Jonathan Dobres

Season 3 is the Season of the Phoenix. The season’s generous allotment of 19 episodes covers just 10 distinct stories, many of which are either about the Phoenix or related to it. “The Phoenix Saga” and “The Dark Phoenix” by themselves occupy about half the season. The two-part season opener “Out of the Past” is a prelude to the first Saga, while “No Mutant Is an Island” is a direct reaction to its aftermath. Altogether, fully 12 of the season’s 19 episodes are tangled up in the Phoenix Sagas, or 13 if you include “Orphan’s End” (which I do).

I think the season is pretty good overall, especially its adaptation of “The Dark Phoenix”. I’m not as keen on “The Phoenix Saga”, but more on that below. It’s certainly an improvement over the meandering second season. We only wasted two episodes on the Savage Land this time! Of course, being so beholden to the Phoenix story arcs presents a few problems for the show. Those stories predate characters like Gambit and Jubilee, giving them little to do. Even Rogue, who can easily substitute for Colossus in the Phoenix stories, is just absent for a lot of the season. If you’re not interested in Jean and Cyclops, you’re out of luck for the year.

Although the Dark Phoenix presents an interesting antagonist for the show, the lack of a season-spanning Big Bad gives these episodes a different feeling compared to seasons 1 and 2. We’ve traded nefarious government contractors and all too believable anti-mutant hate groups for cosmic entities and glam rock galactic empires. That said, season 3 gets a lot right, especially as it leans into the high emotions that come with camp, romance, and tragedy.

Season 3’s storytelling ambitions were frequently in conflict with production problems and meddling from the network. The network wins from here out, so I’m not expecting great things from season 4. Then again, season 3 did things I didn’t expect, like keeping the Inner Circle’s misogyny mostly intact. So I guess we’ll see how things go!

How I’d Rewrite Season 3

I realize that it’s easy to play script doctor with thirty years of hindsight, and that no matter how good my ideas might be, I still don’t have a time machine. But I’ve been slowly reviewing this season for six months, and I can’t help but think about how it might have been better, so humor me.

To start off, just get rid of the first Phoenix Saga entirely. There’s no need for the show to tie itself in knots to adapt a stretch of comics that weren’t even conceived as a coherent story in the first place. Spare us most of the Shi’ar and all of the Starjammers. Instead, tweak “Out of the Past”. It proceeds mostly as it did before, except that the Phoenix is released from the prison ship along with the Spirit Drinker, or alternately, Jean explores the ship with Xavier and accidentally discovers the Phoenix. Either way, make Jean/Phoenix the one who ultimately defeats the Spirit Drinker, and only because of her strange new powers.

From there, the season could tackle whatever stories it wanted, but with Jean gradually becoming more and more powerful, just as happened in the comics over several years. You could even do—dare I say it—interludes that check in with Jean, either to show off some worrisome new Phoenix thing, or to slowly ramp up Jason Wyngarde’s psychic manipulations leading into “The Dark Phoenix”.

Treat “The Dark Phoenix” as the season finale it’s meant to be. If planetary genocide is still too hot for Saturday mornings, fine, keep the D’bari star system uninhabited, but get the Shi’ar in there—skip D’Ken and put Lilandra in charge from the start—and let Jean vaporize herself all the same. I think you’d still have to bring her back to life in the end, but do it as a separate episode rather than hastily resurrecting her a minute after she dies. With these changes, the show won’t be in a ridiculous position where the same character dies two tragic deaths in one season.

And while I’m at it, give Jubilee something to do. This is (nominally) a show for kids and she’s the only kid on it, give her a proper spotlight already. She clearly idolizes the other women on the team, especially Storm, and it’s a huge missed opportunity that the show hasn’t done anything with that, and probably never will.

Worst Episode

“Savage Land, Strange Heart”. The Savage Land is as boring as ever, and completely mishandles what could have been a great Storm story. It’s so focused on dinosaur stampedes and jungle mythos that it feels like Storm is barely there. The best thing I can say about this Savage Land story is that it’s the last one. While the season has a couple of other episodes that are arguably worse on their own merits, “Savage Land” aims highest and crashes hardest.

Dishonorable mentions go to “Longshot” and “Love in Vain”. “Longshot”’s nonsensical plot and obviously reused dialogue, along with the fact that it was written for season 3 but wouldn’t air until season 5, smack of an episode that was cobbled together to fill time and save money. “Love in Vain” is so bad that not even Lenore Zann can save it, though it does manage some unintentional comedy.

Best Episode

“Out of the Past”. It was a thrilling return to form after the lackluster end of season 2, and it’s also the best the show has ever or will ever look (until X-Men ‘97, anyway). It has the distinction of being one of season 3’s only original stories. “Out of the Past” features an unusual combination of characters—the Reavers, Lady Deathstrike, and the Spirit Drinker—that had never appeared together in the comics, making the episode a rather unique remix.

Honorable mention goes to “The Dark Phoenix”, which is narrowly behind “Out of the Past” in my book. The show commits to faithfully adapting the story from the comics, which comes through in ways large and small. Cyclops is formidable and interesting, the big fight in “The Inner Circle” is taken almost panel-for-panel from X-Men #134, and most of the Saga’s adult themes are intact, more or less.

I also have to give an honorable mention to “Obsession”, in which Apocalypse and Archangel ham it up so hard that you can’t help but have fun. Gambit also hits Apocalypse in the face with an entire fighter jet, one of the only cool things he gets to do all season.

Worst Hero

Professor Charles Xavier. It’s not that Xavier didn’t have good moments this season. In fact, he’s more active in season 3 than ever before. Temporarily restoring Jean’s sanity at great risk to himself comes to mind. And his example of grace under pressure in “Child of Light” really resonated with me.

