When X-Men went into development for the Fox Kids Network, it didn’t take the writing staff (who was unfamiliar with the property going in) long to figure out that Wolverine was their ticket to television royalty. The character really took off in the 1980s and helped the X-Men storm into the 1990s as the most popular comic book in publication. Because the character was so interesting (and expertly brought to life by voice actor Cal Dodd), he had a tendency to soak up featured episodes. His long and mysterious history was an easy source to tap into for episodes about his adventures in Canada, Japan, or his past history with Team X and the Weapon X program. Because of the sheer amount of Wolverine content in that first series, it wasn’t a huge surprise to see the character deemphasized for the first season of X-Men ’97. Wolverine often found himself on the sidelines in that first season, but had a big moment in the penultimate episode when Magneto ripped the adamantium from his bones. Because of the structure of the first four episodes of the second season, Wolverine hasn’t had a ton to do since the first episode, but for the fifth episode he finally gets his time to shine.
Because I make these reviews spoiler free, it means I don’t get to react to big moments when it’s too hard to do so without spoiling what transpired. Let’s take it back one week for a second to acknowledge the climax of episode four when En Sabah Nur took on the mantle of Apocalypse and destroyed Magneto while allowing the rest of the time-displaced X-Men to return to the 90s. For Magneto, this is kind of like his third death already in the short-lived series which makes me think that this time it might stick. And perhaps it should? His arc feels complete when examined from the events of the first series up through this one. Magneto began as a rival and came to believe in Xavier’s dream as the best path forward for humans and mutants and gave his life in service to that. And while his body was essentially vaporized, there’s no death that can’t be undone for the world of comic books and their adjacent media. Because of that, it didn’t land with the thump that I think the episode wanted it too. I tend to think he’ll return either as Xorn, a horseman of Apocalypse, or through Onslaught, but perhaps the show should consider leaving him dead?
Back to this week. We have before us “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs” which is essentially a spiritual sequel to the original series episode “Weapon X, Lies, and Videotape.” It picks up where last episode left off when Wolverine received a dossier from Captain America and Black Widow and mentioned that he had assembled a team to investigate Weapon X. That team is revealed to be Morph (sporting the old Team X black and gold uniform), Lady Deathstryke (Erika Ishii), Maverick (Crispin Freeman), Sabretooth (Darin De Paul), and new-comer to the series, Garrison Kane (Ben Pronsky). They’re heading to a newly discovered facility where the old program seems to be back up and running and performing experiments on God knows what. And before the thing even gets started, it lets you know that this is a Wolverine episode as almost all of the clips in the opening title feature Wolverine. The only exception is the inclusion of the Morph/Sinister sequence (Morph also gets to deliver the “Previously,” line). Forge also makes his first appearance in the roll call, but we won’t be hearing from him or any other X-Men. This is all Wolverine and his merry band of mercs.
This new version of Team X will find itself stranded pretty early and the cause is some infected animals. They’ll soon find the facility they’re looking for and find it to be overrun with more infected creatures that reveal themselves to be alien in nature. The whole episode takes on a little bit of a horror/suspense vibe as they search a darkened facility littered with corpses and creatures lurking in the shadows. They’ll have to work together in order to survive, but there’s a lot of mistrust among this group, which should be expected. It’s basically the perfect recipe for a Wolverine centric episode. There are lots of moments for action, but also plenty of soap opera-like drama as who has more of that in their past than Logan? The only characters who don’t have some bad blood between them are Wolverine and Morph (J.P. Karliak), which just makes the rest look upon that pairing with further distrust. Deathstryke also takes to referring to Morph as Tomo, a loyal shapeshifting fox from Japanese folklore, which fits their characterization in this episode to a T. More than once, Morph is challenged to explain what their stake is in all of this, but the sly one is able to sidestep such questions, but is also exposed to a different side of Wolverine. One that the rest of this crew is all too familiar with.
There’s a lot of good character stuff in this one. Because we are dealing with Wolverine, a character not exactly known for being an open book when it comes to his feelings, the episode has to peel back layers on Wolverine via the other characters in his orbit. It can’t rely on exposition like it has done in that past and I think that makes for a better episode. He’s clearly in a state of flux, lost because he’s not the same person he was following his encounter with Magneto. He reacts when an attack with his bone claws fail to take down a polar bear like a defeated man. When Sabretooth notices the bone claws, Wolverine is cagey about what happened and Morph looks on him with pity. The other characters are the first to figure out that this so-called mission is far more personal in nature for Wolverine than he let on and Morph has to confront that. Morph admires Wolverine for the man he is, but Wolverine seems to only view himself as a weapon. Someone who can do the dirty work and spare his friends and comrades from the same. Credited writer Anthony Selliti should be commended for how well crafted this one turned out. There isn’t a neat and tidy finish to it either as there is definitely some rifts forming and I wonder if the remaining three episodes (yes, only three which is such a pity) will even have time to deal with the fallout here. It would be nice for Morph to eventually get their own spotlight episode.
I am a sucker for these kinds of Wolverine stories so I really enjoyed this one. It was nice to see the episode stay here too. X-Men ’97 moves fast, but by not jumping around the pace feels a lot better this season. I suspect some comic purists will be less pleased than I as we have a bunch of different plots being repurposed to serve this one. And maybe there should have been more episodes placed between this one and last season’s penultimate episode, but I’m okay with it. I may be less okay with it if this episode isn’t really followed up on in a meaningful way, but I don’t think that will be the case. Even if it’s not as soon as next week as I expect we will be dealing with more of last week’s fallout. However, given the episode title of “Danger.exe” we may be in for our first full squad episode of the season. And it only took six episodes to get there.
Previously…on X-Men ’97:
X-Men ’97 – “Rise of Apocalypse: Part 2”
Unlike the first three episodes of season two of X-Men ’97, this fourth one is going to spend all of its time in one era. And as you could probably guess, that era is 3,000 BCE since that is where we left off last week. I consider these reviews that I do spoiler free, but…
X-Men ’97 – “Rise of Apocalypse: Part 1”
The premiere episode for season two of X-Men ’97 took us to the far off future where Apocalypse reigns supreme. The second followed that one up with a story set in the present time of the series: 1997 (Duh!). Now, for the third episode of this three-part premiere we head to ancient Egypt to meet…
X-Men ’97 – “A Force to be Reckoned With”
The title of this post says X-Men ’97, but in some respects it should read X-Force ’97 because that’s what the opening title presents. Yes, boys and girls, we have ourselves an X-Force on television. Cable made numerous appearances in the original series, but never as the leader of X-Force. This surprised me as a…
The Nostalgia Spot 