Jonathan Dobres

“Beyond Good and Evil” was supposed to be X-Men: The Animated Series’s grand finale, not just for the season, but for the whole show. It was to be a supersized story that culminated in permanent changes to the team roster. Regulars like Cyclops and Storm would depart, while new faces like Bishop, Archangel, and Psylocke would take up the cause of mutant-human peace. Then Fox decided to order an abbreviated fifth season, making such changes untenable. Per Eric Lewald, this story had to be completely reworked in about two days. It shows.

Should we grade this one on a curve? There are things to enjoy in these four episodes, particularly in Parts 1 and 2. But things rapidly fall apart after that, with tons of loose ends that never get properly resolved. Characters just sort of drop out of the story as it goes on. The core X-Men wind up strangely absent from their own finale, leaving the dumbest man in the franchise, Cable, to close things out with little more than a big gun.

Part 1: The End of Time

Season 4, Episode 18. Air date: November 4, 1995.

I have made my feelings about Cable abundantly clear throughout these reviews, so obviously I’m not thrilled to see we’re starting in 3999. Cable and—heavy sigh—Clan Chosen infiltrate Apocalypse’s pyramid. The animation is terrible. Just look at this screenshot of Cable’s son, Tyler, assuming you can make him out under his shoulder pads. The last time we saw Tyler he was a little kid, so either “3999 A.D.” is shorthand for an entire era, or they grow up very fast in the far future. The action is practically nonexistent. Cable unlocks Apocalypse’s defenses by waving his hand around and then asking his computer for the answer to a puzzle. He then attempts to kill Apocalypse with a gun. If this is your idea of a good time, you’re going to love the way this story ends.

The whole sequence is really just there to lay down the exposition. Apocalypse’s one actual weakness is that once every hundred years, he must return to his Lazarus Chamber to regenerate and sustain his near-immortality. Cable is predictably unsuccessful in trying to shoot Apocalypse, who snatches his time traveling computer in the midst of some delicious monologuing (“Evil? I am not malevolent. I simply am.”). Apocalypse muses that despite his obvious superiority, he’s been locked in a pointless struggle against lesser beings for millennia. Before Cable can grunt a reply, Apocalypse vanishes into the time stream.

Also appearing in the time stream: Bishop, who unluckily crosses paths with Apocalypse while trying to make the return trip from “One Man’s Worth” (points to the show for some ambitious continuity). Apocalypse’s intrusion into the time stream literally knocks Bishop out of the universe, landing him at the End of Time, a surreal space with a single inhabitant hanging out on a rainbow bridge (possibly the Bifrost). This weirdo, Bender, strongly evokes Robin Williams at the height of his cocaine era. Even at fourteen, I probably found Bender’s torrent of Looney Tunes gags and goofy non sequiturs grating. Bishop does his best to brush off Bender and begins walking toward the End of Time’s only point of interest: an Escher-inspired building that we’ll later learn is the Temporal Control Center. Bishop is going to be walking towards it for the entirety of this four-parter, if you can believe it.

Now fully halfway through the episode, we return to the present and finally see some X-Men. Cyclops and Jean are getting married, again, presumably having verified that their new priest is not a mentally traumatized shapeshifter. It’s a pretty lovely scene, actually. Beast quotes poetry, Xavier waxes philosophical about his first X-Men growing up, Rogue catches the bouquet (to her chagrin), and Wolverine looks utterly miserable. Hey, at least he bothered attending this time. I will also note that he’s wearing the same peach bowtie as everyone else, which implies that he’s in the wedding party. These are the kinds of details that escaped me in childhood but catch my eye in middle age.

Everything’s going great until Storm says as much out loud, practically summoning the Nasty Boys (Nasty Boys), plus the only cool Mutate, Vertigo. The Nasty Boys manage to knock Cyclops and Jean unconscious (one of her two natural states, along with Possessed by Cosmic Entity), and quickly toss her into a portal. While the X-Men are out searching for her, none other than Mister Sinister (last glimpsed in “Sanctuary”) appears at the X-Mansion to vamp. His goal is to abduct Xavier, and he nearly succeeds, but with Cyclops back in the fight by this point and a surprise appearance from Shard (chasing Bishop’s temporal anomaly), it’s all Sinister can do to flee through a portal as Rogue snatches Xavier. There’s practically an entire episode’s worth of character beats and fun action packed into these final ten minutes, and I have to give the show credit for some nimble storytelling here.

Sinister’s former henchmen are working for someone other than him. It’s all pretty fun, if nothing else. Seeing arch-nemesis Mister Sinister casually stride into the familiar home of the X-Mansion, especially after the coziness of a wedding, is pretty thrilling. The episode closes with Jean arriving at the End of Time, imprisoned in a glass tube, where Apocalypse is revealed as the mastermind of the whole scheme. This is played as a shock reveal, but given how the episode started, it doesn’t feel that way. The episode would probably have been better if it gave the entire run time to the wedding and melee with the Nasty Boys (feat. Vertigo), allowed the entrance of Apocalypse at the end be a genuine twist, and saved his motivations for a later flashback.

Stray observations:

• Cable tells his son that “500 centuries” of research have led them to strike Apocalypse at this moment. He surely meant 50 centuries (5,000 years). Or maybe Cable is just really dumb, as the rest of this four-parter strongly indicates.

• Apocalypse: “You DEFILE my saaaacred CHAAAAAMBER!???”

• Rogue, catching the bouquet: “Whole lotta good it’s gonna do me.” Gambit is right there, Rogue!

• As all hell breaks loose at the X-Mansion, Xavier tasks Jubilee with getting rid of the normie wedding guests. The next time we see her, she has done so. I really wish we’d seen how.

• The Nasty Boys (Naaasty Boooooys) still aren’t the most interesting villain crew, but seeing them at odds with Arch-Delegator Mister Sinister was a fun twist. Unfortunately, they’ll skip most of the rest of the story, making only the most minor contributions to the fights in Part 4.