But he screws up a lot this season. He sends his X-Men into space despite having no idea who his psychic visions are coming from or what they really mean, and when the “mission” goes awry, he has the nerve to call Cyclops a poor leader! A manifestation of his worst possible self terrorizes the team for half an episode, which begs a lot of questions about what kind of person Xavier really is. Oh, and don’t forget that he exploits his psychic connection with Lilandra to learn about the Shi’ar rite of trial by combat. Or that he tried to manipulate Lilandra with a romantic vision (how like Jason Wyngarde!) before she clocked what was happening and threw him into a chasm (metaphorically).

Lastly, a dishonorable mention for Corsair, who sucks (along with all the Starjammers). But his crimes pale in comparison to the Psychic of Westchester County.

Best Hero

Cyclops. Screw the haters, it’s Cyclops! Since “The Dark Phoenix” so closely follows the comics, the show’s version of Cyclops is suddenly as powerful as he’s supposed to be. More importantly, “The Dark Phoenix” simply can’t work without him. He’s one half of the romance, and without that, Phoenix is just another villain blasting the X-Men with energy bolts. I think Norm Spencer rose to the occasion and gave Cyclops an emotional range we’ve never seen before, which persists even into episodes like “Orphan’s End”.

Worst Villain

Garokk. Literally just a sentient clump of dirt insisting he should rule the world. Get out of here. The Colony are also pretty lame, but that’s mostly down to that episode’s generally poor writing. They could’ve been cool!

Best Villain

Dark Phoenix, obviously. No one else even comes close. She is, as we millennials used to say, epic. I’ve talked about the Phoenix a lot already, so I won’t belabor the point. I’ll also give an honorable mention to Apocalypse. The show needs more villains with the guts to say things like, “I am the rocks of the eternal shore. Crash against me and be broken!”

Most Improved

Again, I think it has to be Cyclops. Going from the show’s constant stick in the mud to Best Hero kind of says it all. Though I have to acknowledge his awful behavior in “Cold Comfort”, so who knows what he’ll be like next season.

Season 3, Episode 19. Air date: February 10, 1996

I would say that this episode is a weird note to end a season on, except it didn’t end the season. “Love in Vain” was produced for season 3 but wouldn’t air until late in season 4. It’s a bottle episode that focuses on Rogue (or tries to) and also introduces some aliens known as the Colony, who are definitely a kid-friendly version of the Brood. I have a guess as to why this episode falls here in the production order. The previous episode, “Orphan’s End,” ties up a thread from “The Phoenix Saga” by revealing to Cyclops that Corsair is his father. In the comics, the equivalent story has Corsair come to Earth because he’s seeking the X-Men’s help against the Brood. So “Orphan’s End” and “Love in Vain” share a connection via the comics that is not at all apparent on the show (Corsair doesn’t even appear).

Anyway, this is an episode where space lizards try to assimilate the X-Men. The Colony, like the Brood, are parasitic aliens who reproduce by transforming other lifeforms into more of themselves. Unlike the Brood, who are terrifying, the Colony are ridiculous. I mean look at the Colony Queen. Look at that cape. They should have leaned into it and had her communicate with clown honks. The only obvious connections the Colony shares with the Brood are their parasitic natures and their use of giant space whales—the Acanti—for interstellar travel.

The Colony are especially interested in Rogue for her amazing strength and vitality. The Queen briefly mentions that she’s chosen her “for the passing.” Nothing more comes of the comment, but it feels like there’s a first draft of this story that singled out Rogue to succeed the aging Colony Queen. The Queen eventually says she wants all the X-Men to join the Colony, but her focus has been on Rogue for years. She’s even gone through the trouble of recruiting Rogue’s first boyfriend, Cody, to try to lure her in. The Colony is immune to Rogue’s powers, so Cody can actually touch her. It’s a great sales pitch until Cody starts succumbing to the transformation and turns into a hideous lizard.

The action in this episode isn’t really worth remarking on. There are fights, mostly with Wolverine, who discovers the Acanti ship before anyone else. He gets infected with the Colony’s spores and starts transforming, but his healing powers fight it off. Later, he’ll put his hands on Rogue to force her to absorb his powers and save her from her own transformation. The X-Men continue to fight the space lizards until Professor Xavier telepathically awakens the Acanti, which had been enslaved by the Colony. And that’s basically it. Once the Acanti is awake, the Colony are driven mad by its keening. Rogue makes one last attempt to get Cody to stay behind, but at this point he’s fully transformed and he just hisses evilly at her, which is unintentionally hilarious.

It’s not a satisfying resolution. The episode is supposed to be about Rogue, but she doesn’t have much agency. At no point does she consider joining the Colony of her own free will, nor does she directly reject them. Wolverine basically stops her transformation for her. Rogue’s abilities don’t matter at all here. Ultimately it’s Xavier who solves the problem from miles away. By the way, did you know there’s at least one Marvel universe where Charles Xavier became an Acanti? It occurs to me that the X-Men didn’t even really defeat the Colony, per se. They’re still using the Acanti for space travel, even with it awakened. So what’s going on there? Is it flying around the galaxy, slowly digesting its former masters?

The episode compares very poorly with “The Cure,” which even amidst all its action still gave Rogue some weighty ideas about “normalcy” to ponder. Sure, the Colony would have given Rogue the ability to touch others, but they’re so overtly hideous and evil that it’s not much of a choice. Imagine a version of this story where the Colony are outwardly beautiful and tempting, but still rob their converts of their free will. It’s an idea that’s been done to death in sci-fi, but it would have been a hell of a choice for Rogue, who is so frequently caught between loneliness and self-determination.

Stray observations:

• In an early scene, Gambit enters Rogue’s room to flirt with her. He finds her reading a book that you can just barely see is titled Romance Novel.

