Jonathan Dobres

Air date: March 6, 1993. This is the first episode that aired out of sequence from the show’s production order. It originally aired after “The Cure” and “Come the Apocalypse”. I’m following the production order, which is the intended narrative order and the one used on Disney+.

This episode introduces two of Marvel’s largest men: Colossus and Juggernaut (Hulk sold separately). The Colossus segments are all very fun, and I think that if the episode had been about him exclusively, it would have been a great one. But these 22 minutes are also saddled with a pretty shallow version of Juggernaut and a story riddled with plot holes.

The X-Men return from Genosha to find the X-Mansion in ruins (in a sign of this episode’s poor writing, Gambit, who at the end of the last episode was on this very plane, has vanished into thin air). The team finds a message from the Professor saying that he’s gone off to talk to an old colleague of his about something important, which means the destruction of the mansion is entirely coincidental. Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, and Jubilee fan out into the city to figure out who could have done this.

Jubilee finds some teamsters, who are mad that their job is being handled by someone they refer to as “Super Russki” and “mutant scab”. It’s Colossus, who merrily demolishes the building as requested. Jubilee and Wolverine immediately assume he’s responsible for the destruction of the mansion. The X-Men, of all people, should definitely know better than to rush to this kind of judgment, but that’s the quality of writing we’re dealing with here.

One of the teamsters decides to drive a semi-truck into Colossus, who transforms into organic steel and lets it hit him at full speed. He doesn’t move an inch, while the truck crumples like paper. Despite this impressive display of power, Wolverine and Jubilee decide to take him on. They’re a poor match for Colossus’s sheer physical strength and he has little trouble shrugging them off. He mostly just seems very put upon by the whole ordeal, and exits the scene muttering about the strangeness of Americans.

Everybody rushes over to the aftermath of a bank robbery. Colossus somehow (bad writing) gets there faster than anyone, just to try to open a bank account and end up falsely arrested (at least it’s funny!). The X-Women decide to break Colossus out of jail, which leads to this classic moment:

Rogue: “Dear, dear! No back door!”

Colossus transforms into organic steel and punches through the wall, smiling at Rogue.

Rogue: “I just love it when he does that!”

Rogue is obviously strong enough to do this herself, which means she just wanted to see the Russian hunk show off. These two would have made a great couple.

Having left no real clues as to the identity of the bank robber other than super strength, the show decides to just reveal Juggernaut knocking over another bank minutes later. He’s a gigantic brute, crushing cars as he walks over them and tossing heavy artillery aside like toys. The episode is running out of time, so we learn a lot about him very quickly: he is monstrously strong and nigh invulnerable, he was looking for his hated brother, Xavier, which is how the mansion got wrecked, his helmet protects him from telepaths, his powers derive from magic rather than mutation,¹ and he spouts an endless stream of grade-school puns. He has no motivation for the bank robberies other than being a bad guy and the writers having no other ideas.

It’s clear to Cyclops that to defeat this villain, they’ll have to work together “for a change”. The writers reached for an easy “value of teamwork” moral, but it makes absolutely no sense on this show, because we’ve seen the X-Men work together in almost every episode. Working together, playing off each other, and combining their abilities in novel ways is a big part of what makes X-Men so appealing. I mean come on!

Anyway, the team (including Colossus) does successfully team up, everyone chipping away, until Juggernaut’s helmet is ripped free. Jean finally puts the psychic whammy on him and he exits the scene with severe memory loss. Letting a super strong criminal who has no idea who he is or how strong he is just wander off seems incredibly reckless, no?

In the epilogue, the X-Men continue to rebuild the mansion (it’ll probably be fixed before Xavier even knows what happened), with more help from Colossus. Everybody likes him, and why wouldn’t you? He declines to join the team, as he must find his sister and see more of America. It’s a shame that we won’t be seeing much of him after this introductory story. His sheer strength makes him an interesting addition to the roster, plus he’s a funny fish out of water and has great chemistry with Rogue. If only, you know?

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: Juggernaut wondering if Colossus is recyclable.

Stray observations:

• Gambit is on the toilet for this one, again.

• In this episode Colossus is always referred to as “Colossus”, never by his given name, Piotr Rasputin. I love the vaguely Slavic music that plays whenever he has a scene.

• After his brief fight with Colossus, Wolverine remarks, “Guy’s got a great arm.”

