Jonathan Dobres

Welcome to the Savage Land, finally. The Savage Land’s publication history goes as far back as 1941, but it wouldn’t become a regular location in Marvel comics until X-Men #10 in 1965. Like all longstanding franchise settings, it’s accumulated an impossibly long fictional history and an expansive subculture—its Wikipedia article lists nearly 50 native clans, factions, and races. It’s where Marvel goes when they want to do a jungle comic. I’m pretty sure that the Savage Land was introduced in early issues of X-Men because Jack Kirby really wanted to draw dinosaurs.¹ I am baffled as to why Marvel decided to waste a huge chunk of season two on it. X-Men #10 and this season finale also introduce Ka-Zar, Lord of the Jungle. He’s Tarzan, but blonde. He’s a non-mutant with peak physical abilities and a pet sabertooth tiger. We will be spending far too much time with him.

Part 1

Air date: February 12, 1994

We pick up with Xavier and Magneto free climbing a sheer cliff to get back to Xavier’s jet. Because you can’t go ten feet in the Savage Land without something trying to kill you, they’re accosted by “sky riders” on the way up. Xavier throws a rock at one of them, to which Magneto says, “Nicely played, Charles!” God, this story is lame.

Atop the cliff, the various Mutates we’ve met in the season’s interludes finally catch up to the duo, and apprehend them to take them back to “the master.” As we’ve seen, something in the Savage Land neutralizes mutant abilities, but the Mutates all have belts that protect against this. That previously unnamed woman with vertigo-inducing powers is named Vertigo, by the way.

Enter Ka-Zar, who communes with a nearby herd of Triceratopses and arranges a stampede to set Xavier and Magneto free. Ka-Zar despises Magneto for creating the Mutates,² and also blames him for every bad thing that ever happened in the Savage Land (he’s only helping them because the Mutates captured his wife, and the new master is worse than Magneto). Ka-Zar can’t let Magneto so much as sigh without remarking on his evil nature. At one point, Xavier comments on the cold wind and Ka-Zar says it’s Magneto’s fault. Give it a rest, dude.

The three of them sneak into Magneto’s citadel via a secret passage, only to be greeted by the Mutates they had escaped from earlier. In other words, they walked to exactly where the bad guys wanted them anyway. We’re also introduced to the last of the comics-accurate Mutates, Brainchild. He is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. An incredibly 1960s character design, giant head topped with a weird crown and a catastrophically receding hairline. He speaks in a shrill, lilting cadence filled with lisps and rolled ‘R’s. His voice is what you’d get if you asked Paul Bearer to do a Paul Lynde impression. Brainchild is also pointless. All he does is tell Xavier and Magneto that there’s a new master in the Savage Land, a fact we’ve heard from every other Mutate this season, even in this episode. Two seconds later, the new master finally shows up. It’s Mister Sinister, with several captured X-Men in tow.

Backing up a few scenes, the B-plot is that the X-Men have found a desperate message from Morph, leading them to a traveling fair where Morph is performing in Jekyll and Hyde (live transformation effects for a stage play is a pretty clever use of Morph’s powers). This is a trap, of course. I guess the writers didn’t watch “Whatever It Takes,” because it’s like it never happened. Morph is colluding with Sinister, albeit still grappling with their split personality. The ensuing fight at first seems like it’s going to be a reprise of the lazy stuff from the season premiere. The good guys are too easily subdued and the Nasty Boys (Nasty Boys) get their hands on Cyclops and Jean. But then Jean uses her telekinesis to pluck Cyclops’s glasses off his face, and we’re all reminded why Cyclops is in charge. Overall it’s a good fight, with characters showing off their powers amid some decent trash talk. It looks like the good guys are going to eke out a win, but Morph knocks Wolverine unconscious in the nick of time, helping Sinister. I also have to note that Chris Britton is doing God’s work as Sinister. His voice slides around every syllable with a delicious irony, like he just loves being evil. This pair of scenes, straightforward as it is, is far more entertaining than everything happening in the Savage Land.

Fast forwarding to where I left off at the citadel, Sinister has the psychic pterodactyl Sauron put the whammy on Xavier (Morph briefly tries to intervene but Sinister neutralizes them). Xavier tries to resist, thinking specifically of the people who depend on him, which is a nice character note. But in the end Sauron wins out, and Xavier contacts the remaining X-Men to lure them to the Savage Land. They know it’s trap, but they’re heading to Antarctica anyway.

Part 2

Air date: February 19, 1994

Part 2, like Part 1, is (almost) all action. The X-Men who aren’t already at the citadel arrive in the Savage Land and fight the Nasty Boys, even without the benefit of their powers. It’s brave, but it doesn’t go super great, and everyone gets captured except for Wolverine, of course. He goes on a speedrun of the Savage Land interludes, eventually encountering Ka-Zar, who ditched Xavier and Magneto the second he realized the citadel was the new Mutate base. I can’t really fault him, since everyone else just got chained up immediately.

Back at the citadel, Sinister reminds the audience about his goal of creating a race of genetically superior mutants. To demonstrate, he uses the citadel’s machinery to combine Vertigo’s and Magneto’s DNA, which makes Vertigo much stronger (cue the powerless X-Men acting very nauseous and passing out).

The only notable scene in the entire episode comes when Rogue confesses to Gambit that she’s scared to live without her powers. From everything we know about her, this is poor treatment of the character. We know she’s strong-willed even without her abilities, and we especially know that she’d love to live a day without hurting everyone she touches. But this does prompt Gambit to confess his love for her. I just wish the season had given this more of a buildup. Season one was peppered with little Gambit/Rogue flirtations, but season two had none. Gambit’s been absent (or at least silent) for a lot of the season, even in stories like “A Rogue’s Tale” where he could have had a bigger role. So we’re mainly going off of season one’s vibes.

Wolverine and Ka-Zar break into the citadel and join the fight. Ka-Zar frees his wife, along with a bunch of other imprisoned humans, who amp up the chaos and give the good guys a fighting chance. This leads to what is probably the lamest moment in any fight to date, in which Professor Charles Xavier destroys a bank of highly advanced computer mainframes by lightly bashing them with an office chair. Everyone gets their powers back and things get fun again. Everyone shows off, and Gambit even has time to say, “The name is Gambit, remember it!”

The final showdown has Cyclops and Sinister holding each other at an impasse with their respective laser blasts. The other X-Men join in, but it’s not until Xavier uses his powers to remind Morph that they’re an X-Man, damnit, that they contribute a few blasts of their own. This finally overwhelms Sinister and he explodes into little pieces. Jean scatters what’s left of him to the wind, hoping it’ll take him a long time to melt back together (don’t worry, his remnants form a Sinister-shaped outline in the beach sand and he closes out the season with a cackle).

It’s a pretty bad finale, especially in comparison to season one. I suppose if you’re twelve and you just want to see superheroes doing cool moves, there’s a lot of that. But there are no emotional stakes here, no attempt to make an even slightly bigger point; just a lot of action sequences set in the wild of the jungle. Every minute spent with Ka-Zar—and we spent a lot of them—is a minute the writers could have spent with characters we actually like. Instead, the finale is stuffed to the gills with characters who aren’t interesting and don’t do much (Brainchild is incredibly off-putting and redundant; and Sauron’s mind control only lasts long enough for Xavier to send the message to the X-Men). This finale doesn’t really pay off the season in any meaningful way. It’s just an extra-large adventure to close things out.

Stray observations:

• “If we do not return, avenge us,” Ka-Zar says to a big cat.