• Even the great Lenore Zann struggles to sell this shallow, poorly written episode. Though when she spots Cody from a distance (having last seen him after accidentally putting him in a coma), her delivery of, “Oh my goodness, it’s really you…Do I want it to be you?” is much better than this episode deserves.

• After his first fight with the Colony, Wolverine drags himself to a payphone to alert the X-Men. Cal Dodd’s desperate screaming, as heard from Xavier’s end of the line, is hysterical. This is happening as Rogue asks for permission to take some time off with Cody. Beast’s extremely polite attempt to get everyone to address the man who sounds like he’s dying on the telephone is even funnier.

• On the toilet: Jubilee. The episode also shows Cyclops and Jean driving off for a trip (so that Rogue can be wistful about intimacy). So I suppose that counts as explaining their absence, though it’s strange that they wouldn’t rush back from a vacation to fight hostile aliens.

Season 3, Episode 18. Air date: February 25, 1995

I have to open this review with some incredible news. It took 44 episodes, but we finally have one in which Wolverine does not appear. I was starting to think it was never going to happen. In fact, most of the series regulars are absent. It’s just Cyclops and Storm, alongside—heavy sigh—Corsair and the Starjammers.¹

This is the one where Cyclops finally learns that Corsair is Christopher Summers, his long-lost dad. The story that surrounds it is a bad one. Corsair returns to Earth with a Shi’ar cop, Raknar, hot on his tail. Raknar claims that Corsair is wanted for the abduction of a young girl named Jandra, who is the only person who knows the location of the Lord Chamberlain’s treasury. Or maybe she witnessed a murder? Hence why she’s repeatedly referred to as “the witness”? It’s not clear. Anyway, the reveal is that Raknar is a crooked cop in the Chamberlain’s employ, and he was planning to murder Jandra to cover up…something?

So yes, Corsair was hoping to gain access to a fortune through Jandra, but he was also legitimately saving her life. Most of these story beats are told, not shown, making for a confusing episode. The Starjammers magically show up to ambush Storm, and later, Raknar, though since the episode made a big show of Corsair coming to Earth alone, I’m not sure how or when everyone got there. To top things off, characters spout some code phrases in an attempt to dress up a pathetically simple battle plan. The Starjammers are able to take down Raknar after Storm uses her powers to—brace yourselves—blow a tarp off of a deflector array.

Outside of that, we get a lot of Cyclops and Corsair processing the revelation that they’re family. Corsair explains that he and Cyclops’s mother were facing imminent abduction by Emperor D’Ken, leaving them no choice but to hurriedly push their two sons out of a plane. Cyclops is understandably very angry about being abandoned, and I have to give it to Norm Spencer here, who manages some decent acting amidst a truly ridiculous story. Cyclops and Corsair reconcile by the end of the episode, which I take issue with, as Corsair did absolutely nothing to win back his son’s trust. He even says that he just sort of assumed Scott and Alex were dead, and thus never bothered coming back to Earth to look for them. This seems like the total opposite of forgivable behavior, but I guess Cyclops is just that understanding of a guy.

Storm is extremely fun in this episode. She’s sporting a long ponytail, yet another fabulous look for a character who’s gotten more costume changes than anyone else (animation is expensive and it’s rare to see characters rotate through so many designs, especially for a ’90s cartoon). In this story, she’s Cyclops’s ultimate wingwoman, repeatedly conjuring gusts of wind and bolts of lightning to get the Summerses out of scrapes with the Shi’ar. The writers accidentally gave her super strength, too, as at one point she casually scoops up Cyclops and Corsair—two fully grown men—to get them to safety. She also fights (and then allies with) the Starjammers, with her abilities providing the decisive edge in the capture of Raknar (decisive, but nonsensical). Storm even drives a monorail! Did you know the X-Men have a private monorail? Did you know that Alison Sealy-Smith delivers an absolutely iconic line reading about the monorail? She’s spectacular. And not a god damn pterodactyl in sight.

Stray observations:

• As young Scott and Alex plunge toward the surface of Alaska with the plane’s only parachute, it catches fire. I get why Corsair assumed his sons were dead, but I’d still check.

• In addition to a silent flashback cameo of D’Ken, we also get the first appearance of the third and most troublesome Neramani sibling, Deathbird. Deathbird.

• Raknar’s navigator betrays him, showing Cyclops a set of ship’s logs that have been faked in advance to cover up Jandra’s planned murder. Why anyone would preemptively incriminate themselves like this, I really can’t say, but the Shi’ar have a weird culture.

• In the final scene, as Corsair and Cyclops are getting to know each other, he says, “So I hear you’re going to marry that redhead…” So I guess the show canonically considers Scott and Jean’s marriage invalid, because Morph was playing a fake priest? Do marriage licenses not exist on this version of Earth?

• Cyclops, wondering who could possibly be contacting them at Christ o’ Clock in the morning: “Well it can’t be an X-Man, they don’t get up this early.” I really enjoy the hint of a smile you can hear in Norm Spencer’s delivery. He’s no Lenore Zann, but he’s very good in this story.

• On the toilet: again, I almost can’t believe it, Wolverine! Along with every principle character except for Cyclops and Storm.

I haven’t read nearly as many comics as these reviews would suggest. Most of the background I provide on the comics is just me doing my homework. But I did read the original “Dark Phoenix” issues, probably the summer before these episodes aired. As a kid, I loved the action and the drama, the fabulous powers and the ever rising stakes. On top of that, I don’t think I’d ever read anything resembling a tragic romance before, so the ending hit me like a train. The collected issues of the Dark Phoenix Saga were, briefly, the greatest thing I’d ever read.

The Dark Phoenix Saga was one of the biggest events in comics, and its importance to the X-Men franchise really cannot be overstated. Its ten issues introduced The Hellfire Club and all its members (including fan-favorite antihero Emma Frost), Kitty Pryde, and Dazzler. Senator Robert Kelly also makes his first appearance, chatting with Sebastian Shaw about restarting something called the Sentinel program. It’s the first time Wolverine demonstrates a healing factor. The story culminates in the death of Jean Grey, which Marvel managed to honor for the next six years. The Phoenix Force would become a part of her and telepathic mutants generally from then on, for better or worse.