Part 2: Promise of Apocalypse

Season 4, Episode 19. Air date: November 11, 1995.

Part 2 is this story’s finest half hour, absolutely packed with ambitious action and a ton of guest characters. Even keeping my summary to the bare essentials, it’s a lot, so apologies in advance.

This twenty minutes has a little something for everyone, even the freaks who like the Shi’ar. Empress Lilandra’s troublesome sister, Deathbird, is attempting a violent coup. She gets worrisomely close to offing Lilandra, before Gladiator bursts through the floor to stop her. It’s at this point that Deathbird’s ace in the hole, Apocalypse, emerges from a portal and abducts not Lilandra, but her court psychic, Oracle. John Colicos makes a meal out of double-crossing Deathbird before departing. Having Apocalypse visit the Shi’ar was a smart way to raise the stakes, but just as with the Nasty Boys, we won’t be seeing them again.

Back at the End of Time, Jean coaxes a little more exposition out of Apocalypse. We learn that since time doesn’t pass here, he’s been able to spend the equivalent of a thousand years studying the Temporal Control Center. Sinister and Deathbird (and later, Magneto, Mystique, and Sabretooth) are all working for Apocalypse because he’s promised them whatever they most want, though how he plans to deliver, if at all, remains a mystery.

Back on Earth and with the benefit of a tip from Lilandra, Xavier reasons that whatever Apocalypse’s goal is, he’s abducting psychics to accomplish it. For those of us in the audience who like it when characters have thoughts and opinions, the episode makes time for a sharp little debate about what to do next. Cyclops wants to surveil other psychic mutants in case the bad guys show up. Storm is firmly against the idea of using people as bait (“You cannot endanger innocent people just to save Jean.”), and Gambit, as usual, has a more chaotic take. “If they be psychic, they already know, right?” Xavier gets the final word, agreeing with Cyclops and setting the episode’s wild second half in motion.

I was going to tee up this part with some background on Psylocke, but good lord, look at her Marvel Fandom entry. More twists and turns in that character history than the Temporal Control Center. Suffice to say that Elizabeth “Betsy” Braddock started out in the pages of Captain Britain, Marvel’s 1970s attempt to break into the UK market. By 1995, she had become Psylocke, a hot telepathic ninja who wields stylish purple “psi-daggers”. Now That’s What I Call ’90s!

Psylocke is an elite thief, and we get our first glimpse of her as she’s sneaking into Worthington Castle. Archangel, who’s looking a lot more sane than the last time we saw him, wastes little time confronting her. The quick fight culminates with Psylocke nonsensically jumping off a cliff, or so it seemed. It’s one of the last clever things we’ll see anyone do in this entire story. Archangel, who is clearly into Psylocke, rescues her, only for her to literally stab him in the back and knock him unconscious. He wakes up just as Psylocke is driving away with his stuff, so he decides to tail her back to her London warehouse.

Wolverine and Shard, following Xavier’s plan, have been on a stakeout near the warehouse just in case Psylocke showed up. Psylocke and Archangel start going at it (fighting! I mean fighting!), with Psylocke accusing Archangel of being a wealthy assimilationist and Archangel accusing her of being a common thief. Before they can finish the argument, Sabretooth rips through the warehouse doors, followed by Mystique, who is followed by Wolverine, Shard, and—surprise!—Magneto. So there are seven powerful mutants duking it out over the course of a few minutes. The whole sequence is maybe a little too cute and quippy, but Jennifer Dale’s sardonic performance as Mystique stands out as especially fun.

Magneto brings the fight to a decisive end. He pins Wolverine to a conveniently placed battleship (the warehouse is next to a harbor). He then drops the entire ship, Wolverine still attached, on Psylocke’s warehouse, just to make a point, before carrying her into a portal. Back in “Family Ties”, when the High Evolutionary said that Magneto’s genes were the key to overwhelming mutant power, he knew what he was talking about.

Storm and Gambit rush over from their own stakeout to do cleanup, which as we’ll see in the final scene, allowed Sinister to abduct another unnamed (and apparently not very important) telepath. Lastly (and leastly) we revisit 3999 A.D., where Cable and Tyler are manfully climbing a cliff, as Cable explains that he’s going to steal the government’s last remaining time machine.

Oh, and we also get a quick shot of Bishop walking toward the Temporal Control Center. That’s all for him this episode.

Stray observations:

• Apocalypse had, by his own reckoning, a millennium to hatch this scheme. Wouldn’t it be much harder to interfere with his plan if he abducted psychics from across the centuries, instead of sticking to 1995? Cartoons!

• Archangel, regaining consciousness: “That’s the last time I save a falling ninja.”

• Shard notes that Archangel is “destined to join the X-Men,” an obvious leftover from the version of this story that was going to permanently shuffle the team.

• When I say this episode is a little too quippy for its own good, I mean lines like Gambit’s, “All tied up and nowhere to go?” as he frees Wolverine from the side of the ship.

• On the toilet: technically, all of the core X-Men appear, but Rogue and Jubilee are inexplicably relegated to blink-and-you’ll-miss-them background appearances, essentially dropping out of the story after Part 1.

Part 3: The Lazarus Chamber

Season 4, Episode 20. Air date: November 18, 1995.

Part 3 is where “Beyond Good and Evil” falls apart. We pick up with Cable and Tyler in 3999 A.D., unfortunately. To stop Apocalypse, Cable wants to destroy his Lazarus Chamber at its origin point in 1200 B.C. To do that, he has to gain access to the world’s last remaining time machine, and to do that, he needs to infiltrate a heavily guarded facility. Whose facility? Cable’s comments in the last episode suggest it belongs to the government, but if that’s true, what’s the deal with Apocalypse ruling 3999? It’s all terribly vague and impossible to care about. Cable grunts his way through a series of explosions, interchangeable robot soldiers, and lots—and I mean lots—of gunfire. More guns than this show has ever seen in a single episode, I think. A really upsetting amount of guns. Even this sequence’s best attempt to gin up the stakes, by putting Tyler in harm’s away (again, from a random robot, for no clear reason) involves Tyler just trading gunfire with the thing for what feels like forty-five minutes. This feels like a completely different show, and a bad one at that.

