Hogan Reviews

My review of the first half of the Season can be found by clicking HERE.

X-Men’s animated series reaches what was clearly meant to be its conclusion with a four-part epic at the end of this season, the fact a fifth season was suddenly greenlit sadly only giving us a weaker actual finale, but that’s for next time (and I guess technically it’s now also not the actual finale?) Either way even the episodes leading up the final story were good as well, giving us an overall really strong Season. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Episode 13 “Family Ties” sees Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch of X-Factor receiving word that their father was ill, and as they visit him in hospital he admits that he wasn’t their real father and they were dropped off to him and his wife as children by a mutant midwife. The twins track down the midwife to “Mt. Wundagore” where she lives with other humanoid animal mutants under the “care” of the High Evolutionary. There she admits their mother was on the run from a Mutant and died shortly after childbirth. Meanwhile (and not coincidentally) Magneto arrives at the X Mansion and tells Prof. X that he believes his wife is still alive and heads to Mt. Wundagore despite knowing it was most likely a trap. As you’d imagine Evolutionary turns out to be a villain and after capturing everyone reveals Magneto was the twins’ father and the mutant their mother was running from, and he sadly admits this to be the case as his extreme views scared her. It added so many layers to Magneto as he grieved for his wife and apologised to his children, wanting to get to know them more, making him much closer to the comic version, straddling the line between villain and anti-hero.

“Hey I caught a Magneto! … Pokémon’s popular at the moment right?” “Sure, brother…”

Episode 14 “Bloodlines” features a very similar premise as Nightcrawler makes a return as he has received a letter from some mysterious people threatening to kill the mother he never knew about and wants the X-Men’s help. It turns out his mother is Mystique and she wishes to make amends with her son (like I said, similar premise!) but their reunion is cut short when the old “Friends of Humanity” mutant hate group attack them. Mystique is hurt saving Nightcrawlers life and end up split apart, the two not getting to properly connect. Again, it added a lot of layers to a character that up until this point had just been a generic villain. Episode 15 has the great title of “Weapon X, Lies & Videotapes” has Wolverine summoned to an old Weapon X facility and meet up with Sabretooth, Silver Fox and Maverick, all also former Weapon X members, and together they discover they’d have memories implanted in them during their conditioning. They eventually defeat a “Talos” robot together and then head their separate ways. It was fun to see all the Weapon X stuff and Wolverine’s past explored a bit, though that part of the character being over-done in the films takes some of the shine off it in 2024.

Uh-oh, Wolverine’s got a funky heard gear on! Time for a Weapon X flashback!

The classic Wolverine lore continues with Episode 16 “Lotus & The Steel” as Wolverine heads to Japan in order to learn to control his anger, meets a girl called Kisara and has to defend her village from bandits led by the Silver Samurai. So not the classic Wolverine/Japan story (we already had hints of that a few seasons ago) but still good fun. Episode 17 “Have Yourself a Morlock Christmas” is a light-hearted Christmas special that sees the X-Men feel sorry for the Morlocks and end up having Christmas dinner with them after helping save the Morlock known as Leech, and also sees Storm give back Morlock leadership to Callisto, which was a throwback to Season 1!

Silver Samurai is another one of those characters that just makes me think of Marvel vs. Capcom 2…

That leads us to the four-part finale, “Beyond Good and Evil”, which is another multiple time period sci-fi fest that I always enjoy. In 3999 Cable, his son Tyler and other resistance fighters believe they finally have Apocalypse beat as they’ve found out about his rejuvenation chamber and have it on good authority that he is currently sleeping but it turns out Apocalypse knew their plan and steals Cable’s time travel computer. As Apocalypse goes back in time he “knocks” a time travelling Bishop out of the time stream and into a strange dimension outside of time with a single annoying cartoony caretaker as company. Meanwhile Jean Grey and Cyclops are finally getting married and actually make it through the ceremony this time, only to get attacked by Mr. Sinister’s “Nasty Boys” after the fact, complete with Jean getting kidnapped. Meanwhile in 2050 Shard is worried about her father so goes back in time to the present and accidentally helps the X-Men save Professor X from Sinister’s clutches, and we the viewer soon find out he’s working for Apocalypse.

