RECAP: X-Men 97 Season 2, Episode 6
We are now more than halfway through Season 2 of “X-Men ‘97,” and while I am enjoying the run, I have some concerns. Blitzing through storylines has always been an issue for this show — it was to a degree with the O.G. “X-Men” animated series as well — but one thing Season 1 did well was give us some moments to breathe, where the major status quo shifts could be at least addressed, if not appreciated. I don’t really feel like we’re getting that this season. A lot has happened since the time-travel shenanigans of the first four episodes. While this episode finally gave us some reaction to Magneto’s brutal death in Episode 4, we still haven’t had the entire team together to unpack the various insanity going on even dating back to Season 1. I get needing to move quickly to get as much into these nine episodes, but I do think they are sacrificing the impact of some very good story arcs by just speedrunning pretty much everything.
That said, I liked “X-Men ‘97” Season 2 Episode 6, “Danger.exe.” I’m a huge fan of the character that was given the spotlight, and while I’m not sure what we needed was MORE main cast members, I thought they did a great job reestablishing her with this group of characters, and making it clear that she is a full-scale badass.
Read on for my take on the episodel Warning: there WILL be spoilers! Read on at the end for speculation on where we may be going next, as well as some Easter Eggs based on someone who has been reading X-Men comics (and comics in general) since the mid-1980s.
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TOP 10: Characters We Want in “X-Men ‘97”
I’ll go through each character featured in this episode, from the most essential to the least.
Polaris
This episode was all about Lorna Dane, AKA Polaris, the Mistress of Magnetism. The original “X-Men” animated series established that Lorna was an X-Man, but left the team prior to the start of that series to be with her then-boyfriend, Iceman. (This is somewhat comics accurate, by the way; Polaris was one of the first characters to join the team after the original five, and she did date Iceman on and off.) The show also explained that Lorna had joined the government-sponsored mutant task force, X-Factor, which we saw rounding up young mutants earlier in this series.
This episode picks up with Polaris leading X-Factor’s mission against the Purifiers, a group of anti-mutant terrorists picking up a shipment of advanced weapons on a tanker ship on the high seas. Polaris displays some badass magnetism skills — although some not-great defensive instincts — and very nearly wipes out the group of would-be mass murderers until Havok and the rest of the X-Factor swoop in for the arrest. After the engagement, X-Factor Director Val Cooper admonishes Lorna, and warns her that people are already saying she’s the heir apparent to Magneto. I’d like to know how the world at large knows that Magneto is dead — did Charles hold a press conference to announce that? Regardless, Lorna tells Val to stuff it, and is promptly fired from X-Factor. She has a brief locker room confrontation with team leader Havok — in nothing but a towel, thank you animators — who may or may not be her boyfrend in this continuity (he certainly doesn’t act like it here), and basically tells the team to kick rocks.
Lorna then finds herself back at the X-Mansion, currently in the process of being rebuilt (I honestly forgot why the mansion was destroyed, but that happens at least once a month, so I guess it’s just Wednesday). Lorna’s bedroom is left exactly as it was when she left years ago, decked out in heavy metal accoutrements (having Lorna, a magnetically powered mutant, being a metal fan is a funny wink on behalf of the “X-Men ‘97” team; I don’t think that’s from the comics). She is welcomed back by the remaining original X-Men, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Beast, who inform her that they’re heading to Genosha with Professor Xavier. That feels strange, and the X-Men are weirdly not emotional about such a trip.
In short order Lorna finds herself interacting with Forge — also an X-Factor ex-pat — Bishop, and Storm, newly named headmaster of the reopening Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. And that school is back in session in a big way, because the Danger Room, the wildly advanced technological training area built into the school, has gained sentience and has evolved its protocols, putting the students into lethal danger in the goal of making them strong enough to survive in an increasingly hostile world.
