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More review & thoughts on the 3 part finale:
My final grade of the show as a season is B. There is enough goodness in it to avoid being tagged as average at B-, but too much wasted potential or busy plots to really evolve it past B+ territory beyond a few standout episodes. Maybe season 2 will make this look better. X-MEN EVOLUTION wasn't "great" until the end of their second season, which was around episode 29 or so. But that show had deeply developed characters who were well fleshed and defined, so one could forgive some of the mundane or weak plots because the characters in them were worth following anyway. W&TXM was nothing without it's fights and sagas. Maybe that is what the X-Men have been in the past, but I did wish to see a better blend of the event-style stuff of the 90's show with the deep rich pathos of Evolution. This season didn't accomplish that balance.
It is a frustrating show to review and watch, but this show IS a good show, better than average and better than many on TV, including BATMAN BRAVE AND THE BOLD. It isn't a great show, not yet anyway, and especially not when SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN is airing. It isn't the animation or the acting that are hinderances; in fact both are highlights. It's the writing that needs to step up.
Meanwhile, awkwardly paced in a future that almost doesn't matter anymore, Future Wolverine, whose hair is a little spikier and his clothes a little holier ("Full of holes, y'know, holy" as Robin said in BATMAN FOREVER) shows up to rescue Xavier and his team from Master Mold. He's backed up by the only team he seems able to tolerate and lead most efficiently; a half dozen clones of HIMSELF. That's right, if you thought X-23 was awesome before, then SIX of her has to be X-AWESOME, huh? Logan even calls one "Laura". What a shock, an L name. As one of the many people who was hardly thrilled with X-23 back in Evolution and has seen her as a waste of a character years later, I was only mildly annoyed. With Logan turning the tide of battle at their darkest hour like Optimus Prime, Future Xavier asks him what was the missing strategy that doomed the world twenty years ago, the one detail they missed. Future Logan sighs and replies, basically, himself.
That's right, folks, the entire crux of the future is that Logan chose not to trust Frost at a key moment, and that doomed the world to Pheonix's wrath. How that exactly led to Master Mold then running the world only makes sense to those seeking a No-Prize from Marvel Editorial. Furthermore, how did any of this mean it was a good idea to have Logan lead the team rather than, say, Beast, who was already at the damn Mansion? Any X-Man would have just followed whatever orders Future X gave them, and I dare say Beast would have been far more level headed. While he did sort of co-lead with Logan the first few episodes, by episode 5-6 he started taking a back seat as the roster expanded, and that still continued. I suppose with Pheonix having killed the X-Men and most of Genosha, that left no one to oppose Master Mold when she returned, but that really is a shoddy way to try to connect two completely unconnected storylines. It's stretching at best. And what is better is that Future Xavier isn't even perturbed to hear that; he's all like, "well, dem's the brakes, let's take out Master Mold and try to leave a vague hint for your past self". And so with barely any juice in his Cerebro contraption, Future X leaves Logan a message of "trust" before fizzling out.
Back at the Clubhouse, Frost leads her dynamic duo alongside Cyclops against her teammates, and they are quickly overwhelmed. Frost surrenders after Selene holds Scott hostage with her lifeforce draining powers, and seeks to crush their spirit by revealing that Frost and the Cuckoos were the ones who caused Jean to "explode" a year ago, that Frost deliberately planted the comatose Xavier on Gensosha so she could "earn" her spot on the team by finding him, and that she was a mole all along. Saddened, Scott mumbles, "was everything a lie?" and Frost regretfully replies, "Not everything." Unfortunately, contrary to Frost's wishes, Shaw asked the Cuckoos to continue with the process of unlocking the Phoenix from Jean without Emma's assistance, and quickly the five are possessed by the Phoenix, donning costumes that will be of no importance to anyone who isn't an X-Men fan and homaging either WARSONG or ENDSONG from the comics. This caves the roof around everyone and scatters the Club; before the final sacrifice, Frost once again has some of the few genuinely touching and powerful moments of the finale to herself when she moves near Cyclops' semi-conscious body and begs him not to leave her. By now, though, Jean is awake and very pissed off at Frost. She uses her TK to bind Frost to a wall with some metal pipes, and the two ditch her to try to stop the Phoenix. Jean is prepared to sacrifice herself to stop the Phoenix's wrath, a plan that Cyclops deems out of the question, as he naturally seeks to destroy the entity himself.
They leave Frost behind, and I did like that the show got her powers right, nothing that her diamond form makes her invulnerable, but not any stronger than she normally is (only strong enough to move in her diamond form). They also stated specifically a few times over the course of the show that Frost can't use her telepathy in diamond form; see, explaining powers doesn't have to be THAT hard. At this point Logan shows up and in a scene heavily edited, considers either leaving Frost there or outright murdering her. In the end, Future Xavier's vague hint seems to do the trick, as he decides to "trust" Frost, perhaps as Cyclops once did.