The original idea was that this was going to be a permanent villain turn for Jean. Chris Claremont had been amping up her Phoenix-based powers for years, and eventually she was so much more powerful than the rest of the team that she made more sense as an antagonist, or so the writers’ room felt. But they overshot. When Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter realized that the Phoenix would be snuffing out an entire star system, killing billions of people, he argued that it was too evil an act to go unpunished. So the Saga ends with the suicide of Jean Grey. Before the rewrite, the Shi’ar were just going to depower her.

Running alongside the galactic dramatics are the personal stakes. The Dark Phoenix Saga is a romance and a tragedy. It’s Jean’s feelings that really get her (and the universe) into trouble, feelings which intensify as she and Cyclops become more intimate. Cyclops even quietly proposes to her just before the climactic final battle that will end her life.

But that’s the comics. The show’s take on the story is different in some very important ways. The Phoenix doesn’t commit genocide in this story—the star system she destroys is lifeless. She’s still a tremendous threat to the universe, so she still ends her own life, but gets resurrected moments later. After all, the show just did a dramatic self-sacrifice in the previous saga, which as originally aired, was only three episodes ago. Ironically, the show delivers us the “Jean gets depowered” ending that the comics didn’t.

The show stays faithful to the comics in other ways, creating a set of episodes that feels unlike most of the series, in a good way. Cyclops is extremely effective in a fight and manages to be an interesting person, for example. The Hellfire Club/Inner Circle’s psychological manipulation of a young woman is still mostly there, shockingly. Jean and Cyclops may already be married on the The Animated Series, but this is the first time they show real chemistry, and it works. Catherine Disher finally cuts loose and delivers the cackling demon I’ve wanted to see for two seasons now. When I think of the ’90s version of Jean Grey, this is who I’m thinking of.

Overall I’d give this story a “pretty good,” with “Part 2: The Inner Circle” being the standout. The story deals with topics that most Saturday morning cartoons would never touch, and it does a decent job of it. I just wish the show’s version of “The Phoenix Saga” hadn’t preempted so much of the drama in “The Dark Phoenix”, but I’ll have more thoughts on that in the season 3 wrap up.

Part I: Dazzled

Season 3, Episode 14. Air date: November 12, 1994

Remember Jean Grey’s climactic sacrifice at the end of “The Phoenix Saga”? Well never mind, she’s back now. The X-Men have her chained up at Muir Island, and are desperately trying to figure out why the Phoenix has gone from benevolent to bonkers. Professor Xavier hypothesizes—and each of these four episodes will reiterate—that the Phoenix seems addicted to the emotions and sensations that it can experience through a physical body. Infinite power plus human urges are a dangerous mix. The end result is Phoenix as ravenous demon, and Xavier’s treatments are barely keeping her in check.

Cyclops is, for once in his life, trying to take his mind off things. “You’ve been worrying too hard about Jean,” Gambit tells him, which is a remarkable thing to say about someone who recently became the avatar of a cosmic power, saved the universe, committed suicide by plunging into the sun, and then mysteriously reappeared, uncontrollably shooting fire out of her face. Anyway, the boys are out at the club to see downtown’s latest hot act, Dazzler.

Dazzler has a small role in this story, mostly to create an “it’s not what it looks like” moment between her and Cyclops that will push Jean into the arms of another man. So let’s take a minute to talk about Dazzler’s behind-the-scenes origin story, which is fascinating. She debuted in X-Men #130, November 1979, and was built to capitalize on two of 1979’s hottest trends: disco and Bo Derek. Derek had rocketed to sex symbol status that year courtesy of a raunchy Dudley Moore vehicle. She was such a hot commodity that Hollywood execs rushed to plan a whole multimedia extravaganza around her, which was to include a movie, an album, and yes, a Marvel Comics tie-in. But subsequent flops like Tarzan, the Ape Man sank Derek’s career as fast as it had risen, and the media blitz never happened. So Marvel was left with a tie-in character who was never going to tie in to anything, sporting an aesthetic that felt hopelessly dated the minute the clocks rolled over to 1980.¹ It’s fun to see The Animated Series use Dazzler’s more updated punk look, but never forget that she started out as a flamboyant diva literally powered by disco.

What should have been a fun night is interrupted by some masked goons who attempt to abduct Dazzler. It’s our first taste of the Hellfire Club Inner Circle,² a secret society of insufferable elitists in 18^th century cosplay with three goals: control the world through politics and finance, collect the most promising mutants, and bicker like they’re playing Vampire: the Masquerade. Cyclops handles the goons without much trouble, and Dazzler blinds cyborg Donald Pierce for good measure. Back at Inner Circle HQ, we’ll meet the rest of the coterie: Sebastian Shaw (energy absorber), Harry Leland (can make objects arbitrarily heavier), Jason Wyngarde (illusions), and Emma Frost (telepath).

The Dark Phoenix Saga marked the debut of the Hellfire Club. They’d do a lot to enrich the franchise, but none more so than Emma Frost, who rapidly became a fan favorite. It’s not hard to see why. She uses her formidable psychic powers for social gain and looks great doing it, too. Over forty years of comics, she’ll go from villain to antihero (even leading the X-Men and teaching ethics at Xavier’s School), gain an awesome secondary mutation (she can transform into solid diamond), and mentor a quintet of her own clones known as the Stepford Cuckoos. But none of that has happened to her yet. This is the conniving, climbing, corseted version of Emma Frost. In this story, she’s there to recap the events of The Phoenix Saga, theatrically trash talk Xavier’s defenses, and help Wyngarde seduce Jean Grey, whom they’ve clocked as an exceptionally powerful mutant.