Lorna is stuck in the malfunctioning Danger Room along with the students (among them Quentin Quire and Monet St. Croix, though they have yet to be named), defending them from the Danger Room along with Beast. Lorna puts up a hell of a fight and eventually the Danger Room — which fashions itself a body so that it can be personified — leaves to chase down Xavier in Genosha. Lorna follows suit and teams up with Charles, Beast, Cyclops, and Jean to take down Danger in a way that doesn’t make a lot of scientific sense, but it sure looked cool.
It looks like Polaris is now part of the core X-team, at least for the time being. As a Polaris fan from back in the 80s, I’m stoked. I’ve always found her a fascinating character, in part because she is wildly powerful but also deeply troubled. On that note, this episode makes it clear that, in this continuity, Lorna is the biological daughter of Magneto, a topic the comics have gone back and forth on over the years, but which has been confirmed for a decades now. Though that could change. Marvel loves retconning and re-retconning who is and is not Magneto’s biological children. I’m curious to see what they do with Polaris on the team. Again, I really don’t think we needed more team member, but if we’re getting one, I’m glad it’s her.
Professor Xavier
Fascinating episode for Chuck, and one that I think will have big implications for him in the future. The episode started with Xavier reliving Magneto’s death at the hands of Apocalypse over and over again via the Danger Room’s telepathic link. Charles says outright that if he was stronger, he would have fought and saved Magneto. This is implied to be the spark that causes the Danger Room to evolve and become relentless in its pursuits to strengthen mutants to survive.
That mentality continues in the ruins of Genosha, where Charles is forced to face the biggest failing of his dream. I’ll be honest, I forget if Charles was even present for any of the Genosha storyline in Season 1. I feel like he was off plant with the Shi’ar for most of it, and only returned after Genosha had been destroyed by the mega Sentinels. I still understand why Charles Xavier would feel a sense of responsibility for what happened, but it isn’t quite a direct line of responsibility, in my opinion. After Charles and the original X-Men dispatch Danger, he then informs the team — in new, modern matching outfits based on the Grant Morrison New X-Men team from the 2000s — that his dream must be evolve. The episode ends with Charles announcing via press conference that he has established X-Corp in a massive building in Genosha. What does X-Corp do? Is it legal for a group of people to just declare ownership on a country that was recently razed in a massive terrorist attack? Great questions, and we’ll have to wait until next episode to find out the answers. One thing is known: Val Cooper says the U.S. government is not on board with any of this. You know this show is set in the 1990s if the U.S. government is acting like it doesn’t have the right to do whatever the fuck it wants on foreign soil…
The major thing to take away this episode with Charles were his deep personal feelings of powerlessness over Magneto’s death, his repeated comments that he keeps searching himself for any shred of Magnus (weird thing to say, bro), and the sense of foreboding that accompanied many of his proclamations this episode. He sure seems to be taking a more active stance compared to his original dream of peaceful coexistence. Let’s see how this works out, shall we?
Danger
The Danger Room becomes Danger this episode, although I don’t think the character is ever referred to as such. Danger was introduced during the Joss Whedon X-Men comic run, which falls squarely outside the 1990s (that’s fine, many of the teen characters also featured this season are from the 2000s and beyond). The origin for Danger are simplified here, and I’m not sure it’s to the benefit for the character. In the comics, the X-Men discover that the Danger Room was always an A.I. consciousness that Xavier essentially enslaved to train his personal mutant army — not a great look for Chuck. Additionally, in the comics, the Danger Room fully becomes autonomous when one of the Xavier students accidentally dies while using it. That character, Wing, is featured in this episode, and is the kid who is seriously wounded when Danger starts acting up. It seemed to me that the show implied that Wing ultimately survived, which is an interesting choice, especially given how brutally the show killed off like three characters last episode.
Making Danger’s overriding purpose to push Xavier and students to their full potential is interesting, and it dovetails with the overall theme of this season vis-a-vis Apocalypse. I genuinely don’t understand how the X-Men ultimately succeeded in beating Danger here (Lorna generated an EMP blast, I guess?), much less how Danger was able to continually reform itself in the rubble of Genosha, but we’ll handwave that. Danger is an interesting character as both an adversary and as an X-Man, as she has served on several X-squads in the past. (Including one iteration of X-Factor led by, funny enough, Polaris.)