Anyway, Cable takes control of the hybrid time machine / spaceship known as Graymalkin, and nearly runs Bishop over while passing through the Axis of Time (Bishop spends this episode continuing to walk forward, FYI). Apocalypse, from his vantage point in the Temporal Control Center, cackles malevolently and forces Cable to detour to 1995. I’ll give the episode this much: that’s a nice bit of foreshadowing that Apocalypse has things well in hand and Cable’s plan isn’t going to work.

Cable lands at the X-Mansion right around the time that Wolverine beats the crap out of Sabretooth to try to learn more about Apocalypse’s scheme. Wolverine comes away with almost no new information, so Xavier decides to violate his own code of ethics and read Sabretooth’s mind against his will. Looking like heroes here, guys. All Xavier learns is that Apocalypse wants to use his abducted psychics to “master time”, somehow.

The X-Men decide that their best shot is to follow Cable’s lead and travel with him to 1200 B.C. to destroy the Lazarus Chamber. Not that Cable would be willing to do anything else, of course. He repeatedly tells the X-Men that their problems are boring and don’t matter to him, never mind that the X-Men’s current cosmic-level problem is a direct consequence of Apocalypse stealing a time machine from Cable. And let’s remember, dear reader, that the currently imprisoned Jean Grey is Cable’s mother, without whom he cannot exist. So anyway, welcome to Apocalypse’s insane looking pyramid, architectural design by Dr. Wily.

Cable’s aggressive stupidity is so obvious by now that I think even the writers had to start commenting on it. Cyclops asks Xavier why Apocalypse might be abducting psychics:

Cable: Who cares? He’s pure evil and that’s why he’s GOTTA GO.

Beast: If Apocalypse is indeed the personification of evil, it may be impossible to destroy him.

Cable: WHY???

Beast: The conflict between good and evil is part of the fabric of existence. Perhaps the world cannot exist without evil. If Apocalypse is destroyed, evil may only take another form.

Cable: I’ll worry about that later.

It’s like watching Voltaire attempt to educate a clenched fist. My heart breaks for Hank McCoy. And later, when Cable and the others have gotten inside the pyramid:

Cable insists that he already knows every trap in the pyramid, then nearly falls into a spiked pit.

Cable: Thanks, I don’t know how I missed that one before.

Beast: Apparently Apocalypse will make a few alterations in the next five thousand years.

I’ll take this opportunity to point out that if Cable had been allowed to do what he’d originally wanted—travel to 1200 B.C. alone to destroy the pyramid—he’d have fallen into that trap and died right there. God, what a moron.

Anyway, by this point the good guys are fighting their way toward the Lazarus Chamber, having been met by Apocalypse’s Egyptian-era Four Horsemen. They look cooler than their modern day counterparts, I’ll give them that much. Other than that, the action is pretty basic. Cable does actually manage to do one smart thing, using his knowledge of the pyramid’s booby traps to take out one of the Horsemen. Another one of them lands on Cable with an entire horse, and while this doesn’t do permanent damage, it ensures that he won’t be able to proceed into the Lazarus Chamber with the rest of the team.

The good guys finally arrive at the Lazarus Chamber, only to realize too late that they’ve fallen into a trap. “Apocalypse” is revealed as a disguised Mystique, and the real Apocalypse electrifies the entire chamber from the comfort of the Temporal Control Center (somehow). Apocalypse claims his ultimate prize, Charles Xavier, while Cable stumbles into the Chamber to find everyone else unconscious.

Stray observations:

• Cable says “nail” a lot. I realize it’s an S&P approved substitute for “kill”, but like everything with Cable, it just feels so edgelordy and lame.

• On the toilet: Rogue and Jubilee, once again.

Part 4: End of the Beginning

Season 4, Episode 21. Air date: November 25, 1995.

In The Matrix, Morpheus explains that the entire human race is being held prisoner in a virtual reality simulation so that their machine overlords can use their bioelectricity and body heat as fuel. “Combined with a form of fusion, the machines had found all the energy they would ever need,” he says. An entire generation of nerds have pushed up their glasses to point out that this makes no sense, that a human body would make for a terribly inefficient power source. But these nerds are missing something. The phrase combined with a form of fusion is all the explanation the Wachowskis needed. It’s a perfect verbal sleight of hand that makes the premise feel plausible. It puts enough science in this fiction to keep our disbelief suspended. That, I think, is what differentiates sci-fi from fantasy. Sci-fi is rooted in the knowable (or at least feels that way), while fantasy is rooted in mystery, where power is ineffable and things Just Are. Neo can break the laws of physics and come back from the dead because he has learned to perceive the code underneath the Matrix. Gandalf can break the laws of physics and come back from the dead because he is Gandalf.¹

I say all this because Apocalypse’s master plan doesn’t read as sci-fi to me. Sure, the wider Marvel universe has its fair share of magic. In the comics, more than one X-Man has been to Hell, which is a real place. But the show has steered clear of the magical side of Marvel, remaining firmly in sci-fi. Apocalypse’s plan doesn’t feel as if it’s grounded in the same world as mutants and time traveling cyborgs. Instead, it feels like a magic ritual. There’s even an orb.

Apocalypse’s version of “combined with a form of fusion” is this: “Time is motion, and motion and thought are a unity. Two aspects of a single power that is beyond comprehension to all but myself. That is why certain psychics can see into the future. The mind can transcend time.” By gathering together all these psychics at the Axis and then sacrificing them, Apocalypse will destroy time itself and remake the universe in his own image.