This is the key thing about the Dark Phoenix Saga. It’s about desire first and foremost, and how dangerous it is for women to have it. In the comics, Jean and Cyclops are becoming much more intimate, having recently established a permanent psychic bond (and a very physical one, too). This coincides with Wyngarde’s telepathic seductions, in which he makes Jean believe she’s a maiden in a colonial-era fantasy world. This is adult stuff, and the show only censors it in the sense that its treatment of these topics is compressed and not explicitly sexual. Yes, this episode has fights and energy blasts, but the primary action here centers on the seduction of one of the main characters. The breaking point comes when Jean mistakenly believes that Cyclops has been cheating on her with Dazzler. There’s no getting around what this story is about, and I’m surprised (and impressed) that the show decided to tackle this at all.

Jean becomes increasingly erratic over the episode, torn between her conflicting identities as Jean Grey, as the Phoenix, and as a pawn in Wyngarde’s romantic fantasies. By the time she sees Cyclops and Dazzler together, she’s completely addled. She “marries” Wyngarde just as the team converges on Inner Circle HQ. The good guys are a poor fit for the Circle’s weird power set. The coolest moment of the brawl—straight out of the source material—is when Leland waves his hand to dispatch Wolverine, making him crash through four floors and land in a sewer. It’s a short and kind of random fight. Crucially, it ends with Jean making her villain turn, subduing her former teammates and officially joining the Inner Circle.

Stray observations:

• “You would leave me to be with another woman??? Go then!” It’s nice to see Catherine Disher finally ham it up as Dark Phoenix. Likewise, Tracey Moore’s campy take on Emma Frost makes the heavy exposition more entertaining than it should be.

• Storm wears a fantastic red and gold hooded cloak while tending to Jean in the infirmary.

• Early in the episode, Cyclops stumbles home from the initial Inner Circle fight to find Wolverine cutting up salami with his claws. Wolverine even asks after Gambit, who’s still out partying. We haven’t had a nice slice of life moment like this since “The Dark Shroud”.

• On the toilet: Jubilee, for the entire multi-part saga. In the comics, the start of the Dark Phoenix Saga introduces a promising young mutant named Kitty Pryde, but there isn’t room for it on the show. With Kitty deleted from the story, there’s no role for Jubilee, either.

Part II: The Inner Circle

Season 3, Episode 15. Air date: November 12, 1994

When I was reading the Dark Phoenix comics and watching the show at age twelve, I’d completely missed what was really going on with the Hellfire Club/Inner Circle. This isn’t just some group of bickering baddies who get what they deserve in the end. It’s more than that. This is a boy’s club bent on controlling women, and in particular powerful ones like Emma Frost and Jean Grey.

You can’t miss it, the subtext is just text. The whole episode revolves around control of the Phoenix. Wyngarde brags about bringing the Circle its most powerful member yet. Then, to reassert his control over Phoenix, he subdues Cyclops in a too-long psychic duel (but fails to kill him due to Cyclops’s bond with Jean). There’s a lot of carping about whether Wyngarde really has things locked down, most notably from Emma Frost, who is much, much smarter than any of the men at the table (she’s also been holding off Professor Xavier’s psychic intrusions singlehandedly). Wyngarde goes so far as to claim that because he controls the Phoenix (his words, not mine), he should lead the Inner Circle over Shaw. When the Phoenix inevitably breaks free and leaves the Circle and the X-Men to fight it out amongst themselves, Shaw says, “I need no help from a woman to destroy the X-Men!”

Meanwhile, Wolverine is busy making his way up from the sewers. It’s a fun B-plot where he gets to intimidate goons (including a “Do I feel lucky?” line read from Cal Dodd) and munch on turkey legs while commenting on the lousy wine and the dumbness of the Inner Circle’s colonial aesthetic. Speaking of, the Circle’s histrionic politicking is surprisingly fun to watch, especially the sneering thumbs-downs that every member gives Shaw to remove him from the Chairmanship in favor of Wyngarde.

Wolverine shows up just in time for Wyngarde to point the Phoenix at him, again trying to prove that he’s the one in control. Phoenix starts setting Wolverine on fire, but flashes back to their romantic moment in “Captive Hearts”, and is unable to finish the job. This also jostles her out of Wyngarde’s trance. With the words, “I tire of your squabbling. Amuse yourselves!” she turns off the X-Men’s power suppressing collars (they’ve been standing there like furniture for most of the episode) and blasts out of the room, initiating the best brawl in these four episodes.

Harry Leland’s ability to make other objects heavier seems oddly specific, almost like it was tailor made for the moment when Wolverine lunges at him from a balcony, causing Leland to panic and use his powers, accidentally crushing himself. I will allow it because watching Wolverine pound this jerk straight through the floor is extremely cool. The fight’s other best beat is at the very start: the instant Cyclops has his powers back, he blasts Leland through a wall and demolishes the floor under Shaw. The sheer speed of it is shocking, a reminder of how formidable Cyclops is supposed to be. He does more cool stuff in the first five seconds of this fight than in the forty episodes that led up to it. Everything I’ve just described is straight out of X-Men #134, so thanks, Chris Claremont and John Byrne!

Wyngarde catches up to Phoenix on the roof and tries to get her back under control. It absolutely does not work, as Phoenix instead offers Wyngarde a small glimpse of her true self, putting him in a coma.³ As Cyclops reaches her on the roof, she declares, “The mortal Jean Grey is no more! I am fire made flesh, power incarnate!” Fire made flesh, folks! I wonder what that’s about.

This episode has it all. The melodrama of the Inner Circle, Wolverine John McClane-ing his way back up to the drawing room, delightfully over the top performances from every villain, a great brawl, and the interpersonal drama that’s been sorely lacking since season 1.