• A surprise cameo from Beast! When the ladies decide to bust Colossus out of jail, Beast is in the next cell over, still eagerly awaiting his day in court. He refuses yet another jailbreak, but offers to “catch up on gossip” the next time the girls are around. We’ve barely seen Beast this season but he remains delightful. I’m so glad they brought George Buza back to voice him in X-Men ‘97.

Air date: February 13, 1993

So it turns out Genosha’s mutant-friendly advertising is a facade to capture mutants and use their powers for various forms of forced labor. Henry Gyrich and Bolivar Trask relocated the Sentinel program here after the events of “Night of the Sentinels”. Trask’s latest innovation is Master Mold (excellent and very toyetic villain name), a supersized Sentinel that can fully automate the production of other Sentinels. All it needs is a massive power supply, which is what the labor camp is building. This means that Storm, Gambit, and Jubilee wake up in a prison that uses the abilities of the oppressed to strengthen the oppressor. When Magneto finds out about this, he is going to be so angry, and so right.

Storm and Jubilee each try to lead their own rebellions against the camp’s leadership, and both fail (though it is cool to learn that Jubilee knows how to pick locks). Gambit is the lynchpin here, as he talks his way out of the labor camp and immediately uses an inch of freedom to double cross his captors. Along the way, he bumps into a hulking Schwarzenegger type with a glowing eye, a metal arm, and a lot of belt pouches. This guy, Cable, has been harassing the Genoshan leadership in a one-man insurrection for months, and with the chaos that the X-Men bring, he’ll be popping up seemingly everywhere to try to assassinate the Leader of Genosha.

Gambit returns to the labor camp and frees Storm and Jubilee from solitary confinement. Thanks to a key that Gambit got from Cable, they’re able to remove their power-suppressing collars and lead the mutant revolt we all want to see. In the riot, there’s Blob! And Northstar! And Sunfire! And Mystique??? She doesn’t do anything of note here and has no lines, so it’s possible that the animators just chose a random character for a background role, not realizing that she’d be much more important later. Storm goes into full Grand Pronouncement mode and blows apart the Sentinel factory with some monstrous weather. The cavalry arrives just in time to take everyone home, but as they approach the X-Mansion, they see it’s been destroyed (guess we’re just going to have to tune in next week!).

It’s great to see the show starting to make use of season-spanning continuity. Jubilee immediately recognizes Trask, and Trask recognizes the X-Men. The episode also makes a point of having Wolverine actually arrive back at the mansion and refuse to explain his disappearance, whereas in other shows, he’d just be back in place as if nothing happened. Even the creation of Master Mold makes sense, since Gyrich complained in the premiere that Sentinel production was too slow. But maybe Trask did his job a little too well. There’s a moment in the third act when Master Mold produces a new type of Sentinel without any direction from a human.

This episode is a real showcase for Storm and Gambit, who are a study in contrasts. Gambit immediately understands that Trask and Gyrich have every advantage, and that a head-on conflict will end badly. So he uses subterfuge and trickery to make himself valuable to the leadership (even if that means telling his captors a little about the X-Men). His heel turn feels plausible enough, especially since he went so far as to sell out Jubilee and sabotage her attempted revolt. He fools Jubilee and probably fooled a good number of the kids at home. Even in the epilogue, when Jubilee tells Gambit that she knew he’d never really betray them, he smiles and says, “How do you know you aren’t being fooled again?” Of course, actions speak louder than words. The instant Gambit had a little leverage, he executed the double cross. His primary power is that he can turn anything he touches into a bomb, and the writers use this to great effect. Sometimes he’ll slip a charged playing card into a door to blow it open, sometimes he’ll grab whatever’s nearby and turn it into a grenade, and in one instance here, he uses his powers on the car he’s being transported in to break free and cause a lot of chaos. He’s very fun to watch!

Storm, on the other hand, is a woman of principle. She immediately tries to rebel against her captors because that is the right thing to do (though it fails miserably and gets her thrown in solitary). She stops Blob from killing a guard during the mutant riot. Even when driven half-crazy from claustrophobia, she’s still trying to fulfill her role as leader and offer an example of strength to Jubilee. When she finally has access to her full powers, she does not hesitate to absolutely wreck the joint. It’s implied that Cable has been poking at Genosha’s corrupt leaders for months. It takes Storm about three minutes to conjure a typhoon that reduces their entire operation to rubble. And that’s Storm. She will give you every opportunity to do what’s right, and she will even do you the courtesy of announcing how thoroughly she is going to ruin you when you don’t. But if it gets to that point, kiss your plans, your evil robots, and everything within a five mile radius goodbye.

