RECAP: X-Men 97 Season 2, Episode 7
After a couple of bummer episodes, “X-Men ‘97” Season 2 Episode 7 seemed to get back its groove. It felt like a team show again, after back-to-back character spotlight episodes. In fact, it did a good job putting the focus on the newer protagonists added to this series, and potentially added a new one to the mix as well.
Read on for my take on the episode, titled “Strange Land, Savage Heart.” 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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I’ll go through each character featured in this episode, from the most essential to the least.
Nightcrawler
Relatively new addition Kurt Wagner was the main focus of this episode, as his role of moral compass and ethical sounding board became quite personal. The episode kicked off his half-brother, human supremacist Graydon Creed (son of Mystique and Sabretooth), kidnapped by new mutant group The Acolytes of Magneto immediately after Creed announced his run for U.S. President.
Kurt was among the X-Men — alongside Beast, Rogue, Bishop, and new member Polaris — sent to rescue Creed from the Acolytes’ stronghold in the Savage Land, the prehistoric jungle zone that mysteriously exists in the Arctic Circle (it was previously shown in the original X-Men cartoon as a base of operations for Mr. Sinister and his mutates). As the X-Men approached in their jet, they were hit by a wave of energy that stripped all of them of their powers, and their plane crash landed.
Separated from Polaris and Bishop, a depowered Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Beast are rescued by Colossus, who vouches for his friends (had he previously met Nightcrawler on this show?) and offers them a tour of the Acolyte compound. Honestly, it seems like a pretty solid place, and Colossus mentions that they regularly receive new mutants joining their ranks, terrified of the world outside. There’s also a massive shrine to the mutants lost in Genosha, including Magik and Squid Boy.
The X-Men are given an audience with Creed, which is interrupted by Exodus. Nightcrawler makes an offer: since Graydon will never be held accountable by a human jury, put Graydon on trial in front of the mutants, with Exodus as the prosecutor and Nightcrawler the defense, with Colossus acting as judge. If Nightcrawler wins, Graydon Creed is free to go. If Nightcrawler loses, Nightcrawler will join the Acolytes. Exodus agrees.
After that we get “Law & Order: Savage Land,” which culminates in Nightcrawler arguing that Graydon is not truly responsible for his anti-mutant actions; he is haunted by what his terrible mutant parents did to him as a youth. It’s a specious argument. Colossus seems moved by the family component, but before he can issue his verdict, Exodus loses it and attacks Colossus — Ally McBeal would never, I’ll tell you that.
Just as he’s about to wipe out the X-Men, the inhibitor tower is destroyed, the X-Men get their powers back, and Nightcrawler and Exodus engage in a furious teleportation-enhanced sword fight. Exodus ends up on the ropes, and just as he’s about to press his attack, he is shot from behind by an escaped Graydon Creed, and it appears Exodus is dead. Nightcrawler then teleports his half-sibling into the icy wastes of the Arctic and leaves him there to receive whatever fate God has in store for him, but also making it clear that his sympathy for Graydon over his upbringing has been exhausted, and his half-brother is now on his own.
This was a strong Nightcrawler episode, showcasing not only his powers and his interpersonal relationship skills, but also his core character elements of faith, morality, and compassion. I’ve been concerned by how little we’ve gotten of Kurt in Season 2, but this episode convinced me that he’s doing just fine.
Colossus
Following in the footsteps of Nightcrawler and Polaris — two X-Men from the comics who appeared briefly in the original “X-Men” series, who were brought back this season to join the team — it looks as though Piotr Rasputin may soon be getting his own title card. In a flashback to the Genoshan massacre, we see Colossus watch in horror as his sister, Illyana Rasputin, AKA Magik, is killed by a mega-Sentinel. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t convinced that Illyana was dead dead, as suggested in the season trailer. Magik’s whole thing is teleportation and, well, magic. She has “died” several times before in the comics, and came back through various loopholes to become one of the most important X-Men of the last decade or so. But here we saw her actual corpse, which sure seems definitive. It is strange that she seemed to almost know what as about to happen, and she just…stood there. Girl, you can literally teleport in seconds. What are you doing?
Colossus joining the Acolytes as a reaction to the death of his sister is literally exactly what happened in the comics, albeit with slightly different specifics. First, Colossus has never been an X-Man in this continuity. He was a guest character in the O.G. series, but has never joined the team — in the comics, Colossus was on the roster pretty much from his debut in 1975 until he quit to join the Acolytes in the mid-90s. He is a central member of this team. So his heel turn here didn’t have quite the impact it did in the comics, but it was still very much in line with his character, which is overwhelmingly preoccupied with his family. (Except his jerk of a brother, but nobody cares about Mikhail — he’s the worst.)
I thought the characterization of Colossus here was solid, and his actions all made sense. At the end of the episode, he returned to the Xavier School with the X-Men, suggesting we have yet another new (and powerful) team member. That makes sense, as he beat the crap out of several Acolytes after Exodus tried to kill him, so…welcome to the team, big man.