Stray observations:

• Pierce and Shaw narrowly escape the building, vowing revenge. Emma Frost, meanwhile, exits on her own.

• Rogue, fighting the cyborg Donald Pierce: “Thanks for the hand, sugah. I’ll bet these cybernetic thangs cost an arm and a leg.” I promise it sounds funnier than it reads. Lenore Zann continues batting 1,000.

• Phoenix can’t bring herself to kill any of the X-Men, despite multiple opportunities to do so (really, she could have obliterated the entire building at any point). The episode does a nice job reminding the audience that Jean is still kicking around in there somewhere.

Part III: The Dark Phoenix

Season 3, Episode 16. Air date: November 19, 1994

This chapter is neatly divided into three parts: the Phoenix toys with the X-Men, departs to go eat a star, and then returns for a rematch in which Jean’s love for her husband and teammates ultimately contain the out of control desires of the Phoenix (with a significant assist from Xavier). Then the Shi’ar show up and demand that Jean Grey be executed.

It’s a decent enough episode, but kind of straightforward compared to the last couple of chapters. I find it’s more interesting to think about this episode relative to its other versions. The most important difference between The Animated Series and the source material is that in the comics, the star that Phoenix consumes is part of an inhabited system, resulting in the deaths of ten billion people. On the show, however, the D’bari star system is lifeless and uninhabited, as a nearby Shi’ar science vessel will strenuously explain. It’s this act that necessitated Jean Grey’s death at the end of the original story, mind you, so I can already tell we’re in for a different conclusion on the show.

The X-Men debate how to handle Phoenix and realize (courtesy of Cyclops’s insights) that Jean is still in there, somewhere. So the rematch is conceived as a rescue mission rather than an execution. There’s even a moment when Wolverine could have ended Jean’s life, but can’t bring himself to do it—you can tell because Cal Dodd screams, “I CAN’T DO IT!” This is strictly better than the events of X-3: The Last Stand, in which Wolverine definitely does kill Jean Grey in the most grunty, Powers Face-y, unimaginative way possible, because in the movies Wolverine is the only character who matters.

Catherine Disher carries this episode, repeatedly shifting between arch-villain Phoenix and the Jean we know and love. One of her first lines in the opening fight is, “You wish me to return to the cold nothingness of space? You wish me to give up the body?? Never!” Again, what could the Phoenix be a metaphor for?

Stray observations:

• Blink and you’ll miss it, but Beast has a picture from Carly beneath his computer’s monitor.

• The opening fight also includes a little Gambit/Rogue flirting. I’m glad to see it, as the show has basically given up on this thread since season 1, but the middle of a losing fight against a living inferno is a weird time for it.

• Jean has a cyclops doll in her childhood bedroom.

• The heavy eyeliner and crazy hairdos of the Shi’ar make it seem like they rule the galaxy through glam rock.

• I know it’s supposed to be Jean’s parents and adult sister in her childhood home, but the show gives them no lines and shoves them so far into the background that they kind of read as a terrified throuple who’ve rented Jean’s old house.

Part IV: The Fate of the Phoenix

Season 3, Episode 17. Air date: November 26, 1994

The big melee that takes up the back third of this episode, between the X-Men and Lilandra’s Shi’ar randos, is not great. More than any other brawl to date, it feels like action figures smashing against each other. Rogue gets to have the most fun with it, particularly in her rematch against Gladiator.

Gladiator: We have fought before, Rogue. You know you cannot match my power.

Rogue: Aww, give a gal a little credit!

And then she punches him through a wall.

But the point of the episode, and indeed this whole four-part story, is not the fight. It’s about Jean Grey’s heart, and what sets it on fire. Human emotions combine poorly with the limitless powers of the Phoenix, presenting an incredible threat to the universe. While the Phoenix did not commit genocide in the show’s version of events, there’s nothing to stop her from doing so next time, as Lilandra points out. While the Empress of the Shi’ar would have preferred to simply execute Jean on the spot, Xavier roots around in Lilandra’s mind (which he’ll pay the price for later) and digs up an irrefusable rite of trial by combat. That an empire as ancient as the Shi’ar still honors something so barbaric is awfully telling, but Beast is the only person to remark on it.

Everything that happens in the run-up to that combat is much more interesting than the fight itself. Jean and Cyclops share a private moment, debating whether she should even be allowed to live. Jean is well aware of the risk she poses to the universe, and even uses her powers to show that to Cyclops in no uncertain terms (all of Earth on fire, etc.). “You’re worth the risk,” he says. Back in “The Phoenix Saga”, he asked Corsair, “Is one woman’s life enough to risk the fate of an entire galaxy?” For him, the answer is yes. If this seems objectively dumb to you, well I hate to tell you, boys, but you’re watching a romance in superhero drag. Deal with it.

Meanwhile, Xavier tries to make nice with Lilandra, taking her on a psychic walk through a beautiful garden. She’s having none of it, though. She overtakes Xavier’s vision, reappearing in steel armor on a mountaintop and dumping him into a chasm. This is very badass and I wish the show had given it more time. Although the show hasn’t really developed the Xavier/Lilandra relationship, the message is clear: she’s an Empress first, and in the face of this galactic threat, her heart must come second.

As I said up top, the fight is exciting if you’re twelve, but not very interesting. Jean and Cyclops hide toward the end of it to steal one more romantic moment, one last declaration of their love. Then they rush back into the fight, and Cyclops takes a critical hit. Jean flies into a rage and unleashes the Dark Phoenix, proving Lilandra’s worst fears right. The X-Men team up to chip away at her, weakening her just enough for Jean to reemerge. Cyclops begs her to find a way to control the Phoenix, but she can’t fight against it forever, “not every second of every day”. She uses her powers to reactivate the weaponry on Lilandra’s orbiting ship, and with the words, “A part of me will always be with you,” vaporizes herself.