That’s the enduring appeal of X-Men. You can be the silver-tongued, unpredictable cardsharp or the type of drama queen who exacts revenge by way of a localized Category 7 hurricane, and both are extremely cool ways to save the day.

Stray observations:

• The Leader of Genosha is some dork in a flowing purple robe. Nobody else is dressed like this. Even on a show where yellow spandex is normal, this looks funny to me.

• The Leader mentions that the camp’s power-suppressing collars were invented by “a scientist from Scotland”. Coincidentally, Xavier stays behind at the mansion to get in touch with one Dr. Moira McTaggert.

• Master Mold, failing to get away from the collapsing facility: “I am still. Plugged. In!”

• Cable’s sudden appearance here and implied backstory don’t make any sense in light of his role in later seasons, but then again he’s a time traveler, so whatever.

Air date: February 6, 1993

If you love Wolverine, this episode is an A. If you don’t, it’s a C. They can’t all be generation-defining bangers, you know? We’re picking up with Wolverine, who has decided to clear his head with a trip home to Canada. He’s having a lovely time skiing around the middle of nowhere, when Sabretooth pops up yet again with a detonator in hand, somehow already well prepared to blow up the ice bridge Wolverine is skiing across. Their fight ends with Wolverine falling into a freezing river. “Let the ice be ya’ tombstone!” Sabretooth screams. Which, what is this accent, exactly? Philadelphia? I find it baffling.

Wolverine is luckily rescued by some local indigenous people. The show doesn’t attempt to name them as a specific tribe or nation, so let’s just leave it as “indigenous”. Given how these portrayals tended to go up until the—let me just check my notes—today, I’m already uncomfortable. Wolverine wakes up in the village and recovers fast (wink), and immediately ingratiates himself with the locals by being super strong and great at everything. The village’s previous #1 favorite person, Kiyoek, does not like this one bit, and he decides to collude with Sabretooth.

In a quiet moment, Wolverine comments that bringing some happiness to these kind strangers has made him happy, too, and the feeling is so foreign that he doesn’t know what to make of it. In a first for the show, he’s even smiling when he says this. All of this reads as incredibly sad to me. The show hasn’t gotten into the Weapon X stuff yet, but if you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen the movies. This dude has led a very traumatizing life.

You know Wolverine’s happiness can’t last. Kiyoek takes him ice fishing, and while they’re gone, Sabretooth ransacks the village and seemingly kidnaps its entire population. This leads to Cal Dodd’s incredible reading of the line, “THERE’S NO PEACE FOR ME!” As he walks toward another confrontation with his old enemy, he takes his mask out of a backpack. I think it’s supposed to read like John Wick un-burying his guns or Kratos retrieving the Blades of Chaos, but this is undercut by an earlier animation error where he woke up in his X-Men costume for no reason.

Sabretooth has gone full Snidely Whiplash. He’s got the villagers tied to an ice bridge and another detonator in his hand. Where, exactly, is he getting this stuff? Who is supplying him with C-4? How did he singlehandedly abduct and restrain what appears to be several dozen people? The show denies us answers. The actual fight isn’t all that great. Kiyoek redeems himself by intervening long enough to give Wolverine an edge, and in true Saturday morning cartoon fashion, Sabretooth miscalculates and lunges off a cliff (never to be seen again, I’m sure).

The episode’s depiction of the indigenous village isn’t too bad up to this point, but in the end they decide to move to the city rather than rebuild their old lives. The show portrays this as a happy ending, but man, that is not how it reads to me.

Barely in this episode at all, Storm, Jubilee, and Gambit (he’s fine after that encounter with Plague, apparently) are on a trip to investigate Genosha, purportedly a mutant-friendly nation. Cyclops was against sending anyone, and he’s such an unbearable jerk about it that even the Professor tells him to consider maybe chilling out. Genosha seems like a fun tropical getaway, never mind the retinal scanner that the hotel concierge is using without your consent, Storm. Everything’s cool until knockout gas starts seeping into the bungalow (like most AirBnBs I’ve stayed at, amirite?). The trio fight their way outside, only to be greeted by what look like some unused character designs from an episode of G.I. Joe and a single, looming Sentinel.