I like the idea that psychics derive their powers from a special relationship with time. The mind can transcend time even has a grain of truth to it. After all, memory is the mind traveling to the past, and planning is the mind traveling to the future, so to speak. But the show hasn’t really done anything with the idea other than say it out loud, making “therefore Apocalypse can use psychics to destroy the universe” a hard pill to swallow.

But alright, this is a make-believe cartoon for little kids. Maybe I’m asking too much, even though we’ve seen the show do much better. Even giving the story’s premise the benefit of the doubt, what Part 4 does with the core cast is just unforgivable. In the immediate aftermath of Part 3, Cable blows up Apocalypse’s pyramid in 1200 B.C. and we see five X-Men (Cyclops, Gambit, Storm, Beast, and Archangel) board the Graymalkin with him. Yet when Cable eventually arrives at the End of Time, somehow it’s just him. Everyone else vanishes from the story until the epilogue. Wolverine is also there, because it’s very important that Wolverine be present for all big stories.²

Part 4’s action revolves around two things, the first of which is the collapse of Apocalypse’s tenuous alliance with his fellow villains. Upon learning the true intent of Apocalypse’s plan, Magneto is disgusted to be in league with someone who “would destroy the innocent along with the guilty.” It’s a nice character note and it kicks off the betrayals and counter-betrayals that will fill the back half of this episode. Magneto and Mystique do their best to fight off Apocalypse and the Horsemen. While Magneto and Mystique have famously great chemistry in the movies and comics, they’ve never even been in the same room on this show, and yet it still feels really cool to see them fight together. What’s less cool is the mounting obviousness of the second thing that powers this story: guns. Mystique somehow holds off the Four Horsemen with nothing but a laser pistol while Magneto frees Wolverine.

Meanwhile, Bishop ambles ever closer to the Temporal Control Center, once again enduring Bender. I wish Bender’s incessant craziness had a point, that maybe his constant stream of nonsense would turn out to be clues that Bishop eventually uses to gain the upper hand and save the day. But no, Bishop doesn’t learn anything useful from these interactions. He just notices the newly added ring of hovering psychics around the Temporal Control Center and decides to shoot one out of the sky. It happens to be Psylocke, and she tells him to shoot down as many as he can, so he does.

Back at the Temporal Control Center, Wolverine and Mister Sinister engage in a minor tussle that shatters Apocalypse’s magic orb, reversing his attempt to destroy time (cue footage of the Shi’ar, random New Yorkers, and a few leftover X-Men fading out of or into existence). Sinister decides to cut his losses, and he and the Nasty Boys (Nasty Boys) head for the nearest portal. A few seconds later, Cable shoots Apocalypse with a big rifle, which somehow causes the Temporal Control Center to shatter into little floating pieces. There’s some slightly fun back and forth as Wolverine and Magneto save each others’ lives, only for Apocalypse to make one last literal power grab via another magic orb. By this point, Bishop has finally made his way to the center of the action and—say it with me—shoots the orb. Apocalypse brags that he is immortal and can never truly be stopped. That’s when Professor Xavier, leading the newly freed psychics, declares that their combined power is enough to pull Apocalypse out of the Axis and put him back in normal time, where he’ll cease to exist (Cable destroyed his regeneration chamber, remember?).

Apocalypse had a thousand years to plan this. Bishop and Cable foiled it with a couple of rifles. Everyone departs for the regular universe, and Bender turns to the camera to reveal that he’s actually Immortus, longtime Marvel villain and Kang the Conquerer variant. It’s a twist out of nowhere and it will never be revisited. Maybe this was all Immortus’s convoluted way of removing one of the only true threats to his own power? Who can say? Certainly not the writers.

In the epilogue scene, noted paraplegic Charles Xavier is depicted standing next to Magneto. This isn’t a blink-and-you’ll-miss it animation error, either. He even gets a few lines while fully upright!

Beast asks Cable if, having destroyed what he considers the incarnation of evil, he thinks the world has been changed. He replies, “I really don’t care. I just wanna go home.” I’m sure this sounded cool to an exhausted writers’ room. Archangel says to Psylocke, “I wish I’d been there to help,” and you know, me too, buddy. Why weren’t you? Why wasn’t anyone?

A story this big with an ending this bad triggers in me an overwhelming urge to suggest some rewrites. As this review is already way too long, I’ll keep it to three items:

1. Get rid of Bender, he’s pointless. Nothing he does helps Bishop or pays off in any other way. Everything Bishop learns during his slow, slow walk to the Temporal Control Center comes from various hanging time portals, not this Yakko Warner ripoff.

2. Psychics having a special relationship with time is a cool idea, but the story doesn’t do anything with it. What if instead, characters occasionally received mysterious messages from out of nowhere, cryptic hints that help push the story along or pay off in weird ways. Imagine Wolverine seeing an apparition of Jean before he interrogates Sabretooth, or Archangel dreaming of Psylocke before they meet, or Xavier getting a strange message from himself, with the final reveal that it’s all been coming from the trapped psychics at the End of Time. The psychics get to do more than just lay around, and Apocalypse’s monologue about their true power gets some weight behind it.

3. Cable is the son of Jean Grey and a powerful telepath in his own right. The TV show has never once shown him using his mutant powers. It’s all guns all day, forever. It would make for a fun twist if the crown jewel of Apocalypse’s collection of psychics wasn’t Xavier, but Cable. Over the course of the story, Cable would move from protagonist to damsel to, perhaps, a more interesting hero in the final minutes. It might also present an opportunity for Jean to do anything in the finale.

Stray observations:

• The animation is all over the place in this episode. Bishop’s rifle doubles or halves in size depending on the scene.

• Archangel, theatrically berating Cable in the aftermath of Part 3: “He knew! Apocalypse knew your stupid plan before we made our first move!” I think Archangel is this story’s MVP, honestly.

• Apocalypse: “You have traveled over 50 centuries of time to stop me. When will you learn it cannot be done?” See? Somebody knows how to do math.

• On the toilet: technically no one. Everyone appears at least briefly in this story, even if they’re just wordlessly vanishing in and out of existence. But they might as well be in the bathroom.