It’s a legendary moment in comics, and a powerful one for the show. Or it would have been, if the Phoenix Force—now separated from those troubling human desires and back to its old reliable self—didn’t immediately manifest as a flaming bird and resurrect Jean Grey. The one catch is that the body is lifeless; it needs a “spark” to become truly alive. Cyclops and Wolverine argue about which of them is going to sacrifice themselves, before the entirety of the X-Men volunteer to share the cost (like a timeshare, but for a human soul, I guess). Jean comes to, and the Phoenix Force helpfully teleports everyone back to the mansion.

The “everyone gives Jean a piece of their souls” thing is obviously a messy attempt to make up for the fact that Jean gets to live. As in “The Phoenix Saga”, where Jean’s final journey into the sun puts her out of reach but doesn’t technically kill her, the story is trying to have it both ways here. Kill Jean, but only for a few seconds. The main problem is that “The Dark Phoenix” is a romance, a story about emotions told on an epic scale, and that’s not really Saturday morning cartoon material. The show does a decent job with it, but the constraints of children’s TV (no sex, no death) inevitably lessen the stakes. The way the show portrays Jean and Cyclops’s relationship (again, very close to the comics here) is a real highlight. These two have been married since the start of season 2, but this is the first time they’ve had chemistry.

Stray observations:

• Beast, after the team is teleported onto Lilandra’s ship: “I believe that the technology involves molecular dispersal and reconstitution. In the vernacular, we were moved.”

• Lilandra must explain the trial by combat to her counterparts in the Kree and Skrull empires. I love that the Kree representative sounds like an aggressively normal guy, while the Skrull empress sounds like a seething lizard monster.

Season 3, Episodes 12–13. Air dates: September 10 & 17, 1994

I would say that Storm has been inexplicably absent since “The Phoenix Saga”, but thanks to season 3’s episode shuffling, this two-parter originally aired immediately after it. If you’d been watching this back in the ’90s she hadn’t been missing at all.

I’ve already made my feelings on the Savage Land very clear. It’s where Marvel goes when it wants to rip off Tarzan or Conan, and it’s a poor fit for X-Men. The place is overstuffed with dinosaurs, cavemen, magicians, and several millennia of lore, none of which feels like it belongs in the same universe as the x-gene. The Savage Land has always felt like it should be a separate comic, and these episodes feel like backdoor pilots for a new show. A bad one.

Supposedly this is a Storm story, but she’s squeezed out of it by all the convoluted Savage Land nonsense. The big bad is Garokk, a sentient rock-god (but not the fun kind) tied to the Savage Land itself. Recently reawakened thanks to the events of “Reunion”, he wants to unleash Storm’s unrestrained energies on the Savage Land to make himself all-powerful, or something. He’s evil and wants power, end of scheme.

Aiding him in this under-defined effort will be Sauron, the psychic pterodactyl from season 2. Sauron, it turns out, is the evil alter ego of Karl Lykos, forcibly mutated by Mister Sinister. In the original comics, Dr. Karl Lykos/Sauron predates Mister Sinister by eighteen years. Bitten by rampaging pterodactyls (welcome to ’60s-era Marvel), Karl gains the ability to drain energy from other living things, and eventually learns that when he feeds off mutants, he turns into a telepathic dinosaur. It’s a Jekyll & Hyde situation. Karl would greatly prefer to suppress his evil split personality and remain a normal human, but fate constantly intervenes. He’s so repulsed by his alter ego that he chooses “the only name in the annals of literature” evil enough to represent it: Sauron. What a dork (says the guy writing reviews of a 30 year-old cartoon).

I tell you all this because Karl/Sauron’s split personality parallels what the story is trying to do with Storm. Early on, Storm reminds us that her powers are linked to her emotions, necessitating a lifestyle of rigorous self control. Once Sauron abducts her to the Savage Land and she falls under Garokk’s mind control, the full fury of her powers is unleashed.

The story wants to be about the darkness that lurks inside even the purest heart (“Savage Land, Strange Heart”, right?). It wants to tell us something about what happens when good people succumb to their worst impulses and destroy everything around them. The problem is that neither Karl nor Storm have any agency in their dark transformations. Once Karl accidentally touches a mutant, he transforms into Sauron and becomes a cackling, unrepentant monster. Likewise, Storm is hypnotized into using her powers for evil and remains under hypnotic suggestion for almost the whole story. Neither character wants or chooses this, they’re both forced into it against their wills, and once in Evil Mode, they’re entirely on autopilot. There’s no inner struggle akin to what we saw in “A Rogue’s Tale”, and not even much remorse once they come to their senses.

The core of the story doesn’t really land, and surrounding it is a bunch of overcomplicated Savage Land lore. Sauron had set himself up as the Savage Land’s new ruler after Mister Sinister’s defeat, but the sudden appearance of Garokk statues inspired the human tribes (led by Ka-Zar, boring as ever) to overthrow him, for some reason. Zaladane, a sorceress and high priestess of Garokk, forces Karl Lykos to travel to New York and find Storm. Zaladane is a great example of how badly written this story is, actually. There’s nothing she does that Garokk couldn’t do directly. She’s just there because the Savage Land always needs more stuff in it. Over the course of two episodes, we get some uninspired fights, dinosaur stampedes, extremely bad jokes, and a brief kaiju battle between the emerging Garokk and a superpowered Sauron, culminating in an explosion that can literally be seen from space. It definitely should have killed everyone except maybe Rogue, but everyone is inexplicably fine.

The best thing I can say about this story is that it’s the last time we’ll visit the Savage Land. If you want a much better Storm story, go back and watch “Captive Hearts”, which tells us more about Ororo Monroe in half the time.

Stray observations:

• Asteroid M is one of the locations preprogrammed into Karl’s jet (which, per Zaladane, was left behind by Magneto).

