lowlights include: “Enter Magneto”, “Cold Vengeance”, and “The Unstoppable Juggernaut” (Colossus notwithstanding).

Best Episode

“Captive Hearts”. How could I possibly have picked anything else? An absolutely packed twenty minutes that gives us a strong character arc for Storm, the show’s first fun melee between the X-Men and the Morlocks, the first glimmers of the show’s soap opera, and several moments that have endured as memes thirty years on.

Other season highlights include: “The Cure”, “Slave Island”, and “Days of Future Past: Part 2”.

Worst Hero

Cyclops. He’s always screwing up missions and getting people killed (or “killed”), yelling at his teammates for not working hard enough, or conveniently forgetting that he can kill anything just by looking at it. He never gets a showcase, never gets a fun moment in a fight, and—thirteen episodes in—barely has a personality. What this show does to Cyclops is nothing short of character assassination. Scott Summers deserves better, people. A close second in this category is Scott’s fiancé, Jean Grey. She, too, is devoid of a personality in season one. But she at least gets a few cool moments (helping Rogue lift a falling building comes to mind), and unlike her soon-to-be husband, she’s not an insufferable jerk.

Best Hero

Rogue. The show sure wants it to be Wolverine. He gets countless opportunities to look cool and he’s the only character given a solo episode this season. But Lenore Zann just never misses. Whatever Rogue has to say, Zann makes a meal out of it. Rogue is simultaneously a power fantasy and a tragedy, gifted super strength but unable to touch another person. She is without a doubt the most colorful and interesting member of the team, especially when she’s dealing with Gambit, who not coincidentally is the runner-up in this category. Gambit’s constant flirting, and Rogue’s negative reaction to it in the “The Cure”, is probably the season’s single best scene, a moment that briefly cracked the mold of what a Saturday morning cartoon could be and undoubtedly inspired a lot of X-Men ‘97.

Worst Villain

Apocalypse. By “worst,” I don’t mean the most evil, I mean the least interesting to watch. By that metric, it’s Apocalypse by a mile. He’s supposed to be an unstoppable, millennia-old mastermind, but in this incarnation he’s a joke. His big plan amounts to “brainwash four mutants and see what happens.” The X-Men have no trouble taking down his Horsemen once the episode gets around to it—it’s by far the easiest fight in the season. Better luck next time, you fish-lipped rodeo clown.

Best Villain

Henry Peter Gyrich. His only motivation is bigotry, pure and simple. Armed with nothing more than money and hatred, he privately funds a mutant surveillance program and military-grade weapons development. He takes meetings with Presidents and Prime Ministers. He is almost never in harm’s way and has yet to face any consequences for his actions. Each time the Sentinel Program is disrupted (never truly destroyed), he just picks up and moves somewhere else. And lest you think he’s the kind of bully who can dish it out but can’t take it, the one time the X-Men fight him head on, his response is to grab a gun and start firing. Motivated by hate, emboldened by wealth, and protected by privilege, he is not only the show’s most dangerous villain, he is also its most believable.

What Doesn’t Hold Up?

The show’s low budget, which affects both the animation and, very often, the sound design. Although the season introduces over a dozen villains, most are heavily constrained by the demands of Saturday morning cartoons (notably Sabretooth, Juggernaut, and Apocalypse). There’s no central Big Bad, though that will change soon enough.

What Does Hold Up?

The social commentary. The soap opera. Every word out of Lenore Zann’s mouth and every interaction Rogue has with Gambit. The “something for everyone” of the show’s big set pieces, and of the endless diversity of mutants overall. There’s a real sense of fun and creativity in how the team mixes and matches their abilities to confront each new threat. And even in the face of weekly cataclysms, there is the power of Xavier’s dream, and the optimism it demands of his X-Men, and of us.

Air date: March 27, 1993

The plot that motivates the action scenes in this episode—Master Mold abducts Senator Robert Kelly and wants to replace his brain with a computer—isn’t very well realized. In previous episodes, we were given enough details about the Sentinel program for it to feel like part of the world, but in this episode the Sentinel program is magically back online, Master Mold and all, at a nebulous location and without further explanation. Kelly is a hostage for most of the episode but Master Mold never seems to get around to the brain surgery. While we do see a hilarious montage of Sentinels abducting world leaders—giant purple hands ripping through walls and yanking screaming politicians right out of their office chairs—we never see any of those people arrive at this mysterious facility.