Season 4, Episode 17. Air date: December 23, 1995.

Just about every kids’ show does a holiday episode at some point, and a few of them even become modern classics. Just not this one. Sure as hell not this one. “Have Yourself a Morlock Little X-Mas” exists because the network wanted a Christmas episode. That’s per head writer Eric Lewald in Previously On X-Men…, where he summarized this episode with the words, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” This isn’t Letterboxd and I’m never going to review an episode in two sentences or less, but boy, this one tempted me. The episode’s plot is Christmas Special and its key themes are Christmas Special. The soundtrack is Christmas Special and most of the character beats are Christmas Special.

If you’ve been keeping up with my review series, then you probably want a more earnest synopsis of the goings-on. I’ll give it this much, it’s got a big helping of the slice of life scenes that I tend to like. The X-Men are in the midst of some lighthearted holiday antics. Jean and Gambit threaten to kill each other for control of the kitchen, Beast nearly blows up the mansion in an attempt to make cranberry sauce, and everyone hits the mall for some last minute shopping. That’s when the Morlocks bust into Rockefeller Center in a stolen ambulance. They say that Leech is gravely ill, and they implore Storm, whom you might recall is technically their leader, for help. The only viable treatment, given the Morlock’s lack of resources and inability to seek treatment at a hospital (points to the show for highlighting that), is a blood transfusion from Wolverine. Because why should any other character be important in an X-Men story?

Wolverine reveals yet another detail of his infinitely tragic backstory (a similar transfusion attempt failed with some kids, never referenced before or since), but after a bunch of Sad Times Back and Forth, he agrees to try it with Leech. It works, and Beast—the team’s actual medical expert—arrives just in time to do nothing other than give Leech a quick checkup. Also, there is an incredibly cloying, incredibly off-model mutant named Mariana for Jubilee to be sad with. Jubilee decides to give the Morlocks all the presents she’s bought, half of which are food (honestly a nice touch). Storm also formally reinstalls Callisto as the leader of the Morlocks. I’d point out that becoming their leader has previously required trial by combat, but hey, Christmas Special.

Nothing has ever demonstrated the difference between Christmas and Christianity for me quite like the contrast between this episode and “Nightcrawler”.

Stray observations:

• Jubilee’s characterization is way off in this story. She comes off like a little kid instead of the rebellious teen she’s supposed to be. However, when cajoling Wolverine to sing Christmas carols, she gets in a fun line: “You could sing the guys’ part on ‘Jingle Bells’. Cyclops is uhh…having his problems.” I’m going to work the phrase having his problems into as many situations as I can from now on.

• Beast: “I am unhurt. That is more than I can say for my cranberry glaze…Delightful! Though the chemical formula proved distressingly volatile, the harmony of flavors is impeccable!” Been there, Hank. If you know me (and if you’re reading this, you probably do), you know that I am a huge cranberry sauce fan.

• Wolverine, in the middle of all the holiday cheer: “Did I hear an attack alarm? Or would that be hopin’ for too much?”

• Storm has a dignified bearing and sense of self-worth that most people can only dream of. When Callisto insults her for finally showing up after her extended absence, she firmly replies, “I do not deserve that. We are here to help.”

• Storm uses her powers to lift the Morlocks’ stolen ambulance into the air, diverting it from some innocent bystanders. This would require hurricane force winds strong enough to tear the ambulance apart, but now I’m just being pedantic.

Season 4, Episode 16. Air date: June 11, 1995 (in season 3).

Stories should happen in the present tense, especially for Saturday morning cartoons. I’ve said it before, but X-Men: The Animated Series only gets about twenty minutes per episode, and the show struggles whenever it has to spend precious minutes cramming in new backstory just to get the ball rolling. You would think that this wouldn’t apply to the show’s most frequently featured character, Wolverine, that at this point we know enough about him that we can live in his present. And yet there is always more Wolverine Background to unravel.

So it is with “Weapon X, Lies, and Video Tape”.¹ This episode features a pared down version of Team X and their false memory storyline from Wolverine #48. I don’t know much about those comics, other than that they tried very hard to be an overcomplicated spy spectacular. The first issue is titled, “The Shiva Scenario Part 1: Dreams of Gore, Phase 1”, for God’s sake. The show’s version of events greatly simplifies things, trimming Team X to Wolverine, Sabretooth, and guest characters Maverick and Silver Fox. Maverick is a dude in clunky armor and Silver Fox will be serving as Wolverine’s love interest for this half hour. Guy gets around.

Wolverine has started hallucinating, going berserk and lashing out at everyone around him. The cause, as we’ll learn, is that he has a bunch of fake memories courtesy of the Weapon X program, and they’re breaking down. A mysterious photograph of Wolverine with his arm around Silver Fox (and some coordinates on the back, more on that in the stray observations) sends him back to Canada to get to the bottom of things. Beast follows him, because the episode needs someone in it who isn’t constantly having a mental breakdown.

Wolverine arrives at the strangely familiar facility (“I got my bones here.”) and encounters Sabretooth. They fight each other immediately, and surely would have done so without much pretext. On top of their general hatred for each other, Wolverine’s memories suggest that Sabretooth was abusing Silver Fox and/or trying to destroy her romance with Wolverine, though the details are understandably kept vague for a kids’ show. Don Francks does what he can, imparting Sabretooth with an especially poisonous line reading of, “What’s the matter, runt? Can’t take care of your woman?” Wolverine also remembers a mission in which Team X faced Omega Red, and Sabretooth callously left Maverick and Silver Fox to die.

This is a story about false memories, so naturally, Silver Fox promptly reveals herself as very much alive. She explains that the facility they’re standing in—a cross between a TV studio and a science lab—was designed to turn them into sleeper agents with false memories. Oh and Maverick is there, too. Silver Fox discovered the lab months ago, but there’s one door she can’t open without all four of them present. Beast points out that the door, which is designed to put all four members of Team X in one extremely secure location, is an obvious trap. But they want the truth no matter what.

