x-men re-examined: slave island

Air date: February 13, 1993

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stray observations:

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

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

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

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

x-men re-examined: cold vengeance

Air date: February 6, 1993

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

x-men re-examined: captive hearts

Air date: January 30, 1993

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A lengthy list of stray observations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

x-men re-examined: deadly reunions

Air date: January 23, 1993

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

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

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

Wolverine: I’ll penetrate his recesses…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stray observations:

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

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

x-men re-examined: enter magneto

Air date: November 27, 1992

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. I just realized that here in 2024, we are farther from the debut of this cartoon than the cartoon was from its 1963 source material. Now if you’ll excuse me, I obviously need to go put down a deposit on a burial plot. 

  2. Specifically, Beast quotes one of The Merhcant of Venice’s most famous lines: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” Let it not be lost on us that this comes from Shylock’s monologue in defense of Jews. Someone on the writing staff is keeping the dream of Magneto the Antihero alive. 

x-men re-examined: night of the sentinels

Marvel’s revival series X-Men ‘97 is their best work since Endgame, giving us the deft blend of social commentary, soap opera, and beautiful mutants in skintight clothing that made the X-Men a marquee cape team in the first place. Marvel has pulled off quite a difficult trick. X-Men ‘97 not only continues its predecessor as if no time has passed, but it gives us the show we remember, not the show as it actually was. X-Men ‘97 is vivid, fast paced, thought provoking, melodramatic, and frequently sexy. It makes a decade of blockbuster Avengers movies look intolerably boring.

It’s so good that it’s made me want to revisit the original, and if I’m going to sit here watching all 76 episodes, I might as well write about it. I’ll try to keep these short, but since this is the first entry (and a two-parter!), this one is going to be a little longer.

A little table setting. X-Men debuted on Fox in 1992 (on Halloween, in fact). I was ten years old, squarely in the show’s demographic. It immediately became the centerpiece of me and my friends’ Saturday mornings, the definition of appointment television. There was nothing else like it. Here was a show that had a hero (and a villain) for every taste. The good guys were as likely to fight each other as they were their archenemies. It was the first serialized kids’ cartoon. Its big ideas couldn’t be contained in a mere 22 minutes, and you couldn’t miss an episode (but don’t worry, the “Previously On…” would catch you up). Batman: The Animated Series, which debuted two months earlier, had a bigger budget and a full orchestra, but it didn’t have season-long epics and it never left you hanging, wanting more.

X-Men was a groundbreaking piece of kids’ entertainment, and stayed popular enough to run past the 65 episode hurdle that ended many other shows.1 Without X-Men, I don’t think we’d have gotten Disney’s Gargoyles or Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, both favorites of mine (and all other people of good taste). The success of the series, one of the few bright spots in Marvel’s business at the time, made it an appealing property to turn into a movie a few years later, which kept capes in theaters after the Schumacher Batman movies imploded.

It can be a dangerous thing to revisit one’s childhood. But, as Wolverine growls repeatedly in this debut two-parter: “I go where I wanna go.”

Part 1

Air date: October 31, 1992

The opening theme is, of course, iconic, but this will be the only time I mention it. Here, enjoy the Powerglove cover.

The debut story follows Jubilee, a young mutant just discovering her powers. Her foster parents register her with the Mutant Control Agency, and a Sentinel quickly arrives to apprehend her. When I was ten, I thought Sentinels—50 foot killer robots designed to hunt and “subdue” mutants—were pure comic book craziness. But in a post-DHS, post-Patriot Act, post-Blackwater world, it doesn’t seem so crazy that the government would allow a private company to create absurd weapons in the name of fighting a nebulous threat. I’m not saying Magneto was right, but the people who liked to say “Magneto was right,” turned out to be pretty right.

But Jubilee has already run away to the mall (natch), where she bumps into Storm (the regal and dramatic Mistress of the Elements) and Rogue (if a young Blanche Devereaux were Superman). Here the episode makes a rare departure from Jubilee’s perspective to introduce Gambit, who is elsewhere in the mall buying a fresh deck of cards.

We must—simply must—talk about Gambit. If Jubilee’s visor sunglasses and bubblegum addiction scream late 1980s, Gambit’s design screams 1990s. The brown trench coat over a neon tunic, the “we’d like this character to be easier to draw” cowl that frames his face, the inexplicable mastery of a bo staff he hardly uses. He is the most ’90s thing in this episode. Despite all that, Gambit actually debuted at the start of the decade, in August 1990. He doesn’t reflect ’90s character design, he defines it. And on this show, he is very obviously the writers’ favorite character. He never gets saddled with clunky exposition and spends most of his time being interesting and hot. Weird habit of referring to himself in the third person aside, he’s the one you’d want to hang out with. Or have sex with. This is his first scene:

Gambit is admiring a deck of playing cards.

Shop Girl, extremely into him: You must like to play cards.

Gambit: I like solitaire okay. Unless I got someone…to play with.

Full credit to Chris Potter here, who delivers this line with so much sex appeal that they must have blackmailed someone at Standards & Practices to keep it in.