The X-Men meanwhile fight off the Sentinels, although the scene where they announce their hunt against humans was pretty good and dramatic, a nice role reversal of the horror that they deal to mutants. Despite Magneto controlling them, the Sentinels put up no more fight against the X-Men than usual, and most of the X-Men can down at least one by themselves at this point (unlike "Backlash", when they seemed to barely be able to handle about five). Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler probably get some of the most memorable sequences, and Rogue "borrows" some of Iceman's powers in mid-battle to save a falling Beast from one of Magneto's attacks. You would think this would have some extra oomph, a founding X-Man once again dueling the Master of Magnetism, but nope, just mundane, no time for that stuff. The Phoenix then comes out of nowhere and starts smashing both Sentinels and Magneto alike, with only Quicksilver saving Magnus from a nasty fall. Having been dwarfed by their power, Magneto finally has some remorse for his decision, even if he really had NOTHING to do with the Phoenix and could never have anticipated it. His escalation of the Sentinel war had NOTHING to do with Frost kidnapping Jean and the Club unleashing the Phoenix; NOTHING. The only connection you could claim is the X-Men maybe would have been able to stop the Club had they not been preoccupied by Sentinels, but again, that is a friggin' stretch to connect two unrelated stories.
To Cyclops' credit, he genuinely tries to blast at Phoenix and to destroy it, but of course he is swatted aside by the Cosmic PMS Bird rather easily. I mean there's no way anyone can really stop it if they aren't a powerful psychic. Seeking to undo her sins, Frost takes the absorbing blow for Jean, sucking the power away from her Cuckoos and containing it into her diamond form. Saying a final farewell to Cyclops, she starts to crack and then shatter into pieces, on screen. To say it was a sad end for her is an understatement. Her only crime was falling in love with a completely unworthy man, who only saw her as a means to an end to find his REAL girlfriend. To this day I have no idea what the hell Frost saw in Cyclops, only that she had far better chemistry with him than Jean, or any character had with him really. She was the only one who didn't abandon him emotionally, or who not only wanted to actually understand Cyclops' pain, but was willing to actually do something to, gasp, remove it from him, rather than just giving lectures or ignoring him. While Cyclops did trust her, in the end he's too busy hugging Jean to give more than an over-the-shoulder look at Frost's demise. The X-Men don't seem to mourn her loss or sacrifice a scene later, either. They're all like, "Hooray, we saved the world, our token red-head, and Zordon is pleased with us! Milk-shakes for all!" And that has been a problem for me with this series; these are the least compassionate X-Men ever. Angel has turned into a vicious warrior and aside for one scene with Logan and Storm, the rest don't even care. Kitty and Kurt used to have some sort of dynamic with Colossus at the start of the show; yet never in the heat of a hard battle does either kind of mumble, "Isn't it shame that Piotr's not here?" No one on the X-Men beyond the INNER CIRCLE MOLE gave two turds about Cyclops even when he was borderline suicidal. And now Frost saved the world at the cost of her own life, and a second later it's as if she was just bruised or something.
In fact, the notion of Rogue forgiving Logan for abandoning the team from the start of the season, which should be a big, grand moment, instead almost feels tacked on, included by obligation, and is over in about ten seconds. Considering this was one of the show's interesting and rarely developed character conflicts, it seemed a bit wasted to be resolved so quickly and cleanly. There simply may not have been enough time, but that is my point; there could have been if this stuff was paced differently, if this sort of stuff wasn't seen as a hinderence to action or a complicated storyline.
You can't sacrifice emotion and character interaction for action spectacules. Without that investment, even the best action will feel flatter or less important than it should. Some things you can't shortcut.
The future team manages to fight Master Mold (trading Hellion for Polaris), but aside for some nice power moves it doesn't add much to the story but more smashing, which is fine enough, but nice smashing still has to have a point. Despite having 26 episodes instead of 13 for a season, this finale seemed very crammed.
Future Xavier/Zordon (I'm sorry, he looks SO much like Zordon sometimes) congratulates the X-Men and of course Wolverine for saving the world, but warns that while the future is free of Master Mold, there now is a new threat to have to deal with; the Age of Apocalypse, where floating pyramids hover over cities, Mr. Sinister and Cyclops are his right hand agents, and Apocalypse's head looks like Kingpin's with facepaint. A mostly good and faithful rendition of the design I suppose, which may get better when the animators have more practice with it; I just thought his head looked awkward. EVOLUTION's Apocalypse had a more unique design, but everyone wants the awesome shoulderpads, the grey tubing, and an "A" somewhere.