What’s waiting for them on the other side of the door is a little more exposition and a fight with a robot called Talos. Among its many combat features are what can only be described as nipple cannons. I am including a picture so that you will understand that this is not something I just made up. This is something a team of professional writers made up, had animated, and put on broadcast television. An entire TV network, along with its Standards & Practices Department, had no problem with this. But God forbid that Amelia Voght walk out on Charles Xavier while holding suitcases.

The fight with Talos is reasonably well done, making good use of all its participants. Where it loses me is the resolution, or the lack thereof. The good guys manage to blow Talos up, only for the facility’s defense systems to trigger traumatic memories in Team X (somehow) that conveniently knock them out, while also loudly announcing that a second Talos will shortly be activated to kill everyone. Beast takes the opportunity to collect Team X’s unconscious bodies, load everyone onto a truck, drive off, and lock the door behind him.

Before everyone goes their separate ways, Wolverine and Silver Fox have an intense heart-to-heart. They both have memories of carving their initials into a tree, as cartoon lovebirds do. Yet the facility’s studio has no such initials in its tree, and the team has learned that all of the false memories are based on half-truths. So was their relationship real? Did they really love each other? Is it too late to find out? Silver Fox doesn’t want to risk it, though she does give Wolverine one last, long look before departing. It’s pretty effective for what the episode has to work with, but it makes me wish the script had done a little more with the ideas of half-truths and unreliable narrators.

I’ll never say no to Beast getting some screen time. George Buza, as always, does a lot with what he’s given here, and I think he pairs well with Wolverine. That said, Beast doesn’t do much in this story other than locate videotapes of exposition (which, again, is the story being told from the past). Wouldn’t this story have been more interesting if Jean, who found the photograph of Silver Fox and Wolverine, had followed him to Canada instead? For one, it would have made sense for a telepath to try to help people who are in mental anguish. For another, Wolverine’s relationship with Silver Fox—yet another person he isn’t allowed to love due to forces beyond his control—would have hit that much harder with Jean nearby. Lastly, come on, Jean’s basically been absent since “Xavier Remembers”. Give the gal something to do.

This is a middling episode that would probably be stronger if you viewed it as Part 1 of a two-parter with “Lotus and the Steel”, which directly deals with the loss of control that Wolverine experiences in this story. Unfortunately, Disney Plus lists the show in production order (where these two are back-to-back but in the wrong order), while other services use the airing order (chronologically correct, but eight months apart in two different seasons). As it stands, the only good way to watch this pair of episodes is with an asterisk.

Stray observations:

• There’s a wild animation error during Wolverine and Sabretooth’s initial fight, in which their lines are synced to each others’ mouths.

• Jean snoops around in Wolverine’s bedroom to find that photo with the coordinates on the back. The coordinates are written as “53º / 120º”, which Beast immediately says is in “southern Canada”. Whole degrees cover huge distances, so at latitude 53º, we’re talking about a region slightly larger than Delaware. It should be nearly impossible to pinpoint a single, extremely secret building in such a large area, but then again, Wolverine has his traumatic memories to guide him and Beast is a genius. Given Wolverine’s history, Beast reasonably assumed that the unlabeled coordinates were meant to be 53ºN by 120ºW, which is indeed somewhere in Canada (though “southern” is a stretch). Hank’s other options were eastern Russia, the middle of the South Pacific, or about halfway between Australia and Antarctica/the Savage Land.

• On the toilet: Rogue, Storm, Jubilee, and Gambit. Cyclops appears and even gets to utter exactly one word (he shouts, “Wolverine!”), while Jean gets a small speaking role for the first time since “Courage”.

Season 4, Episode 15. Air date: February 3, 1996.

I’ve decided to open this review of our latest X-Men episode, “Lotus and the Steel”, with the most interesting in-universe fact I could find about the Silver Samurai. The Silver Samurai’s teleportation powers come from a magic ring that he recovered during a fight against Saturday Night Live’s John Belushi. This is canon thanks to a 1978 Marvel crossover comic featuring the contemporary SNL cast, which also makes it canonically true that Saturday Night Live exists within the Marvel universe, which I (brilliantly) deduced must be the case in my review of season 2’s “Till Death Do Us Part”:

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.

The teleportation ring’s lore may or may not have been updated to replace Belushi with Chris Farley, thanks to the Marvel Sliding Timescale, but I can only find one reference to that, and it’s got an ominous “citation needed” next to it. Let us never forget that X-Men is ridiculous.

Anyway, Wolverine and Japan. Both of these things got a lot of attention starting in the 1980s, so why not combine them? “Lotus and the Steel” is a very loose take on Chris Claremont’s 1982 Wolverine book. Overall, the episode isn’t great. On the one hand, this half hour is trying to address Wolverine’s many traumas: Weapon X, Sabretooth, religious faith, Yuriko Oyama, Jean, and even his terrifying encounter with Proteus. He decides that the only way to heal and control his rage is to Eat, Pray, Love about it in Japan.

On the other hand, you’ve got a story that thinks it’s an homage to Seven Samurai, in which Wolverine journeys to a remote Japanese village under the thumb of the Silver Samurai, who is about to collect his annual tribute. It doesn’t work very well, because standing in for an interesting group of hired mercenaries with varied personalities is Wolverine, and only Wolverine. He spends most of the episode learning to restrain himself, pointedly not fighting people and not even offering the village any help with its defense strategy. The villagers make up their own Home Alone-inspired defenses to defeat the Samurai’s gang while Wolverine wrestles with his demons. The emotional stakes are heavy but the action is featherweight, and the two don’t even really overlap.

The performances in this episode are some of the worst in the entire series, though the writers did at least pepper Wolverine’s lines with some basic Japanese. Cal Dodd does the best he can with these phrases, which isn’t very good. I think the episode is implying that Wolverine is actually speaking fluent Japanese throughout, and we’re just hearing English for convenience. Jubilee’s subplot is that she’s searching for Wolverine but failing to make progress because she can’t communicate with anyone.