This continues in Part 2 as Oracle, the psychic of the Shi’ar Empire, is kidnapped by Apocalypse himself, which leads Lilandra to contact Xavier about it. Convinced it’s not a coincidence the X-Men begin to stake out other psychics around the world and that leads us to Psylocke, who breaks into Archangel’s castle and heads to a warehouse with his stuff. The two have a confrontation which then gets complicated when Mystique and Sabretooth arrive to capture Psylocke which leads to Wolverine and Shard arriving to stop them. As they all do battle Magneto appears and successfully kidnaps Psylocke and takes Mystique with him to Apocalypse, who is revealed to have set up shop in the same timeless realm as Bishop is stranded in. As you can tell its something of an “all-stars” story, which is why it was so obviously meant to be the actual finale…

Overall Thoughts:

There’s no mention of Psylocke being an English woman body-swapped into an Asian body, nor is her brother Captain Britain brought up… Probably better that way, honestly. Talk about unnecessary baggage!

Two good episodes focusing on villains’ families, two good Wolverine-centric episodes, an admittedly weak Christmas episode, and then a big four-part send-off using as many characters and plot threads they could manage (that ended up not being a send-off). Yep, the back half of Season 4 was really fun, and given the score of the equally fun first half I’d say Season 4 as a whole is also an easy 4, very close to a five, honestly. Now all that’s left is the final ten episodes… should be able to get that done and up before the new series begins airing next week! (still a weird thought in 2024…)

Part 3 of “Beyond Good and Evil” has Cable steal an older model Time Machine (at the risk of his son’s life) and heads to before Apocalypse used the chamber for the first time in ancient Egypt but is diverted and ends up at the X Mansion in present day. A good majority of the X-Men join up with Cable to head to Apocalypse’s chamber and when they get there they’re assaulted by Apocalypse’s original Horsemen. After a good battle or two it all turns out to be another trap and Mystique and Apocalypse snatch Professor X (and Wolverine by virtue of him jumping into the portal after them) while knocking everyone else out. Cable does destroy the chamber anyway but Apocalypse reveals (to the audience) that he is now immortal thanks to living in the Axis of Time so no longer needs it.

Bishop finds himself in the World Between Worlds decades before its invented. That’s time travel for you!

Apocalypse reveals his plan of using the immense power of all his gathered psychics to recreate the universe from the beginning in his own image, something that takes Magneto by surprise as he only joined up to have his wife resurrected. This leads to a battle between Magneto and Mystique against Apocalypse that nearly sees the immortal Mutant knocked into the void, but he manages to survive thanks to his Horsemen. He then defeats the duo with the help of Sinister, who reveals that within the Axis he can create anything he wishes and not have to wait for things to naturally develop over time so he’s fully on board Apocalypse’s new universe plan. As Magneto frees Wolverine and asks for his help Apocalypse raises the psychics into the air and begins his plan, but as Cable and the X-Men arrive to stop him Bishop sees the floating glass pods in the distance and decides something is up so he shoots one of the pods, freeing Psylocke, who then tells him to do the same to the others. As Wolverine defeats Sinister and destroys Apocalypse’s machine for good measure the now free psychics all combine their minds to send Apocalypse back to regular time without time travel and therefore condemning him to death due to the destruction of his chamber.

With everything settled everyone heads back to their respective time periods and the mysterious janitor is revealed to be Immortus, which was no doubt lost on me at the time but now I know more about Marvel lore I got it. Still a weird “reveal” given I don’t believe it was ever followed up on or anything! And there you go, a big all singing all dancing four-part finale using as many characters and series lore as they could manage without over-doing it. Great stuff.