Frankly, the whole Future Xavier thing seemed like the ghost of a former draft that should have been removed. It basically took a lot of drama and pressure of Logan actually leading the team, because he didn't really lead it. He followed Xavier's orders. It seemed a way of the crew wanting to have their cake and eat it to; removing Xavier to give a reason why Logan has to rally the team without Cyclops or Storm, but still keeping him for vital exposition or Logan ego rubbing. It didn't work as well as it could have. And now the hint that they will basically be doing the same thing again, only swapping Master Mold for Apocalypse, seems kind of lazy. Hopefully Future X is dispatched quickly, thus forcing the X-Men to actually operate without him.
Scarlet Witch takes over Genosha, and has Blink banish Magneto and Quicksilver from it. Presumably they will be leading the other Brotherhood mooks in Season 2.
And for those who look at the Age of Apocalypse from the comics and go, "Gee, this will be a big thing for Cyclops, as he was undermining Apocalypse from within and was uber pivotal at the end, and it likely won't be Good Wolverine vs. Evil Cyclops like many of you haters fear", all I say is that you are horribly naive. This show has bent over backwards to prove that Wolverine is physically and morally superior to every X-Man possible, especially Cyclops. This show would give nothing less than to have a clear cut example of Good Wolverine vs. Evil Cyclops, and I doubt AOA will be a temptation they will resist. We may get a cool fight out of it, at least. If this season has proven anything, is that this is a show for those who think character development is for sissies, that the real game is sagas, punching, and sagas that involve punching. Whatever character focus and development there is must come after the checklist of "events" have already happened.
The characters that were well fleshed to the point of being understood, even if not always sympathetic, were Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Frost, Cyclops, Scarlet Witch, and Magneto. To a lessor extent, Angel, whose fall from grace was properly developped, and Rogue was fine until about 2/3rds into the season when she rejoined the X-Men and then did little else. Everyone else had some defining moments and some fun lines now and again, but weren't as defined. Despite an origin episode, Storm was almost a non-entity. Jean was a walking Maguffin.
The finale was in a Catch 22 in a way. Had they killed off Jean rather than Frost, it would have been truer to the current comic dynamic, and left Scott with a better developed girlfriend for season two, but it would have felt flat because Jean wasn't enough of a character (even if Jennifer Hale played her exceedingly well) to care about. Having sacrificed Frost for a twist gave us a death that had more punch and meaning, but left us with a stale, boring romantic couple, and a Cyclops who, intentionally or not, appears to be a cad. In the comic books, naturally, Frost was shattered but was saved; her psyche was still floating about, and Jean used TK to piece her together (albeit with budding Phoenix power), so considering this wasn't the end for Frost in the comics, it may be possible that she will return in Season 2. Criag Kyle likes "dark chicks" in that way, such as Enchantress, and I can't imagine him leaving Frost dead forever in a series he has a lot of creative sway over. It would have been far more interesting to have Scott move on with Frost rather than always fall into Jean's arms. It was bittersweet when they basically did the same thing in X-MEN EVOLUTION, although Rogue's crush wasn't as blatently obvious as Frost's love was here (Rogue was more introverted). Despite Hale's performance, I have little interest in Jean, and Season 2 will be an uphill battle to prove why she was more deserving of a future than Frost, considering she spent much of the season off camera, or with amnesia, or wrathing in agony to unleash the Threat of the Month.
Plus, what was the point of the Hulk fight episode, beyond fan *******? Why out of anything to have Nightcrawler fight for two episodes, was it Mojo? Why did we need two Weapon X episodes when only one was good? And as much as I may have enjoyed the Silver Samurai episode, that one really does look like filler now.
That's right, folks, the entire crux of the future is that Logan chose not to trust Frost at a key moment, and that doomed the world to Pheonix's wrath. How that exactly led to Master Mold then running the world only makes sense to those seeking a No-Prize from Marvel Editorial. Furthermore, how did any of this mean it was a good idea to have Logan lead the team rather than, say, Beast, who was already at the damn Mansion? Any X-Man would have just followed whatever orders Future X gave them, and I dare say Beast would have been far more level headed. While he did sort of co-lead with Logan the first few episodes, by episode 5-6 he started taking a back seat as the roster expanded, and that still continued. I suppose with Pheonix having killed the X-Men and most of Genosha, that left no one to oppose Master Mold when she returned, but that really is a shoddy way to try to connect two completely unconnected storylines. It's stretching at best. And what is better is that Future Xavier isn't even perturbed to hear that; he's all like, "well, dem's the brakes, let's take out Master Mold and try to leave a vague hint for your past self". And so with barely any juice in his Cerebro contraption, Future X leaves Logan a message of "trust" before fizzling out.