X-Factor
X-Factor got short shrift this episode. Val got some speaking lines, Havok had a brief towel-clad exchange, and Wolfsbane at least appeared on screen a couple of times. I don’t think Multiple Man or Strong Guy even showed up. That X-Factor team is one of my favorite line-ups, and I would love to see them get explored more — surely Lorna couldn’t be the only member with qualms about hunting mutant teens for the government. But as I alluded to before, this show really doesn’t have the space for any other characters.
Bishop
Bishop didn’t get a ton to do this episode, but there was an interesting moment when the Danger Room used its telepathic link to mine Bishop’s memories of the future to create a post-apocalyptic landscape. Like Forge, I worry that Bishop is going to struggle for screen time — and purpose — now that the time-travel shenanigans have been resolved.
Apocalypse
Speaking of time-travel shenanigans, the episode ended with Apocalypse making his first appearance in the present this season. We see him in Athens, Greece, activating a machine that transforms a shrouded body on a table. The body is charged with energy, is suddenly covered in playing cards, and they transform into Tarot cards, revealing a family, but changed face: it’s Gambit, back from the dead, and it looks like he’s going to be one of Apocalypse’s new Horsemen. But which Horseman will he be? And who will be joining him in the stable? We’ll find out more next week!
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SPECULATION SECTION
Spoilers, including for things that have not/may not happen in the future.
-Gambit being turned into one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen — specifically Death — is taken directly from the comics, where he was transformed during Peter Milligan’s Uncanny X-Men run. The little snippet show to us this episode implies that the show is taking much of the inspiration from that arc — it’s not surprising that the Horseman element of Gambit is also being explored again in the current Uncanny X-Men series by Gail Simone.
-Guess who else was one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen during that run? One Lorna Dane, AKA Polaris, who was transformed into Pestilence. This capped off a crazy run for Lorna (which is really saying something, because Lorna’s character has been THROUGH IT) in which she was de-powered, went fully batshit crazy, and was stalking Havok and his then-current human girlfriend (and her son). It’s possible they brought Polaris back into the team specifically to turn her into Horseman here, but that seems like a lot of work for fairly minimal payoff. Especially when there’s a much better option right there…
-Instead of Polaris, I’m hoping that Magneto is another one of the Horsemen. I’m still not convinced that Apocalypse actually atomized him in the distant past. That could have very easily been a teleportation burst instead. Given Magneto’s personal connection to Apocalypse, and their philosophical debates earlier this season, it just makes more narrative sense to me. Additionally, Charles would lose his mind (I mean, more than he already currently is) if that’s how Magneto was brought back. And I do think Apocalypse is deliberately targeting the X-Men’s emotions with his picks for Horsemen here (see: Gambit and the impact that will have on Rogue).
-Who will be the other Horsemen? There are a lot more dead from Genosha, and several of those characters were killed off either offscreen or with little fanfare. The Genosha episode last season, and this season’s trailer implied, that Iceman, Magik, Banshee, and Madelyne Pryor all died in Genosha. All of those characters have significant X-ties, and at least one (Banshee) has also been one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen in the comics. If he picked up Gambit’s corpse from the Genoshan wreckage, there’s no reason he couldn’t have gone on a shopping spree…
-A minor thing I enjoyed this episode was that Lorna was wearing a bracelet with a skull totem on it. I don’t know if this is true, but I suspect it is a nod to Malice, the psychic entity that possessed Polaris for a good chunk of the 1980s X-Men comics, turning her into a full-blown villain and the leader of Mr. Sinister’s Marauders. Malice was represented by Polaris wearing a choker with a skull totem on it. Some of her later outfits also incorporated the skull motif when artists were trying to make Lorna look cooler or more dangerous (she’s had a fascinating history with costumes).
What do you think of “X-Men ‘97”? Are you happy with Season 2 so far? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