Unfortunately, the Sentinel has arrived to ruin everybody’s fun. It bulldozes its way into the mall and immediately starts causing havoc. The amount of damage Sentinels do is hilarious. Just stomping around nice neighborhoods indiscriminately ripping apart houses and demolishing whole malls, while telling everyone to REMAIN CALM at 100 decibels.

Or what should feel like 100 decibels, if the sound design wasn’t so bad. I never noticed it as a kid, but it’s awful, the element that ages the show the most. The fights on this show feature an array of dazzling abilities, but they often sound like nothing. Rogue flies through the air, punches the two and a half ton Sentinel hard enough to knock it over, and yet it sounds like a foley artist gently slapping a tin sheet.

Rogue, Storm, and Gambit are unable to stop the Sentinel, but luckily Cyclops shows up (people just sort of arrive places on this show) and easily blasts its head off. This is, unfortunately, about as cool as Cyclops gets for the foreseeable future.

The X-Men then abduct Jubilee (but for good reasons, as heroes do) and she wakes up at the X-Mansion. She meets the rest of the team: Beast (that CS major you knew who spent tons of time in the gym), Morph (a shapeshifter with an off-putting giggle), Jean Grey (telepath dressed like a stripper, welcome to 1992), Wolverine (pre-Hugh Jackman, still short, hairy, and talking like Popeye) and Professor Xavier (surprisingly inert).

Jubilee realizes that she’s put her foster parents in danger and tries to return home, but she just falls into Henry Gyrich’s trap, and is re-abducted to an undisclosed location. The team decides to raid MCA headquarters and destroy its files to protect other mutants. The show spends a surprising amount of time giving us little character insights while they infiltrate. Cyclops is a true believer and boy scout, Wolverine wants to do what’s right but can’t stand all these rules (“I go where I wanna go!”), Gambit prefers to work alone, Morph is a capering jackass, Rogue tragically can’t touch anyone without killing them, Beast is loquacious, Storm lives her life theatrically, you know how it goes. Like I said, this show offered something for everyone, often simultaneously!

The episode ends on the cliffhanger of the team opening a security door, armed guards waiting on the other side. The outro credits are worth a mention, as they feature some mind blowing early ’90s CGI.

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: “Look what she did to the VCR just by touching it!”

Favorite Rogue-ism: “You look nervous as a long tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”

Part 2

Air date: November 7, 1992

The team makes quick work of destroying the MCA’s files, but Sentinels foil what should have been an easy retreat, with Morph apparently killed (“confirmed” by Xavier and Jean’s telepathy). The team returns home in shambles, with Wolverine threatening to kill Cyclops over what happened. We’ll learn via flashback that Cyclops botched their exit from the MCA, resulting in Beast’s capture and Morph’s death (sure). Leading with the aftermath, focusing on the team’s interpersonal conflicts, and only revealing the actual events a little later was unheard of for a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s the kind of narrative choice we remember thirty years later.

Less remembered is Gyrich’s meeting with President Stairmaster. Sorry, she’s on a Stairmaster while talking to him, and the show hasn’t actually mentioned her name yet, so she’s President Stairmaster, okay? It would be the most ’90s moment in this episode, but Stairmasters go back to the ’80s. She says that while she finds the Sentinels highly effective, the idea of a mutant registry is appalling, making her more of a Bush Sr. than a Bush Jr.

Cyclops hatches a plan to damage a Sentinel and follow it back to its factory. When it asks Cyclops to surrender, he replies, “Of course…NOT!” So if you were to ask me, “How ’90s is the ’90s X-Men show, really?” I would just play you a clip of that.

The damaged but mostly still functional Sentinel returns to its factory in Detroit by crashing straight through the ceiling, which again, begs the question of whether a Sentinel’s secondary imperative is “Cause at least $5 million in property damage per hour.” This factory is also where Jubilee is being held. That was revealed much earlier (along with the introduction of mad scientist Bolivar Trask), but it has almost no bearing on the plot. In fact Jubilee doesn’t get much to do here, which is strange given how central she was in the last episode. The fight out of the facility is pretty fun, and everyone has a chance to show off.

Jubilee decides to go live with her fellow mutants at the X-Mansion. Saying goodbye to her foster parents, she tells them, “You guys are the best foster parents I ever had.” Bear in mind that these parents feared her burgeoning abilities, put her name in a national surveillance database, and briefly colluded with a powerful anti-mutant bigot. If these are the best foster parents Jubilation Lee ever had, I shudder to think what the worst were like.

Loose threads. Could there be a reason why that Sentinel’s sensors lingered on one “human” guard at the MCA after Morph “died”? What’s going to happen to Beast? And how long will Cyclops be second guessing himself?

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: Cyclops firing a “NOT” joke at a Sentinel, very possibly the most ’90s thing in the entire series, but I hope we haven’t peaked too early.

  1. A 65 episode order ensures that there will be enough episodes to eventually air them in daily syndication, repeating the series quarterly. So networks usually saw 65 episodes as a good investment, while anything more was wasted money.