Jonathan Dobres

Season 3, Episode 8. Air date: September 21, 1996

Narratively, this episode deals with the immediate aftermath of Jean’s death in “The Phoenix Saga”, but due to animation problems and scheduling shenanigans, it wouldn’t air until fully two years later. It must have been very odd to see it in 1996, long after season 3 had first aired. It’s also strange to see it in its intended narrative order. Produced alongside season 5, this episode has a different intro and a jarringly different visual style, thanks to season 5’s new animation studio.¹

This is a Cyclops solo episode, and I’d say it’s serviceable and kind of boring, just like Cyclops himself. The team is still processing Jean’s death, and Cyclops tells Professor Xavier that he’s “sick of being den mother to a bunch of quibbling children,” and just doesn’t care anymore. He quits the X-Men and visits the orphanage where he grew up. Said orphanage is run by a childhood friend of his, Sarah, who happens to have a fair number of mutants under her care. The orphanage is bankrolled by one Zebediah Killgrave,² who is only too happy to adopt several of Sarah’s “special” kids. Killgrave uses his own mutant powers to brainwash the kids into a kind of adolescent terror cell, all so that he can gain access to the governor and brainwash him into green lighting an electric dam. Picture Magneto and then aim a lot lower.

One of Sarah’s kids, Rusty, runs away from Killgrave and tries to tell the adults about all the brainwashing and abuse, but he’s a kid with a troubled past, and no one believes him. Like Cyclops, Rusty has a destructive mutant power (pyrokinesis) that he struggles to control. Cyclops takes the kid under his wing, shows him that being a mutant can be kind of cool, actually, and slowly (oh so slowly) figures out what’s going on with Killgrave. Things come to a head and Killgrave attacks the orphanage, setting it on fire. With a healthy dose of PTSD from The Phoenix Saga, Cyclops screams “NEVER AGAIN,” rushes in, and saves the day. Alongside all this, Sarah and Cyclops are sort of falling for each other (human-mutant acceptance is Cyclops’s major turn-on), but he’s still not over Jean. Ultimately, this brief experience serves to remind Cyclops that there are many injustices in the world, and if he wants to correct them, he’ll have to do it as an X-Man.

As Cyclops returns to the mansion, there’s a sudden alert from Cerebro: Jean has been detected alive, somehow. Again, this must have been a very confusing watch in the middle of season 5.

The story has a few moments that could have elevated it if they’d been pursued—the backstory of Cyclops’s emerging powers or his angsty dream sequences about Jean, for example. Or even, hey, should kids be believed when they say adults are abusing them? Instead we get pretty straightforward Saturday morning cartoon fare about Kids In Trouble, and the lesson that Cyclops still cares about people. We’ve seen the show do a lot more with twenty minutes, that’s for sure.

Perhaps the episode’s biggest failing is that it doesn’t offer much of a coherent arc for Scott Summers. His assertion that he just doesn’t care anymore rings hollow, given everything we know about him. More specifically, Cyclops has that line about “quibbling children.” Most of this episode will take place at an orphanage populated by actual children, and yet somehow that line fails to pay off. This episode could have been so different. Maybe have Beast tag along to give Cyclops someone to play off of. This show doesn’t do well with solo episodes.

Stray observations:

• Killgrave has a dartboard with Daredevil’s picture on it.

• “Say hello to Mr. Summers,” Killgrave instructs the kids. “Hello Mr. Summers,” they all say in unison. Cyclops is starting to realize Killgrave’s nefarious nature, but what really tips him off is getting knocked unconscious by the kid in the wheelchair.

• We almost got through an episode without Wolverine, but he appears in the very last scene, albeit without any lines from Cal Dodd.

• This episode’s title is betrayed by the fact that there is, in fact, at least one mutant that is a literal island.