Air date: January 30, 1993

This episode has it all, and I can’t believe they managed to cram it into twenty-two minutes (okay, I can, the pacing is pretty abrupt). The inciting incident is that Cyclops and Jean go on a date and get abducted by the Morlocks. We will use this as a lens to examine Storm’s fears about leadership and Wolverine’s frustrations over his unrequited (?) feelings for Jean. Along the way, a shocking number of memes.

The tentpole of the episode concerns Storm’s doubts about her leadership abilities, and it manages to hang together as a coherent arc despite everything else going on around it. We see her fail at the start, as her claustrophobia overwhelms her in the Danger Room. Later, she leads the mission to rescue Cyclops and Jean, where she controls (but doesn’t conquer) her phobia. This requires her to lead the team through a Morlock melee and face their leader, Callisto, in single combat. She enters those tunnels insecure and unsure, and emerges as a queen. Literally, she’s formally the leader of the Morlocks after this, but she lets Callisto “rule” in her place. I think it’s especially important that the episode shows Storm keeping her fears in check, but not exactly getting over them. Growth is a process, even for a badass goddess like her.

Meanwhile, this episode finally leans into the soap opera of it all. Cyclops and Jean are very into each other and Wolverine can’t handle it. He and Jean share a tender moment early in the episode, only for Jean to tear herself away to go on her date with Cyclops. We then follow the lovebirds up until their capture, cutting back to the mansion for just a few seconds to see Wolverine in bed, tenderly touching a certain photo.

Yes, friends, this is that episode. The one that launched a thousand memes. In fact it doesn’t just give us Wolverine Crush, it also gives us Sad Wolverine, in which he looks like he’s posing for a missing tarot card called The Third Wheel. But wait, what if I told you that if you order now, in this very episode, you will also get covered with scorpions. COVERED WITH SCORPIONS!!! And as a special bonus—I truly can’t believe they’re letting me do this—a completely gratuitous (and appreciated) shot of Gambit in a speedo. And certain dweebs were mad about the crop top?

You’ve surely seen at least a few of these memes around, thirty years later (the Gambit speedo moment didn’t catch on, but I’m here to make the world a better place). They’re all here, in this one episode, delivered to the world on one Saturday morning in January 1993. It’s always tempting to believe that the world was at its height when you, personally, were twelve, but this truly was a golden half hour in pop culture history.

Anyway, Wolverine has feelings, but unlike Storm, he has no idea how to control them. He briefly contemplates killing an unconscious Cyclops before deciding it would upset Jean too much. By the end of the episode, he’ll abandon the mansion for parts unknown, leaving the shattered photo of Cyclops and Jean on his bedroom floor.

All this, and I haven’t even talked about the Morlocks. The episode tries to underline what life is like if you’re a mutant who isn’t useful or beautiful. All the Morlocks are either too strange looking for polite society or simply too dangerous. They don’t have a wealthy benefactor or a cushy mansion. For them, mutant acceptance isn’t some lofty ideal, it’s the prerequisite to being allowed to walk around outside. They tell Storm as much when they refuse her offer of safe haven at the X-Mansion.

The climactic fight between Storm and Callisto isn’t very good. It feels extremely American Gladiators, but it gets the point across. Likewise, the big melee between the X-Men and the Morlocks is less a well choreographed fight than it is a montage of cool little actions and quips, but it’s fun. It’s another one of those “something for everyone” sequences, and I am sure we were reenacting it on the playground the next week.

This episode is a lot. It makes use of every active cast member (they even remembered Gambit!), and introduces a dozen new Morlocks on top of that. It’s got lessons about how (and how not) to control your feelings. Everyone has a chance to show off their powers. More than anything else, this episode is having a lot of fun, and it’s the first one to lean into the X-Men’s soapy side, with legendary results.

A lengthy list of stray observations:

• Rogue, trying to stop a pneumatic wall in the Danger Room: “This sucker’s thick!” They knew, right? They knew?

• As Storm struggles to make her way through the underground, Gambit says, “We have to help her!” Wolverine kills the well-meaning sentiment with a gruff, “Let her ask.” Wise words for a Saturday morning cartoon.

