Let’s Talk about X-Men Episode 1-10

When we last left the X-Men, part of the team had mutinied, joining forces with Magneto.

As Bastion controlled an army of Sentinels, some of them recently human, Magneto somehow did something worse.

The Master of Metal ripped the adamantium from Wolverine’s body, possibly killing him.

As the episode ended, Professor Charles Xavier prepared for a final battle with his longtime frenemy.

Let’s talk about X-Men ’97 episode 1-10, the one that somehow ends in days of future…and past.

Mind Meld

The action comes fast and furious at the start of the season finale. Everybody’s past talking by now.

After a brief scene showing how Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto revealed their Mutant natures to one another, they fought.

The battle occurred in Magneto’s mind, which Professor X invaded as an attempt to reset Earth’s magnetic fields. Yup, we’ve got stakes this week.

Magneto deems the action a violation, and he’s right. Then again, Magneto is trying to manufacture an extinction-level event.

Nobody’s wrong here, but from an ethical perspective, Xavier’s definitively on the side of the angels.

Alas, until the two men come to an understanding, they will remain in Magneto’s mind, which is collapsing upon itself. Stakes.

Speaking of which, we also catch a few images of the chaos unfolding across the planet.

Familiar faces from Marvel Comics like Daredevil, Moon Knight, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, and Pyslocke all try to save the day.

The recently awakened Omega Red also makes an appearance. It’s all hands on deck against Bastion’s Sentinels.

At a different location, Bastion himself stands with Mister Sinister’s and forces Cable to confess a painful truth.

Cable has attempted to stop Bastion 200 times thus far without success…and now he’s under Mister Sinister’s mind control.

Storm and Forge are captured in this area as well. It’s looking grim for our heroes.

At this point, Mister Sinister and Bastion disagree, as the latter individual breaks their agreement by trying to kill Cable.

Before this can happen, a heroine arrives to save the day. It’s Jean Grey as The Phoenix, and she’s not messing around.

Just like that, the tables turn, with Mister Sinister disintegrated via stripping the stolen DNA in his core in a bit of karmic justice.

The Two-Winged Angel

I’m about to make plenty of Final Fantasy VII/Sephiroth references, and if you’ve seen the episode, you know why.

Bastion loses like eight different boss battles during this episode alone, and he changes form each time.

After The Phoenix stops Bastion initially, he rips off Cable’s mechanical arm and beats the X-Man with it.

Then, Bastion ascends into his next form for the upcoming battle, and it’s as Sephiroth as something like this could be without being legally actionable.

As Bastion retreats, he develops a new plan. He will bring down Asteroid M on the planet, creating a different extinction-level event.

The X-Men stop this attempt as Rogue shouts, “His name was Gambit! Remember it!” Then, the two fight in outer orbit.

The outcome doesn’t matter, as President Kelly chooses to utilize the Magneto Protocols to launch a missile attack on Asteroid M.

Many of the X-Men are currently on Asteroid M. So, they’re screwed.

On the plus side, Charles is making some headway with Magneto, and Bastion has gone through a couple more forms.

Bastion’s starting to look like the cybernetic equivalent of a Botox addict.

On Asteroid M, the Mutants battle him again, with several impressive moves by people like Nightcrawler.

Alas, they cannot *bamf* their way out of the missile attack, but they do manage to stop Bastion, who gets buried by a Sentinel.

Soon afterward, another Sentinel arrives…and squashes Bastion.

Beast is driving this vehicle and makes a Trojan horse joke. Quality. They’ve used Beast perfectly this season.

At this point, Cyclops tries to persuade Bastion to join the X-Men, a misguided attempt, even by his standards. It…doesn’t work.

Bastion chooses the destruction of the Magneto Protocols rather than work with the Mutants, whom Jean Grey encases in a protective bubble.

The End of the Beginning

Once the missiles strike the asteroid, Earth’s fate appears sealed. However, the X-Men try to save the day.

The ones still on the space station try to work together to stop the asteroid from entering the Earth’s orbit.

At this point, a one-armed Cable recuperates in an empty diner when he receives a psychic visit from his parents.

Cyclops and Jean Grey say goodbye to their child, alerting him that they must make a noble sacrifice.

Cable shows a tender side by saying “those legends really didn’t do my folks justice.”

In the future, people still speak fondly of the heroic X-Men. Now that Cable has met his parents, he knows they’re even better.

This bit of closure isn’t enough, though. After all, the entire planet is about to die.

Beast’s plan appears likely to fail, but it’s at this point Charles reaches Magneto and convinces his friend to help.

Magneto stops the asteroid in orbit and pushes it away from Earth, averting catastrophe.

That’s not the strange part, though. The asteroid blinks out of existence, albeit not in an explosion. It just…vanishes.

Later that year, we cut to Forge, whose corkboard shows his mostly failed attempt to find surviving Mutants.

Bishop, who had previously left the team, enters Forge’s lab, a dangerous move since they’re strangers.

Forge threatens the stranger, but Bishop confides that they can find the X-Men. It’s less a question of where than…when.

Yup, we’ve got a time-travel story unfolding, and it takes place in two parts.

Days of Future and Past

Professor X, Beast, Rogue, and Nightcrawler discover themselves in the desert…of the distant past.

Specifically, the year is 3,000 BC, and they’re in Egypt. After a brief scuffle with the locals, the Mutants encounter someone new.

The person identifies himself as En Sabah Nur. Uh-oh. Oh, and Magneto is there, too. Hooray?

We find Cyclops 6,960 years later, in 3,960 A.D. He’s looking for Jean, who he’s relieved to find is with him. But they’re not alone.

An elderly woman introduces herself as Mother Askani, which instantly breaks the brains of longtime comic book fans.

Mother Askani leads the Clan Askani, who aren’t going to be enemies to the X-Men.

That’s because their psychic child, a kid named Nathan Summers, appears and vouches for his parents, whom he may or may not recognize.

Folks, Nathan Summers is the much older brother of Rachel Summers, who is also sometimes known as…Mother Askani.

Cyclops and Jean Grey have traveled millennia into the future to encounter their two children.

The “older” one, Nathan, is just a boy. The “younger” one, Rachel, is elderly. This is trippy.

Oh, and in a post-credits scene, Apocalypse appears and hints that he’ll raise Gambit from the dead to be his Archangel.

This also seems like a good time to mention that Rachel Summers’ reality is the setting for…Days of Future Past.

So, the finale sets the table for season two, which appears to be Apocalypse then, Apocalypse now, and Apocalypse later.

Days of Future Past also eventually leads to the creation of Nimrod. So, there’s that, too.

Final Thoughts

The pre-credits part of the episode ends with the Apocalypse revealed, followed by Beast saying, “Oh, dear.”

That’s the kind of subtle humor I adore, and it was omnipresent throughout the season.

Overall, I worried after a couple of episodes that an X-Men animated series wouldn’t work in the modern era.

Thankfully, as the season progressed, my fears evaporated as I grew more confident in the storytelling.

As is often the case with sweeping comic book stories, ambition and a need for splashy fight scenes led to some wrong turns.

Bastion’s many forms in the season finale were worse than the 45-minute boss fight with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Dude just kept coming back, and he looked more ridiculous each time. I could have done without the Transformers nonsense.

Still, the story remained true to the original 1990s series but somehow evolved the concept.

I was a big fan of this season overall and happily grade it as a solid A.

As an Apocalypse (and Cable) fan, I’m really looking forward to seeing where they go with this idea in season two as well.

 

Thanks for visiting MarvelBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below, and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond-Level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon!

Featured image: Marvel