The primary benefit of this half-baked story is that it flips Magneto into an antihero. He abducted Kelly at the end of the last episode, and here is seconds away from crushing him to death beneath a pile of metal. But a plastic Sentinel drops in, grabs Kelly, and leaves Magneto injured and unconscious. The X-Men arrive way too late to do anything but collect the Master of Magnetism and put him in the infirmary.

The X-Men track down Henry Gyrich, who puts up a surprisingly competent fight but is ultimately taken down by Wolverine, because the show cannot ever let Cyclops look cool. With all the information now in hand, the X-Men must decide whether they’re really going to risk their lives against thousands of Sentinels to save the life of a man who is currently running for President on an anti-mutant platform. This is what the episode’s title, “The Final Decision”, refers to. How committed are Xavier’s students, really, to the idea of mutant-human coexistence? Enough to risk themselves for someone who not only hates them, but might go on to do irreparable harm to all mutants? Everyone gets a moment to reason through things in their own way, and they all reach the same conclusion: yes. Magneto stumbles out of the infirmary and warns them not to rescue their would-be oppressor. “You’re all fools! Heroic fools. The brave are always the first to die.”

Leaving Magneto to brood at the mansion, the whole team, even Xavier, heads off to confront Master Mold’s army. As has become the norm over this season, it’s a pretty fun set piece, with half the team running infiltration while the other half puts up a big, loud fight against the flying robots. The most notable thing about the fight is the surprise participation of Magneto himself. He saves the X-Men’s lives multiple times during this chaotic melee. Xavier loses control of the Blackbird, but Magneto sets it down gently with the words, “Did you think I would let you die alone, Xavier?” This is Magneto as Antihero, not Magneto as Shredder, and there is just no denying how much more enjoyable Magneto is in this role. Even David Hemblen seems to be having more fun voicing him.

The infiltration side of the operation gives everyone but Cyclops a chance to show off, but otherwise doesn’t amount to much. It’s not even the X-Men who try to take out Master Mold. Master Mold has concluded that, “Mutants are humans,” eliciting an audible gasp from Trask, and that therefore “humans must be protected from themselves,” hence the brain replacement scheme. Trask, perhaps panicking because the superintelligent robot he created thinks anti-mutant bigotry is illogical, and having lost control of the Sentinels, points a laser at a propane line and blows up the whole operation yet again.

At this point, the various team members are all in the middle of doing different things, and I don’t think the plotting exactly lines up, but suffice to say that everyone makes it back up to the surface. So does Master Mold, who bursts out of the mountaintop like the Czernobog, declaring that it cannot be destroyed. It did not, however, count on Charles Xavier somehow^{[citation needed]} loading up the Blackbird with explosives, ejecting at the last second (aided by Magneto), and destroying Master Mold in an explosion so enormous that it’s animated with a mushroom cloud.

Everyone gets a little moment in the immediate aftermath. Cyclops and Jean share a kiss, as do Rogue and Gambit over Rogue’s gloved hand (which is terribly cute). Magneto bids farewell to Xavier with an ominous, “We shall meet again.”

This fades to the epilogue. Senator Kelly publicly reverses his position and declares that mutants and humans must find a way to live together. He even gets Beast released from prison. Cyclops and Jean go on a picnic, where Cyclops proposes (I am still calling him “Cyclops” here because so does Jean). While she’s worried about what their mutant children might face (whoa girl, what about your career?), she says yes, and she wonders aloud about their future together. Then it’s revealed that we’re watching surveillance footage. A strange new voice cackles, “Sinister knows what your future holds!”

I would bet money that this final moment, with the sudden transition to a surveillance console and Sinister’s extremely rushed dialogue, was added late in production. Minus these last minute additions, the final scenes function as a tidy series finale. Rogue is finally returning Gambit’s affection, Cyclops and Jean are engaged, Beast is free, and the world is taking a small but important step toward peace. Magneto is even proved wrong. The X-Men listened to the better angels of their nature and rescued Senator Kelly, who has returned the kindness. If the show had only gotten one season, this would have made a satisfying ending. But of course, X-Men was a huge hit, so sure, give us a stinger teasing one of next season’s Big Bads. Always leave them wanting more.