• Cyclops says that his eye beams are solar powered. So he’s powerless for most of the episode, which gives Jean a chance to gaze lovingly into his eyes for the first time. But it does beg the question of just how fast his batteries run out. How long could he possibly have been underground before he lost his eye beams? Four hours, tops? Does he lose his powers overnight? If he decided to take up photography as a hobby and was spending a lot of time in a dark room (it’s the ’90s, remember), would he suddenly be able to live normally? Possibly Leech accelerated the depowering process, but the writing is unclear on this point. These are important questions.

• The sound work in this scene where Annalee (Madame Covered With Scorpions) tries to mind control Storm is awful, like they hired an intern to do the mix, fired them after one day, and then shipped the episode to Fox anyway.

• Gambit gets hit by Plague at the very end of the fight, and we’re told he’s “recovering” in the epilogue. Is this going to matter in a future episode, or did they just want to show off one more mutant?

• “To serve my people I need a companion, someone to provide me…an heir.” Callisto looks like she stepped out of The Warriors but she is horny in the manner of a Tudor.

• “He refuses me! DESTROY HER!” These women are fighting over Scott Summers, of all people.

Air date: January 23, 1993

They seriously made us wait two months for a new episode? They made children wait two months for a new episode? The ’90s were barbaric.

This episode is a pretty direct continuation of the previous one. We’re picking up the Sabretooth drama from last time and dealing with Magneto in the B-plot. The episode opens with Xavier psychically probing Sabretooth’s mind, but there’s something the growling lunatic wants to keep hidden. Wolverine doesn’t see why the Professor should extend him any kindness. Or as the show puts it:

Xavier: There are some recesses of his mind I’ve not yet been able to penetrate.

Wolverine: I’ll penetrate his recesses…

I thought this was funny when I was ten, and I still think it’s funny now. Wolverine is one of the few characters with much of a personality at this point, and it’s very clear even at this early stage that the show intends to spend lots of time with him. This will set a trend that continues through several other shows (most notably, the titular Wolverine and the X-Men) and at least six feature films.

Wolverine storms off in a huff (in a cool way, people!), and the rest of the team is called away to again face Magneto, who is raiding a chemical plant. Big Shredder vibes from him here, as this is the second consecutive episode where he just floats in and starts causing problems. Cyclops is quickly taken out by noxious gas (pathetic), Storm has her first claustrophobia-induced panic attack due to some falling debris (relatable), and this all keeps Rogue busy making sure no one dies. Which is made harder when she gives Cyclops some Southern-style mouth-to-mouth (or CPR, as it is known), and she absorbs his powers. She has to keep her eyes shut to avoid lasering the plant in half, effectively taking her out of the fight.

This sets up the first real sparring match between Magneto and Professor Xavier (that levitating wheelchair is clutch). As usual, Xavier tries to get his old friend to see reason, but he’s having none of it. “My people used reason while others used tanks, and they were destroyed for their trouble. I won’t watch it happen again.” Since words failed, Xavier resorts to images, showing Magneto his own war-torn memories. Whether mentally traumatizing someone is really an ethical way to win a fight is a debate for another blog series, but in any case, it works and Magneto crawls away.

Back at the mansion, Jubilee is watching Senator Kelly declare a run for President, with mutant internment as the primary plank in his platform. She turns off the TV in disgust, and starts chatting with Sabretooth. If you think leaving a hardened war criminal in the care of a naive teenager is a smart idea, you are Professor Charles Xavier.

This goes about as well as you’d expect, and Sabretooth quickly gets himself set free, revealing that he’s been working for Magneto the whole time. Luckily Wolverine didn’t go far. He opens the brawl against Sabretooth with the words, “You egg-sucking piece of gutter trash! You always liked pushing around people smaller than you. Well I’m smaller! Try pushin’ me!” I know we all love Hugh Jackman now, but it really is a shame they went with a 6’3” Australian and lost this aspect of the character. Is it any wonder Wolverine becomes the star of the franchise? With Wolverine, you get this exquisite antihero trash talk. With just about any other member of the team, you get another bracing lecture about the dream of mutant-human peace.

Anyway, Sabretooth uses Slashing Claw and it’s super effective. Please note that he’s able to do this because Xavier starts lecturing Wolverine in the middle of the fight. This was before Wolverine’s mutant healing abilities were reinterpreted to mean he could instantly shrug off anything but the most grievous injury, so he’s down for the count. But before Sabretooth can finish the job, Jubilee blasts him through a wall. Kid’s got potential!