The Silver Samurai may oversee a motorcycle gang, but his protection racket and the overall vibe of this version of Japan are positively feudal. The episode’s portrayal of Japan as exotic and a bit backward feels very dated from here in 2026, when anime has become a global phenomenon.¹ It’s thanks to our Crunchyroll subscription that I know that Dodd’s Japanese is pretty bad, and also why I know so much about the standardized layout of Japanese high schools.

Things come to a climax, if you can even call it that, when the Silver Samurai decides to stop playing games and personally crush the village. Wolverine steps in for a stupidly easy fight. The point is that Wolverine has learned to wait, pick the right moment, and strike with precision instead of rage. Although the episode spends a lot of time showing Wolverine not fighting (thrilling TV, right?), we don’t really see him learn anything. The monk he’s been spending time with, Oku, urges Wolverine to see with “different eyes,” a callback to “Nightcrawler”, this time from the practitioner of an Eastern religion instead of a Western one. Oku spouts phrases that vaguely approximate Zen riddles (“True strength is knowing when not to fight”, etc.), but the episode never actually demonstrates how this philosophy helps him. Oku’s life is threatened twice in this episode, and both times he’s saved not because of self-control or the acceptance of things he cannot change, but because Wolverine is nearby.

Overall, this one is a weird mashup that doesn’t really work. Now if you’d gotten Chris Farley in there somehow…

Stray observations:

• Xavier specifically mentions “the recent revelation” of Wolverine’s false memories. The episode contains flashbacks to the events of “Weapon X, Lies, and Videotape”, which, if you’re watching the show in production order, haven’t happened yet (it’s the next episode). This is a rare case where the airing order reflects the correct continuity but the production order doesn’t.

• Jubilee has a minor presence in this story, but it’s nice to see her. She manages to be pretty funny in her brief scenes. I particularly like the way she pilots her jet, demonstrating that she has learned nothing since season 2.

• After Wolverine defeats the Silver Samurai, the villagers just let him walk away. This guy has run a years-long protection racket against them, and they just let him wander off with a frown on his face?

Season 4, Episode 14. Air date: October 26, 1996 (in season 5).

Every time I start to think this show has lost sight of what makes X-Men great, it gives me an episode like “Bloodlines”. The kickoff is that Graydon Creed is desperate to rejoin the Friends of Humanity (now even more klan-coded), and he agrees to eliminate all the mutant members of his family to prove his loyalty. We haven’t seen Creed or the FoH since way back in season 2’s “Beauty and the Beast”, so their reintroduction here is quite a surprise. We learned in that earlier episode that Creed is the son of Sabretooth. This episode reveals that his mother is none other than Mystique, whose other children (Rogue via adoption, and Nightcrawler via Count Wagner, as previously seen in “Nightcrawler”) will also figure prominently here.

How, exactly, Creed manages to coerce the very clever Mystique into his scheme to ensnare his half-siblings isn’t very clear, though she does mention that she wanted to get closer to Rogue (as usual). Regardless, ensnare she does, sending Nightcrawler a letter meant to lure him to an FoH facility. Correctly sensing a trap, he takes the precaution of stopping by the X-Mansion on Halloween night to recruit Rogue (always fated to end up in Mystique’s garbage), Wolverine (continuing his near-perfect attendance record), and Jubilee (finally doing something!) for help.

This is the third story in a row that focuses on family feuds, produced (but not aired) immediately after “Proteus” and “Family Ties”. Those earlier episodes felt disjointed, either going through the motions of Saturday morning action pieces or doling out the family drama, but not really managing to blend the two into satisfying stories. “Bloodlines”, on the other hand, manages to keep everything in balance. The action is simple (but not boring) so that the characters can shine. Nightcrawler, Rogue, Wolverine, and Jubilee infiltrate a massive FoH compound (Rogue: “How did we miss this place?”) and spend the remainder of the episode fighting Creed and an escalating number of FoH goons. In between the gunfire, we get a lot of strong character moments and a surprisingly strong climax.

The show leans heavily on Nightcrawler’s religious faith once again, and while I wish the writers would show us some other sides of his personality, this continues to be effective, even in some unexpected ways. When Nightcrawler expresses his doubts about dragging the X-Men into his personal quest, Wolverine snickers, “Just have a little faith, pal. I hear it can work wonders.”

As the action comes to a head in the background, Mystique bitterly explains to Nightcrawler that his birth cost her a comfortable life as the wife of a German aristocrat. She’s always been an opportunist, she says, stealing little bits of other peoples’ lives, but never really living her own. She never wanted Nightcrawler, and hates him for existing. In response, Nightcrawler says, “I will beg God to bestow his grace on me, so that I can learn to forgive you. Then I will ask him to bestow his grace on you, so that you might forgive yourself.” Not even the flames of the Phoenix itself could deliver a burn this sick, people. Adrian Hough’s understated, gentle performance makes it hit like a truck. Mystique is taken aback, and shortly thereafter pushes Nightcrawler out of the way of Creed’s pistol. We briefly see her memories of nearly throwing the infant Nightcrawler off of a waterfall, as she goes over the side of the dam.¹

Meanwhile, Rogue, Wolverine, and Jubilee are having a grand old time fighting the FoH. Rogue teases the goons (who are all terrible shots, naturally), and even wrestles a helicopter to the ground! The episode is full of fun touches like this. There’s a very cool shot of Wolverine prying open some reinforced doors with his claws, Nightcrawler climbs along the ceiling to keep up with Rogue, Mystique cycles through some disguises that go all the way back to “Days of Future Past”, and even Jubilee manages to take out a few thugs along the way. Speaking of Jubilee, it sure is nice to see her! This is her first significant outing since “Savage Land, Strange Heart”, and she’s very fun. She’s mostly there as the episode’s Han Solo, occasionally calling out the crazy soap opera that’s unfolding in front of her.