Exodus
Exodus is a fascinating character who was introduced in the comics in the mid-90s, and never really given his due until the Krakoan Age storyline that ran 2018-2024. What you need to know about Exodus is that he’s massively powerful, powered by his faith, is impossibly old (centuries at least), and historically plays right-hand man to other powerful entities. In the comics, that started with Magneto, and ended with Hope Summers (long story, not sure if we’ll get there on this show). Here, he is inspired by Magneto’s death, but he is the clear leader of the Acolytes. That’s not really the way Exodus usually operates. Also, he sounds Australian or New Zealand, and Exodus is quite French. So that confused me.
I certainly hope that Exodus is not as dead as he seemed to be at the end of this episode. There’s potential there — as there is with the Acolytes, of which we also saw Uniscione, Amelia Vought, Random, Tempo, Rusty, Senyaka — and to have him sniped by a shot in the back would feel really lame for a character who, on paper, is tremendously powerful.
Bishop
Last week I worried that Bishop may struggle to find a role on this team now that the time-travel stuff has concluded (for now). He was great this episode, and I was engaged by the bit where he was being physically harmed by energy he had stored but which he could not release due to his powers being inhibited. I also liked the bits between himself and Polaris, and the super brief moment between him and Colossus (who was the only other X-Man present on his squad back when he was introduced in the early 90s).
Polaris
Speaking of Polaris, she had another strong episode. There definitely seems to be a flirtation happening between herself and Bishop — I’m intrigued by that pair — and she got a badass, mid-air rescue sequence even after she was depowered. They’re doing a great job making Lorna a real firebrand, and I’m loving this characterization for her. She’s serving the role Rogue did on the original series, which is helpful because Rogue herself is pretty down in the dumps this season. (Uderstandably.)
Professor Xavier
Charles wasn’t given a lot to do this episode, except get lectured by Val Cooper not once but twice about sending his mutant strike force to interfere with international affairs. Between this episode and the last — and the fact that we only have two episodes left this season — the conflict between the U.S. government and the X-Men is building to something big. The clip from Season 3 shown at San Diego Comic-Con last weekend gives us a clue as to what that is. Read the Speculation Section for more.
What is not clear is what, exactly, X-Corp is and what it does. I was hoping for at least a brief explanation of how X-Corp — established by Xavier at the end of last episode — differed from the X-Men, but we got nada. Context clues tells us this is a public-facing arm of the X-Men that is concerned with international mutant affairs. It would be great if the show actually told us that.
X-Force
The episode ended with a button featuring X-Force — Cable, Jubilee, Sunspot, Psylocke, Archangel — infiltrating Apocalypse’s base in Athens, Greece. The team is shocked to find a dessicated corpse of Apocalypse on an operating table, with a singed playing card nearby. Did Apocalypse’s newest Horseman kill his master off-screen? That would be an anticlimactic ending to that mega-arc. We’ll have to see what happens next episode, which is appropriately titled “Dead Man’s Hand,” and which will likely kick the Apocalypse and Horsemen arc into high gear.
SPECULATION SECTION
Spoilers, including for things that have not/may not happen in the future.
-The clip from Season 3 shown as SDCC featured the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants characters Pyro, Blob, and Avalanche fighting against specifically colored Sentinels. Those Sentinels sure look like the ones run by O.N.E., a government agency that essentially took over managing American mutants after the Decimation in the comics. The Decimation is an event in which a character who is quite familiar to MCU fans, but barely referenced in the “X-Men ‘97” continuity, cast a spell that wiped out the mutant abilities of all but 198 mutants, literally deactivating their X-Genes and turning mutants into an endangered species instead of the next evolution of mankind. It was a status quo that lasted for a shockingly long time in the comics. I don’t think we’re going to get the Decimation on this show — at least not any time soon — but I do suspect this Val Cooper/Xavier stuff is building toward Val creating the O.N.E. office, and Sentinels freely policing mutantdom. Graydon Creed may also play a role if he wins the presidency.
-That is, if this is Val Cooper at all. One of the suspicions from Season 1 of this show, which has continued to now, is that Val Cooper might actually be Mystique. There are a few hints to this fact, which have continued to Season 2 — I believe they showed her cat last episode, and that cat was connected to the Ultimate Universe version of Mystique. Mystique is a notable omission from this series so far, and I wonder if we’re going to get a combo of her playing Val Cooper and also launching Freedom Force, basically the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants working on behalf of the government (X-Factor before X-Factor became government stooges). That’s all strictly speculation.
-More speculation: I’m starting to suspect that all of our new recruits for the team are connected to Apocalypse’s new Horsemen. We know Gambit is a Horseman; that was confirmed the last two episodes. He’s connected to Rogue. I still think Magneto is going to end up being a Horseman, and Lorna is his daughter — emotional connection there. I wonder if Magik will end up being a Horseman, too. If Apocalypse could take Remy’s corpse from Genosha, why not also get a BOGO deal and also pick up Illyana’s? To be frank, a magic-empowered teleporter would be a hell of lot more useful than a guy who charges up playing cards — and it would give Colossus a close emotional tie. Finally, the previews for this season showed us Siryn, daughter of Banshee, who we also know died in Genosha, and who has also been a Horseman in the comics. Again, I have no spoilers on this. I just find it interesting that we have all these new members who are related to characters who have recently “died.”
What do you think of “X-Men ‘97”? Are you happy with Season 2 so far? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