• While we’re briefly in New York, there’s a banner for NY Comic Con featuring the words “‘Nuff Said!”

• The multiple encounters with dinosaurs in this episode are boring, but at least Wolverine finally gets a Fastball Special courtesy of Beast.

• Wolverine has a quick line about some of the team being away at Muir Island, “Studying Jeanie like a lab rat…” Jean just died, so this is a hell of an off camera development!

• This story’s smartest moment is when the team is debating how to take down an out of control Storm. They can’t just have Rogue drain her energy, since Rogue would gain Storm’s powers and that would risk even greater weather chaos. They decide to have Karl do it instead, and then have Rogue drain the energy out of Sauron. The two energy absorbers briefly struggle against each other, with Rogue transforming back and forth between herself and a pterodactyl a few times. “It was real weird,” Rogue later says of the experience.

• On the toilet: technically no one, since Wolverine has that throwaway line about the rest of the team being at Muir Island. That line aside, it’s Professor Xavier, Cyclops, and Gambit.

Season 3, Episode 11. Air date: February 4, 1995

“Cold Comfort” was meant to run before “The Dark Phoenix Saga” but instead aired as one of the last episodes of season 3. Since its only connection to the season is the Shi’ar tech that keeps Bobby trapped at the X-Mansion for a bit, this episode could have aired any time after “The Phoenix Saga”. I keep asking myself what “Longshot” and “Cold Comfort” have in common narratively that requires that they be placed here. The answer, I think, is Jubilee’s ongoing driving lessons.

Bobby “Iceman” Drake goes all the way back to X-Men #1 in 1963, so it’s a little conspicuous that The Animated Series made it well into season 3 before ever mentioning him. To the episode’s credit, there’s a reason: he was on the team originally, but quit after an early mission nearly got his girlfriend, Lorna Dane (aka Polaris¹), killed. Now he’s resurfaced to invade the Kirby Glen military depot in search of Polaris, who vanished mysteriously after a few years of playing normie with Iceman.²

The writing isn’t exactly subtle, but it manages to sketch out the kind of dynamics that make X-Men a great franchise. As the team learns that Iceman is infiltrating the depot, Xavier points out that they’re not “against” him (he’s an X-Man and former protégé), but they’re not exactly “with” him either (he’s committing a crime). Cyclops bristles—a lot—at the special understanding that Xavier and Beast extend to Iceman, while Wolverine has a very, “This workplace drama predates me,” attitude toward the whole thing.

Jubilee’s de facto status as the team’s little kid, and how the X-Men incorrectly still think of Iceman that way, forms a decent arc for the episode (which Xavier will spell out in the end), though it gets a little lost amid the very fun action here. Jubilee identifies with Iceman’s desire to rebel against the adults in the room, and she also has a crush on him, as she does with all new male characters (no matter how prominent the mullet). So when Xavier briefly imprisons Iceman in the mansion’s living room—much to Beast’s surprise, who thought he was working on a healing device³—it’s Jubilee who will break him out and return to the Kirby Glen depot.

Cyclops, Beast, Wolverine, and Xavier follow suit, and quickly encounter the ’90s-era incarnation of X-Factor: Forge, Polaris, Havok, Quicksilver, Multiple Man, Wolfsbane, and of course, Strong Guy. It’s a lot of characters to introduce, but the episode does a good job of it. Each of these new characters is memorable, much more so than anyone from Alpha Flight or the Starjammers. It helps that Forge has purposefully engineered a melee that matches one member of X-Factor against one member of the X-Men. Ultimately it’s Jubilee who breaks the pairings, cluing Xavier in to what’s going on⁴ and turning the tide. On a series with many brawls, this is one of the better ones, juggling a dozen characters and their varied powers over just a few minutes.

The X-Men prevail, and Forge explains that he wanted to test his new, government-backed X-Factor team against Xavier’s best (so where are Rogue and Storm?). Polaris explains that she wasn’t abducted, but faked her disappearance because she knew Iceman wouldn’t understand her desire to do something with her life. Honestly, I get her. If I had superpowers, I’d want to use them. If this has you thinking that maybe Iceman isn’t the guy for her, well don’t worry, she also makes plain that she and Havok are an item now.

In this episode, Iceman has infiltrated a military base (twice), returned to, been imprisoned in, and escaped from his old workplace, tangled with a new mutant team, and learned that his girlfriend was so bored with him that she faked extraordinary rendition and found a new man. Busy day for the guy, you know? In the great tradition of all guest characters, he’s grateful for the X-Men’s help, but not interested in sticking around.

Before we wrap this one up, let’s talk about the series’s continued character assassination of Cyclops. As usual, he’s a stick in the mud, but his jealousy and outright anger here is really unconscionable, and frankly, not who Cyclops is supposed to be. “Jubilee, how could you help this misfit escape?” he says at one point. Cyclops, mutant, vanguard of the fight for mutant-human peace, a guy who went off on his own to help some misfits three episodes ago, should absolutely know better. Also in this episode, Cyclops fights against Havok, and finds that they’re immune to each others’ powers. Havok is, of course, Alex Summers, Scott’s secret brother (Norm Spencer voices both of them). For those of you keeping score, Cyclops the Sad Orphan has now unwittingly met three generations of his immediate family—his father (Corsair), his brother (Havok), and his future son (Cable)—but remains in the dark about all of them.

Stray observations:

• Wolverine hits the snooze button with his claws, destroying his alarm clock. “This better be good. If I don’t get a full night’s sleep, I’m cranky all day.”

• An extremely obvious animation error: Cyclops blasts Iceman through a leftover frame of Wolverine.

• On the toilet: Rogue (would’ve been a match for Strong Guy), Storm (would’ve absolutely ruined Iceman), and Gambit (would’ve crashed a supersonic jet into someone, I’m sure).