The really interesting thing about this episode—and again, I cannot stress enough how unusual this was for early ’90s cartoons—is that everybody loses. It’s an episode about failure. The fight at the chemical plant is a disaster. Xavier drags home a blinded Rogue (herself carrying her two unconscious teammates), while Magneto runs away terrified. Sabretooth puts Wolverine in the hospital, and then he barely manages to scamper into the forests of upstate New York. Xavier has to reckon with the fact that he used his X-Men as pawns against his old frenemy, and failed. Or as Storm puts a button on the idea: “We failed, Professor. Together.”

But you know who doesn’t deal well with failure? Shredder Magneto, who vows to gather likeminded mutants to his cause and destroy Charles Xavier.

Stray observations:

• Where the hell is Gambit? Morph is presumed dead and Beast is reading Tolstoy in prison, but Gambit just hasn’t been around for two whole episodes. For that matter, where’s Jean? They’re both on the toilet for this one, I guess.

• Commenting on their CPR “kiss”, Rogue says, “We’ll have to do it again sometime.” To which Cyclops responds, “Yeah well uhh…ummm…” Smooth, Scott. I can’t believe this dweeb manages to get married next season.

Air date: November 27, 1992

Magneto, the Master of Magnetism. The X-Men’s original nemesis, all the way back to issue #1 in 1963.¹ For eighteen years, he was your bog standard arch-villain, trying to take over the world, scheming against the forces of good, etc. And then in 1981, Chris Claremont retconned Magneto into a Holocaust survivor, making him a tragic villain/antihero. That improved backstory, plus the magnetic (I’m sorry) interpretations of Magneto from Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender (both the best performances in their respective films), have given the character an outsized presence in nerd culture ever since.

You get none of that in “Enter Magneto”. Xavier simply says that Magneto is “the survivor of a war.” The Holocaust was too heavy a subject to drop on the show’s intended audience, so we get Magneto the Mustache Twirler instead. Even weirder, none of the X-Men, save Xavier, even know who he is.

This version of Magneto is heavy on dramatic entrances and grand pronouncements, but pretty light on action. He easily breaches Beast’s holding cell at the Mutant Control Agency, but Beast insists on waiting for his day in court. “What chance does a mutant have,” Magneto says as he bats away the MCA’s laser fire, “Are these the people whose laws you trust?”

At the bail hearing, Beast quotes The Merchant of Venice and tells the court that the X-Men’s raid was in response to the MCA abducting innocent mutants.² The judge is unmoved and bail is denied. The show portrays this as bigotry, but neither of Beast’s points is a sound legal argument (regardless of whether they were just), so what was he expecting? Either way, it looks like Magneto was right…about the trial, I mean.

Because this is a Saturday morning cartoon and the show needs more to do, Sabretooth appears out of nowhere as court is letting out and starts wrecking the joint. Conveniently, Cyclops and Wolverine were already there, and quickly subdue the raging man-animal, who I must point out is wearing a costume that makes Jean Grey’s look Amish.

Wolverine has history with this half-naked berserker, it turns out, and hates him. When the X-Men take him back to the mansion to help him recuperate (apparently the cops were not interested in detaining a man who destroyed a courtroom), Wolverine tries to kill him a second time. Once again, Wolverine nearly comes to blows with the team, but just then, Xavier becomes aware that Magneto is attempting to invade a military base. Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine rush off, but not before Wolverine gets in a nice dig at Xavier: “How come we’re supposed to trash your old enemy, but we gotta go easy on mine?”

The episode’s third act is pretty perfunctory. Magneto singlehandedly takes over the base, forces its staff to flee, and arms the missiles, all without ever even stepping inside. “Better that we die on our feet than live on our knees,” he tells the X-Men before flying away. Storm diverts the missiles into the conveniently nearby ocean (very conveniently aided by psychic knowledge from Cerebro), and we’re out. The episode ends with Magneto on a hillside, melodramatically lamenting that the X-Men, though well trained and capable, are betraying their own kind.

Compared to the jam-packed premiere, this episode feels like a stumble. It’s very talky, and the action is uninspired, mainly because Magneto is unstoppably powerful. Nothing even slows him down, let alone presents a credible challenge. Had he stuck around at the base, he’d have had no trouble dispatching our heroes. It’s almost as if he set up a problem and then left on purpose, to test dear old Xavier’s students…

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: Unbelievably, Cyclops’s “NOT!” joke from the previous episode makes it into the “Previously On…”