Stray observations:

• At the start of the episode, an angry crowd chants, “No more mutants!” I can’t hear those words without thinking of an extremely important storyline that would hit the comics a decade later.

• The team is able to locate Gyrich after scanning Gambit’s memories. They also could have done this with Jubilee, since both have met him, but Gambit is much more interesting. Gambit’s memories include a winking Rogue and possibly an encounter with Ghost Rider?

• Master Mold, describing his plan: “All their brains will be replaced. It will be a vast improvement.”

• Cyclops, rushing back into the facility to find Wolverine, who is standing shirtless atop a pile of destroyed Sentinels: “Wolverine! You coming, or is this your day off?” The scene is a perfect distillation of the show’s attitude toward these two. Wolverine must always be cool, Cyclops must always be a jerk.

“Days of Future Past” was originally published as a two-issue story in early 1981. It’s another one of Chris Claremont’s seminal contributions to the X-Men franchise (1981 was a big year for impactful Claremont stories). In the original story, Kitty Pryde, coming from the future of 2013, travels back in time to then-contemporary 1980 to stop an assassination that will lead to the dystopia she’s currently suffering through.

This story was also adapted into a movie that I mostly did not like. It sends Wolverine back in time, because the movies don’t care about any other character. It also has a lot of stupid stuff in it, like Xavier becoming a drug addict. But it does the universe the incredible favor of retconning the entirety of X-Men 3: The Last Stand out of existence, so at least there’s that.

X-Men: The Animated Series swaps Kitty for a dude named Bishop. I think there a few reasons for this. Bishop was a very new character to the comics, having debuted just a year before the animated show started airing (similarly, Kitty Pryde debuted a year before the original “Days of Future Past” story). So it’s possible that Marvel wanted to spotlight one of their newest creations. Kitty also often served as the team’s little sister, a role already filled by Jubilee on this show.

But more than anything, Bishop owes his presence in these episodes to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I cannot overstate how huge T-2 was. A true sci-fi action masterpiece. The highest grossing movie of 1991. The peak of Schwarzenegger’s film career. A landmark in visual effects (which still hold up). A cultural phenomenon that had us all growling, “I’ll be back,” and “Hasta la vista, baby.” And it was tearing up movie theaters right around the time this season of X-Men was being written.

So instead of Kitty telepathically possessing her earlier self, we get the physically imposing Bishop stepping through a techno-time portal, carrying an enormous rifle. He’s a distinctly more Schwarzenegger-esque presence than the younger, smaller, and more defensively oriented Kitty Pryde. Bishop even gets his own version of the T-1000. He’ll be followed into 1993 by Nimrod, a futuristic super-Sentinel who in the comics has shape-shifting abilities (though not demonstrated here). None of these changes are bad, necessarily, but the influence is undeniable.

Part 1

Air date: March 13, 1993

Part 1 of this two-parter is a lot of setup. It’s entertaining, but heavy on exposition. We see the dystopia of 2055, and it’s one of the better-animated scenes this season. Sentinels soar fluidly around a destroyed Statue of Liberty. The heroes we know and love have been reduced to headstones. Wolverine is still raising hell, but gets taken down by Bishop and escorted to a mutant detention center. Wolverine warns Bishop that being one of “the good ones” won’t save him from the Sentinels, and because we’ve only got twenty-two minutes, the Sentinels prove Wolverine right seconds later. The two fight their way out and make it to Forge’s lab. Forge and the resistance have a theory that the nightmare they’re living in can be averted if they can go back in time and prevent a specific assassination. Wolverine was supposed to be the man for the job, but he’s a little too old and a little too injured, so Bishop steps up.

And that’s how the big guy with the rad “M” tattoo over his right eye lands in 1993. He’s got a temporal transceiver (a magic armband) that will keep him in 1993 as long as it’s functioning, a gigantic rifle, and severe amnesia. As he gets glimmers of his memory back, he decides to board a bus and visit the X-Men. The smash cut between Bishop boarding public transit, rifle and all, and an exterior shot of the normies screaming as they immediately flee the bus is one of the funniest moments in the show so far.

Bishop can’t remember who the assassin is, just that it’s one of the X-Men, so he immediately tries to fight them all. He loses, of course, but fighting against the younger version of Wolverine jogs his memory a little. Xavier decides he wants some answers from this inexplicably aggressive stranger. Cerebro reveals images of Bishop’s terrible timeline, which more or less gets everyone on board, except for Wolverine. He’s lived a long, violent life and he’s seen a lot of strange things, but time travel is where he draws the line. Though he is pleased to see that he still has all his hair in 2055.

