There comes a time in all superhero stories where the villain finally gets to step out of the shadows and spread their wings in order for their nefarious plans to rumble into action. With that in mind, episode 8 turns its harsh spotlight fully on Bastian, the smug, bearded big bad mastermind who has been revealed as the author behind the devastating attack on the mutant nation of Genosha which claimed untold lives.
However, unless you’re fully clued up on your X-Men history, Bastion may not sound like the most rousing of villains to be the one to bring mutants to their knees. Thus it’s down to the first part of Tolerance Is Extinction to build this little known (but hardly lesser) foe into a major player in the X-Men’s rogue gallery.
So, does it manage it and elevate a bad guy who isn’t as familiar to casual viewers as the likes of Magneto, Mister Sinister, or Apocalypse, or does Bastion remain with the likes of Sauron, Mojo or Black Tom?
Well, if we’re grading him by sheer amount of fucked up shit; Bastion’s doing pretty well on points.
Bastion’s insanely far reaching plans manage to sprout another arm when he takes his knowledge of Charles Xavier’s not-deadness and leaks it to the press which immediately causes and angry mob to surround the X-Mansion who think that the mutant leader is in league with a possibly hostile alien race. However, the X-Men manage to gain some desperately needed intel from Cabel when he turns up with info on Bastion from the future and has a tearful reunion with his father on the side.
However, when Cable, Cyclops and Jean Grey go to scope out his childhood home, the full scale of his plan is revealed thanks to a complicated origin story that’s needlessly complex even for an X-Men character. Essentially brought into being by the time traveling essence of the super Sentinal known as Nimrod (told ya), Bastion had merged the work of both Boliver Trask and Mister Sinister in order to create a grotesque new model of sleeper Sentinel that comes from the techno-organic virus created by the later. The result are people who have no idea they’ve actually been turned into Sentinels, suddenly turning into killing machines once Bastion gives the order and before you know it, people all around the globe are suddenly turning into superpowered, zombie-like killers and some of them are even close to the X-Men.
With the X-Men suddenly on the defence, Bastion’s future of a human utopia built on mutant slavery seems all but assured; but when a guilty Dr. Cooper lets Bastion’s go, the future of everyone is soon in question.
But who is Bastion’s prisoner, I hear you ask? Well, it’s only motherfucking Magneto, who is understandably pissed beyond all reasonable doubt.
Despite floating around being a pain in the X-Men’s ass since the mid-90s, Bastion hasn’t actually managed to crack the upper echelons of mutant supervillainy most because he’s never been the antagonist of a X-movie yet (always the quickest and easiest way to become a household name), but judging by now hard episode 8 pushes his dastardly nature and the abject horror of his plan, it’s obvious that the writers of X-Men ’97 really see gold in the smugly sadistic master planner. He’s already murdered arch racist Henry Gyrich in his bed, turned Trask into a black-faced, robo-zombie and pulled some prime psycho shit with a captive Magneto as he shaved his face while whispering taunts in his face, but this episode sees his plan go live with spectacular results. It helps that we see he’s in bed with the likes of Baron Zemo and Doctor Doom (figuratively speaking, or course), but the real winner is the sheer creepiness of his plan as it goes full body horror. Watching Bastion’s own mother suddenly turn into a jerky-limbed weapon of mass destruction is freakish enough, but the fact that these secret Prime Sentinel don’t know they’ve been infected and contains the likes of Beast’s girlfriend, Trish Trilby, amount their number, raises the stakes through the damn roof.
Suddenly, our heroes are squaring up to friends and neighbours who can re-attach severed limbs and suddenly sprout huge blue tongues for probably no other reason than it’s just fucking weird. However, it also means we get some of the most satisfying action we’ve seen in the season so far as the show make room for some magnificent, fist-pumping moments that launch into superhero nirvana. The sight of Cyclops, Jean and Cable erupting from an exploding X-Jet in a Porsche while zapping Prime Sentinels out of the sky may be insanely badass, but even this is eclipsed by the sight of Wolverine (who has been strangely quiet this season) plummeting through the sky, hacking up his foes as he falls. But wait – it gets better! While it might not initially sound as cool as the Porsche thing, the image of Wolvie fighting back to back with Nightcrawler who wields not one, not two, but three swords with the help of his prehensile tail, may be one of the flay out coolest setpieces the franchise has ever seen.
However, while we finally seem to hit a ceiling when it comes to the expansive, thrilling action, that’s nothing compared to Magneto’s act of ultimate vengeance after a penitent Cooper frees him while uttering the damning statement “Magneto was right”. If you thought that the master of magnetism was something of a drama queen before, nothing will prepare you for Magneto flying to one of the planet’s poles (dressed only in a fucking pair of underpants) to use his vast abilities to screw with the entire planet and shut down the Earth with a gargantuan electromagnetic pulse.
While the ensuing blackout ensures another round of Marvel cameos from Spider-Man to Omega Red as the world reacts to a global shutdown, it seems that things couldn’t be bleaker for our team of photogenic mutants – but that usually means it’s time for a last second twist and while the melodrama prone Magneto wins out when it comes to scale, he’s outdone when it comes to timing. That’s right, when things look their worst (and only when they look their worst), Charles Xavier returns from outer space only to crash into the already ruined X-Mansion to make the maximum amount of entrance.
Still, it’s all worth it once he removes his weird, mantis shaped space helmet to enigmatically utter his signature phrase (all together now) “To me, my X-Men”. However, while this seems to be the signal that things will start to turn around, I’d like to remind you that this is only part one of the three part finale and so there’s still plenty of time for things to get worse.
But that’s the thing about X-Men ’97, it’s now cooking on so much gas, the worse things get, the most excited you become so here’s hoping the next episode pours on the hurt.
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