Jonathan Dobres

Air date: December 4, 1993

Twenty-two minutes—or less, if you subtract the opening and end credits—is not a lot of time. If I’ve learned anything watching this show, it’s that X-Men can get a remarkable amount of things done if it lets the established cast play off each other and trusts the audience to keep up. Season two keeps doing the exact opposite, presenting stories that split up the cast and necessitate a lot of lengthy exposition. “X-Ternally Yours” is the worst offender yet. It’s a Gambit spotlight, so I want to like it, but it’s so weighed down with Gambit’s elaborate backstory that there’s not much room for him to actually do anything.

Gambit was a member of New Orleans’s Thieves Guild, you see. The Thieves are locked in a vague, ancient conflict with the Assassins. This cajun-flavored Hatfield/McCoy situation is mediated by an entity known as the X-Ternal, who appears once per decade to collect tithes from both guilds and bestow or revoke power from whichever side she finds deserving of her generosity/wrath. Who is the X-Ternal and what does she want? The episode doesn’t say. She’s probably based on Candra of the Externals,¹ but the show redesigns the character to vaguely evoke a Voodoo priestess a la Marie Laveau (I’m guessing). Form your own head canons.

Anyway, the Thieves have been on the outs ever since they screwed up the last tithe. The Assassins want to put the final nail in their coffin this time around, so they kidnap the Thieves’ leader, Bobby, who also happens to be Gambit’s brother. Gambit has another connection to this weird mess: he nearly married the current leader of the Assassins, Bella Donna. She never got over it and wants him back, so by orchestrating Bobby’s kidnapping, she gets the chance to simultaneously destroy the Thieves and force Gambit into marriage.

If this all sounds like a lot, it is! And it forces a lot of shortcuts. It would have been great to see crafty old Gambit attempt to double cross Bella Donna, but there’s no time. As the X-Ternal’s most recent chosen one, she has powers that allow her to slap a magic ring on Gambit’s finger, which removes his abilities and forces him to play along. It would have been great to see Rogue kick ass on behalf of her sort-of boyfriend (she’s part of the cavalry along with Jean and Wolverine), but the writers conveniently forget how formidable she is and settle for her just being very incensed at the idea of some swamp witch marrying her guy.

In the plus column, the animation is a lot more evocative in places here, especially when Cyclops is battling simulations of every major villain in the Danger Room. He manages to hold his own for a while and even looks kind of cool. Similarly, Jean finally gets some important things to do. She takes away everybody’s guns and, in the end, telepathically reveals Bella Donna’s schemes to the X-Ternal, allowing the Thieves to prevail. Gambit asks that Bella Donna be rendered powerless rather than killed. He declares, “I am not Thief or Assassin. I am an X-Man, and I am never coming back.” In a very nice final touch, he leaves with his arm around Rogue. In spite of it all, Gambit remains a charming presence.

Oh and I almost forgot, we get another Savage Land interlude. Xavier and Magneto encounter Barbarous, who tells Magneto that he “has a new master now.” Barbarous nearly succeeds in bear hugging Magneto to death, but Xavier drops a hive of angry bees on him and the two make yet another narrow escape. Five near death experiences in as many episodes. The Savage Land lives up to its name, at least.

X-Men is an ensemble franchise, and the more I watch season two, the more firmly I believe that. Splitting up the cast scuttles the show’s best dynamics in favor of thin exposition, rushed stories, and boring fights.

Stray observations:

• When Cyclops complains that the Danger Room simulation is too easy, Gambit smirks and says, “You don’t like Gambit to be gentle?” Again, form your own head canons.

• The “cajun” accents are all over the place. Sometimes Chris Potter says, “thief”, but often it comes out “teef”.

• Wolverine, exploring the decaying gothic plantation where Gambit was raised: “No wonder Gambit’s so messed up.” Gotta love Cal Dodd. The show sure does. Wolverine is the only character to appear in every episode so far this season, excluding the Savage Land interludes.