At this point, Bishop’s wearable computer (how futuristic, you know?) alerts him that someone else has come through the time portal. “Oh yeah, I thought I felt a shift in the planet’s alignment there,” says Wolverine. The team rushes to the portal’s location and fights Nimrod. Like the T-1000, it can recover from everything the team throws at it, until Storm conjures up some cold weather and freezes it solid (again, like the T-1000). Which reminds me, why is OG X-Man Iceman not on this show? In any case, with Nimrod frozen, Bishop is able to destroy its temporal transceiver, whereupon it fades out of our reality. Good on this episode for reminding us how precarious Bishop’s visit is.

The team reconvenes at the X-Mansion and debates what Bishop is telling them. One of the X-Men is the assassin. Each of them has a dark side and could be driven to such an act under the right circumstances, which is a pretty wild thing for a Saturday morning cartoon to acknowledge about its good guys. Jean says, “Even I’ve had my dark days,” which is the first hint we’ve gotten that she has any personality at all, and is also foreshadowing the Phoenix Saga stuff to come. Midway through this chat, Gambit returns from visiting Beast in prison. Bishop recognizes him as the assassin and raises his rifle.

Stray observations:

• There’s only one departure from Bishop’s perspective in the whole episode, and it’s when Gambit and Rogue are visiting Beast. Much is made of how uncomfortable Gambit is, which is certainly meant to add another chip to the pile of “Gambit could be the assassin” (though really, who is comfortable in a cell?). Beast helpfully bends the bars of his own prison cell to let Gambit end the visit early. In case you were wondering if Beast is still sitting there voluntarily.

• Just once, Wolverine refers to Bishop as “Mr. Terminator”. At least they’re admitting it! Cal Dodd is great throughout this episode, especially when he’s carrying the exposition-heavy first act.

• Now That’s What I Call ’90s: The first thing to jog Bishop’s memory is a couple of passersby talking about a new video game called “Assassin”, which has cover art of what is undeniably The Punisher.

Part 2

Air date: March 20, 1993

Part 1 walked so that Part 2 could run. It’s so chock full of fun moments that I had to watch it twice. The episode opens by rolling back a few minutes, to where Gambit and Rogue are driving back from their visit with Beast. Rogue’s driving is appropriately reckless for someone who cannot possibly die in a car accident.

Gambit: Maybe time you had another lesson, eh?

Rogue: Who’s gonna teach me, you?

Gambit: Sure, I’ll teach you plenty of things. If you ask me nice.

Rogue: Don’t you ever get tired of listening to yourself?

Gambit: Not when I’m talkin’ about you, cher.

Rogue stops the car and flies off, befuddled and exasperated.

Gambit: Don’t worry, Rogue! …I’ll park the car.

This scene serves no greater purpose in the episode. It’s there entirely for the Gambit/Rogue shippers in the audience, which at this point has to be everyone. Chris Potter has been a little uneven as Gambit, but his read of that final line is laugh-out-loud funny. The show is getting more confident, finding that balance between superheroics and soap opera that will make it worth a revival thirty years later.

The X-Men stop Bishop from shooting Gambit. Jean even does some actual telekinesis to take his gun away. Bishop lays out what will happen after the assassination. The event leads to widespread fear and anti-mutant sentiment. The US passes the Mutant Control Law, legitimizing and greatly expanding the Sentinel program. Then come the mutant death camps. “But those who control the Sentinels don’t stop with mutants,” Bishop warns, as we see Sentinels tearing the roof off the White House and enslaving most of the human race. In 1993 this seemed far-fetched. Having lived through 9/11, its associated anti-Muslim backlash, the Patriot Act, and a couple of disastrous wars, Bishop’s description of future events hits more like a prophecy than speculative fiction.

But enough about our own dystopian future. Bishop can’t remember who’s supposed to be assassinated, but he knows that it’s going to happen soon and that Gambit pulls the trigger. Bishop holds Gambit responsible for the entirety of his awful life and Gambit takes that very personally. The X-Men have a hunch that the assassination will probably happen at or around the imminent mutant relations hearings in Washington. Most of the team hops in the Blackbird to D.C., while Gambit and Bishop agree to stay behind (thus no assassin, no anti-assassin), with Wolverine playing babysitter (and yes, that’s pretty funny). This doesn’t last long. While killing time playing poker, Gambit surreptitiously places a few charged cards around the room and escapes during the ensuing chaos. Bishop also briefly shows off his mutant power: energy absorption and redirection.

