Jonathan Dobres

Season 5, Episode 6. Air date: November 16, 1996.

I went into season 5 knowing that it was produced hastily, an effort to pad out the show’s run quickly and cheaply, even going so far as to enlist an in-house animation studio with a different (generally worse) visual style. So I wasn’t surprised to find an episode like “Jubilee’s Fairytale Theatre”, in which Jubilee gets stuck in a cave with some little kids. She keeps them calm and out of danger by telling them a fantasy story. The one she tells feels more like an episode of Gummi Bears than X-Men, and while it does make sense for her intended in-universe audience, it doesn’t for the show’s. I wish the episode had leaned harder into the idea that this is a story from Jubilee’s imagination, maybe let her run wild with her most ridiculous power fantasies. Instead, she’s an elf. The animation is rubbery and cheap looking, maybe the worst the show has ever looked. The only notable thing in this episode is the debut of the redesigned Gambit. He looks and sounds terrible, as Chris Potter has been replaced by the inferior Troy Daniels.

It’s a downgrade all around, folks. I suppose at the very least, the episode has a tiny character arc. Jubilee goes from complaining about having to play babysitter to doing a very competent job keeping the kids safe and unaware of how much danger they’re actually in. Jean (hi, Jean!) notes that she doesn’t sense any of the fear or trauma from the kids one might expect after spending a day in a slowly flooding cavern. Good for you, Jubilee.

Stray observations:

• This episode has a fair bit in common with Uncanny X-Men #153, in which Kitty Pryde calms down young Illyana Rasputin with a similar story (in the middle of the Dark Phoenix Saga, no less). It’s hard to say whether that issue directly inspired this episode, or if tropes like Professor Xavier as an all-knowing wizard are just kind of obvious.

• One of the peasants that elf-Jubilee rescues looks an awful lot like Longshot, but as there’s no other reference to him, that’s probably coincidence.

• The X-Mansion has vast caverns underneath it, as all cartoon mansions do.

• The kids leave via a school bus belonging to the Squillace School District, a reference to the show’s co-creator, Frank Squillace.

• On the toilet: Storm, Rogue, and Beast.