The episode closes with a tearful Mystique quietly slinking away to whatever her next mercenary venture is, and the FoH dumping Creed out of a plane, putting him right in front of the family member who remained conspicuously absent from the reunion: Sabretooth. Leaving the episode’s villain to snivel in front of his hulking, sadistic father is, needless to say, a pretty dark way to close the adventure. Then again, Creed had it coming.

All in all, a very fun, tightly plotted episode that manages some really effective soap opera theatrics in its scant twenty minutes. Alas, Nightcrawler’s second big episode will be his last. At least he exits on a strong story.

Stray observations:

• Wolverine doesn’t like that kids essentially get to pretend to be mutants on Halloween, which seems like a better note for Beast. Ironically, he’s wearing a Beast mask shortly before he says this, which muddles the message even further.

• Mystique, explaining why she chose to marry the bland Count Wagner: “I’ve been many women in my time, some rich, some poor. Rich, I find, is preferable.”

• On the toilet: everyone except Wolverine, Rogue, and Jubilee.

Season 4, Episode 13. Air date: May 4, 1996.

“Your mother was a gentle woman. The world I fought for frightened her. I frightened her.” It’s this episode’s most powerful line, and it comes from Magneto, telling his children (Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, aka Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch) why their mother chose to flee from him and die in hiding. This confession comes shortly after the High Evolutionary reveals to all three of them that they’re a family, and just before Magneto decides it’s time for them to wreck the Evolutionary’s hidden fortress/laboratory. Or as he tells his children, “We shall not perish at the hands of a psychotic biologist!” Needless to say, this episode has some tonal problems.

Wanda Maximoff has a long history with the franchise, debuting way back in 1963’s X-Men #4 as a reluctant member of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She eventually leaves that group, joins the Avengers, leaves them, hooks up with Vision, and on and on. This episode borrows elements from a 1974 Avengers story, which revealed that Pietro and Wanda’s parents were the Golden Age heroes Miss America and—ahem—The Whizzer, a guy who manifested superhuman speedster powers after being injected with mongoose blood. It’s not until a 1982 story that Magneto is retconned as Pietro and Wanda’s father, no doubt part of other early-80s efforts to transform him from a one-note villain into a more nuanced antihero. Wanda goes on to do many great things, not the least of which is that time she de-powered 90% of all mutants on Earth. She’s also the star of one of the best MCU TV series, but if you’re reading this, you probably already knew that. Or maybe all of this!

Wanda’s powers are an iffy blend of science (“probability manipulation”, parallel universes, etcetera) and sorcery (hexes, demonic influence, abracadabra). She can make basically anything happen, but she can’t control the exact effect. This makes her chaotic and interesting, at least in the comics. “Family Ties” barely uses her powers at all. She restrains Magneto with a rope that magically ties itself, and later makes a bunch of goons trip and fall over. As for Quicksilver, he’s very fast. Not so fast that he’s functionally God, but fast enough to spin like a top and save himself from deadly falls, as he does a couple of times in this story. The action scenes in this one are pretty bad, folks.

The episode makes the mistake of giving the audience too much information. The High Evolutionary feeds Magneto and Pietro/Wanda different stories to get everyone to his lab at Mt. Wundagore, which makes their initial meeting and fight kind of tedious to sit through. We know that the High Evolutionary is going to reveal himself as the villain, and surprise surprise, he wants their DNA (the keys to probability manipulation, super speed, and raw power) to accelerate his own research into creating a genetically perfect race.

If I had it my way, I would have made Wanda a conspirator in the High Evolutionary’s scheme. This is the first time we’ve ever seen her, making her an unknown quantity. Her character often walks a fine line between good and evil (most notably in WandaVision but unfortunately not in Multiverse of Madness), and I think it would have been satisfying to have her start as an antagonist, then experience a change of heart and betray the High Evolutionary in the nick of time. But alas, no. The Evolutionary’s human-animal hybrids apprehend Wanda and Pietro seconds after they deal with Magneto, the Evolutionary reveals his plan, there’s another clunky fight with the goons, and then the Evolutionary cuts his losses and departs. Oh, and Wolverine gets transformed into an actual werewolf (guy’s really been getting it bad lately). In a great example of lazy writing, he just reverts to his normal self when the Evolutionary departs.

The talkier parts of the story work better, if not especially well. David Hemblen does a commendable job selling Magneto’s sincere guilt over what happened to his wife and his unwitting abandonment of his biological children. He asks Wanda and Pietro if they can forgive him, and doesn’t fault them when they don’t. Wolverine acts like Magneto is still his early-era archvillain self, but he’s spent most of his time on the show solidly in antihero territory, and this episode is downright sympathetic to him. Magneto also has a cool exchange with Xavier near the episode’s start, which almost feels like a preview of how their relationship will be portrayed in the movies. Lastly, dude looks fabulous in a simple black coat. Between act breaks, he’ll inexplicably be put back in his classic red and purple costume, billowing cloak and all. At least we got a few scenes of him dressed to impress.

Stray observations:

• Wanda and Pietro’s adoptive parents receive the infants from Bova, a half-cow midwife. They have no follow-up questions.

• Magneto has no difficulty getting into the X-Mansion for his late night chat with Xavier. “Wolverine was supposed to be on guard duty,” Xavier muses. Checking his security cameras, he finds Wolverine struggling in agony against some kind of electromagnetic web that Magneto devised. Then Xavier just mutes the TV and turns back to his chat with Magneto. Charles Xavier continues to be just a bit more of a sociopath than I’d like.

• This episode acts like everyone already knows who the Scarlet Witch is, despite the fact that we’ve only previously gotten the briefest glimpse of her in season 2’s “Repo Man”.

• On the toilet: everyone except Xavier, Wolverine, and Beast. I’m pretty sure Beast is here just so he can say, “The creatures are neither man nor beast, much as I have been described! Though I doubt we will have time to discuss it.”