That’s how the entire cast ends up in Washington. Mystique, Pyro,¹ Blob, and Avalanche are also there. Looks like Mystique has gotten the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants together at Apocalypse’s behest. Xavier is testifying before the committee (including the hostile Senator Robert Kelly), when Pyro and Avalanche bust in with the subtlety of the Kool Aid Man. Senator Kelly escapes with help from his personal aide (Mystique in disguise), while there ensues one of the biggest, craziest fights in the show yet.

I won’t bother with a blow-by-blow, but it’s wild fun. Pyro conjures a couple of literal firebirds to chase Storm and Rogue around, Bishop shows off those energy reabsorption powers against Avalanche, and Jubilee is understandably grossed out by Blob’s threat to sit on her until she dies. The fight climaxes with Bishop redirecting Avalanche’s energy toward a large tower, which then starts falling toward some civilians. Jean slows the descent with telekinesis and Rogue holds it above ground just long enough for Wolverine to dash in and rescue a straggling child. It’s a delightful three minutes that ends in the funniest way possible. Wolverine hands off the little girl to Jubilee with the words, “This kid’s cryin’. Do somethin’.”

This would be the climax of a three-hour Avengers movie. For the X-Men it’s just another week. Man.

All of this spectacle is, of course, a distraction from Mystique’s planned assassination of Senator Kelly. But the X-Men are on top of things:

Cyclops: Rogue, can you see Bishop?

Rogue is hovering in midair and spots Bishop entering the Capitol Building.

Rogue: I could spit on him, if I wasn’t a lady. Looks like he’s running for Congress.

Running for Congress. This episode is having almost too much fun.

Mystique leads Senator Kelly to a private room, where his real aide has been bound and gagged (a necessary witness to the assassination). Mystique transforms into Gambit and declares that Kelly should have known better than to mess with mutants and the X-Men. This is the only part of the plan that doesn’t exactly make sense. The aide sees Mystique transform, and would probably know that there’s some kind of subterfuge happening. Kelly’s death will foment anti-mutant sentiment either way, so maybe implicating the X-Men is just a cherry on top (for reasons we’ll understand shortly)?

Gambit rushes in, foiling his doppelgänger (“Maybe you’re not as tough as I look!”). Bishop arrives and decides that the easiest way to prevent the assassination is to kill both Gambits. Before he can, however, Rogue catches up to him and destroys his temporal transceiver, sending him back to 2055. Rogue is delighted to have an opportunity to pay Mystique back for all the trouble she caused on Muir Island, but Mystique is coolly confident that her butt will remain unkicked. It’s at this point that Mystique reveals that she is—oh, the soap opera of it all!—Rogue’s mother!

We don’t see exactly how it happens (giving the episode a reason to check in with Cyclops and Wolverine), but Rogue knocks out Gambit and does indeed help Mystique escape. It was Apocalypse’s plan to assassinate Senator Kelly and give the humans “the future they deserve,” but that’s all over now. Mystique tells Rogue that enslaving her to Apocalypse, “seemed like the only way to get you back,” which is an amazingly screwed up thing to say to your adopted daughter. Mystique walks off, resigned to whatever fate Apocalypse has in store for her, and Rogue in tears.

Bishop lands back in 2055 with nothing changed. Either the resistance’s assassination theory was wrong, or something new intervened in the timeline to bring this about anyway. “You’ll have plenty of opportunity to try again,” Forge tells Bishop. Meanwhile, back in 1993, Cyclops, Jean, and Xavier are about to meet with a newly receptive Senator Kelly. But they arrive too late. There are sounds of a struggle, and Cyclops blasts the office door open to find a hole blown in the wall. Xavier believes this is the work of a different gang of mutants, because his watch has been—pause for effect—magnetized.

Stray observations:

• Upon arriving back in 2055, Bishop exclaims, “I’m back in the future!” That’s a very strange thing for someone to say about their own present!

• Storm says, “Gambit, I know you better than anyone,” while giving Rogue some rather pointed side eye.