With all the back stories taken care of and a thirst for answers building in the aftermath of the attack on Genosha, it’s time for X-Men ’97 to build that all important momentum as it forges (no pun intended) toward its three-part climax. But before we do, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate how accomplished the series has been when it comes to tackling, what essentially is 9/11 for mutants. Apologies if such an analogy seems tasteless, but the fact that this seventh episode is willing to dig its fingers into the rubble left behind after a major tragedy proves that the show is trying to be much more than just a string of action sequences wrapped in nostalgia. The weight of the loss is keenly felt, either through funerals, open grief, cruel politicking and the continued search for survivors and it’s pretty impressive that an animated show would handle such a thing with a surprisingly delicate touch that still manages not to pull its punches.
But with that being said, another feeling that usually rears its head during such times is revenge – and that brings us to an enraged Rogue…
As mutants far and wide race to give their aide and condolences to those murdered by the Sentinel attack, those on site still trying to give aid struggle to process their many conflicting emotions. The X-Men has buried one of their own in the form of the self sacrificing Gambit; Magneto is lost, presumed dead and Rogue, who had something of a love triangle going on with both men, is desperate to get to the bottom of things.
But while she’s raiding General “Thunderbolt” Ross’ secret military base in order to discover the whereabouts of mutant hating political prisoner, Henry Gyrich, mutants such as Beast and Roberto de Costa are discovering the far reaching effects that will reverberate around their kind in the wake of such violence. Still, violence suits Rogue just fine and after her chat with Ross, her search later brings her face to face with Captain America who is also on the hunt for Gyrich in order to find the location of Sentinel inventor, Boliver Trask, but after Cap informs her that a team up isn’t on the card for political reasons, Rogue’s mood understandably begins to worsen.
Eventually, Gyrich is found and Rogue uses her mutant absorption powers to rip the info she needs from his memories, but after the X-Men track down Trask hiding out in Madripoor, hints that there are masterminds behind masterminds before Rogue commits a violent act she can’t take back.
However, it seems that death technically isn’t the end for Trask when his corpse suddenly resurrected as the latest model of Sentinel and hands the mutants their asses one at a time, a face from the future arrives to save the day.
But who is Bastion; and what plans does he have for the X-Men, the Sentinel programme and the previously thought dead Magneto?
While a good portion of “Bright Eyes” is dedicated to coping with the grief of a major tragedy, once the episode moves on we find that it shifts into a dark thriller laced with a spot of political intrigue as Rogue rockets across the country to beat several buckets of shit out of anyone who may be holding out on her. To prove this, the show does quite a cool thing by having cameos by two Marvel mainstays that stand as examples of how tolerant the American military machine can really be. So step forward the obsessive, Hulk hating General Ross to embody the harsher end of the spectrum while Captain America is there to stand for the more noble end – however, the twist is that neither Ross or Cap are willing or able to help even if their eventual goals are the same. In fact, there’s a certain amount of satisfaction when Rogue takes Captain America’s shield and hurls it as far as she can in a defiant act of spite.
However, the real shocks come thick and fast when X-Men ’97 starts to play fiendishly nasty as the true villain finally makes himself known in the form of Bastion who immediately makes his mark by smothering Gyrich to death in his bed and starts doing some creepy, serial-killer style shit to the tune to the song The Purple People Eater eerily playing on the radio. Sure, Genosha pushed the boundaries of show when it came to mass extinction, but when it comes down to dark and dirty murder, Bright Eyes plays surprisingly rough. Matters get even more murky in the moral areas when Rogue saves a raving Trask from committing suicide, only to drop him deliberately to atone for the countless deaths at the hands of his various creations and to Jubilee’s horror, no one seems particularly cut up about it.
Rogue has something of a salty past, what with her being raised as a super villain by her mother and her later romance with Magneto, but to see her go full vengence mode after seeing her as a plucky, super strong southern belle is a huge step in a worrying direction.
Or is it? Does Trask’s intent resurrection as a techno-zombie Sentinel upgrade mean that it’s technically no harm, no foul or will Rogue have to pay a piper once to smoke clears
That the smoke clears at all is thanks to a timely intervention by the time travelling Cable, who finally reveals his true identity to his father, Cyclops, who must have had it up to his optic beam spitting eyeballs with all the shocking revelations he’s had to weather recently. But it’s just the latest example of the showrunners lining up both sides for the hefty season finale that’s looming on the horizon and even Roberto da Costa has to deal with mutant related issues in an inversion of X-Men 2’s famous “coming out” moment. Here, Roberto is overjoyed that his mother had guessed of his mutant nature long ago and is perfectly ok with it, but his relief is soon scuppered by the fact this his parent’s company is going to close ranks on any mutant rumours in the wake of Genosha.
With the battle lines well and truly drawn, Bastion has one last surprise before we tumble into the three-part finale and the reveal that Magneto is his prisoner is a doozy. In fact, it’s a shrewd storytelling move to have the guy holding Mister Sinister’s leash close out the episode by creepily shaving a restrained Magneto as you essentially have one of the most powerful mutants in the X-Men cannon reduced to a damsel in distress and as a result, you just feel that Bastion is holding all the cards.
Still, with Cable joining the fray and Storm and Charles Xavier heading in from out of town (quite a long way out of town in Charles’ case), soon the board will be set in order to bring things to a close – thankfully, Bright Eyes moves the pieces beautifully.
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