Back at the Clubhouse, Frost leads her dynamic duo alongside Cyclops against her teammates, and they are quickly overwhelmed. Frost surrenders after Selene holds Scott hostage with her lifeforce draining powers, and seeks to crush their spirit by revealing that Frost and the Cuckoos were the ones who caused Jean to "explode" a year ago, that Frost deliberately planted the comatose Xavier on Gensosha so she could "earn" her spot on the team by finding him, and that she was a mole all along. Saddened, Scott mumbles, "was everything a lie?" and Frost regretfully replies, "Not everything." Unfortunately, contrary to Frost's wishes, Shaw asked the Cuckoos to continue with the process of unlocking the Phoenix from Jean without Emma's assistance, and quickly the five are possessed by the Phoenix, donning costumes that will be of no importance to anyone who isn't an X-Men fan and homaging either WARSONG or ENDSONG from the comics. This caves the roof around everyone and scatters the Club; before the final sacrifice, Frost once again has some of the few genuinely touching and powerful moments of the finale to herself when she moves near Cyclops' semi-conscious body and begs him not to leave her. By now, though, Jean is awake and very pissed off at Frost. She uses her TK to bind Frost to a wall with some metal pipes, and the two ditch her to try to stop the Phoenix. Jean is prepared to sacrifice herself to stop the Phoenix's wrath, a plan that Cyclops deems out of the question, as he naturally seeks to destroy the entity himself.
They leave Frost behind, and I did like that the show got her powers right, nothing that her diamond form makes her invulnerable, but not any stronger than she normally is (only strong enough to move in her diamond form). They also stated specifically a few times over the course of the show that Frost can't use her telepathy in diamond form; see, explaining powers doesn't have to be THAT hard. At this point Logan shows up and in a scene heavily edited, considers either leaving Frost there or outright murdering her. In the end, Future Xavier's vague hint seems to do the trick, as he decides to "trust" Frost, perhaps as Cyclops once did.
The X-Men meanwhile fight off the Sentinels, although the scene where they announce their hunt against humans was pretty good and dramatic, a nice role reversal of the horror that they deal to mutants. Despite Magneto controlling them, the Sentinels put up no more fight against the X-Men than usual, and most of the X-Men can down at least one by themselves at this point (unlike "Backlash", when they seemed to barely be able to handle about five). Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler probably get some of the most memorable sequences, and Rogue "borrows" some of Iceman's powers in mid-battle to save a falling Beast from one of Magneto's attacks. You would think this would have some extra oomph, a founding X-Man once again dueling the Master of Magnetism, but nope, just mundane, no time for that stuff. The Phoenix then comes out of nowhere and starts smashing both Sentinels and Magneto alike, with only Quicksilver saving Magnus from a nasty fall. Having been dwarfed by their power, Magneto finally has some remorse for his decision, even if he really had NOTHING to do with the Phoenix and could never have anticipated it. His escalation of the Sentinel war had NOTHING to do with Frost kidnapping Jean and the Club unleashing the Phoenix; NOTHING. The only connection you could claim is the X-Men maybe would have been able to stop the Club had they not been preoccupied by Sentinels, but again, that is a friggin' stretch to connect two unrelated stories.
To Cyclops' credit, he genuinely tries to blast at Phoenix and to destroy it, but of course he is swatted aside by the Cosmic PMS Bird rather easily. I mean there's no way anyone can really stop it if they aren't a powerful psychic. Seeking to undo her sins, Frost takes the absorbing blow for Jean, sucking the power away from her Cuckoos and containing it into her diamond form. Saying a final farewell to Cyclops, she starts to crack and then shatter into pieces, on screen. To say it was a sad end for her is an understatement. Her only crime was falling in love with a completely unworthy man, who only saw her as a means to an end to find his REAL girlfriend. To this day I have no idea what the hell Frost saw in Cyclops, only that she had far better chemistry with him than Jean, or any character had with him really. She was the only one who didn't abandon him emotionally, or who not only wanted to actually understand Cyclops' pain, but was willing to actually do something to, gasp, remove it from him, rather than just giving lectures or ignoring him. While Cyclops did trust her, in the end he's too busy hugging Jean to give more than an over-the-shoulder look at Frost's demise. The X-Men don't seem to mourn her loss or sacrifice a scene later, either. They're all like, "Hooray, we saved the world, our token red-head, and Zordon is pleased with us! Milk-shakes for all!" And that has been a problem for me with this series; these are the least compassionate X-Men ever. Angel has turned into a vicious warrior and aside for one scene with Logan and Storm, the rest don't even care. Kitty and Kurt used to have some sort of dynamic with Colossus at the start of the show; yet never in the heat of a hard battle does either kind of mumble, "Isn't it shame that Piotr's not here?" No one on the X-Men beyond the INNER CIRCLE MOLE gave two turds about Cyclops even when he was borderline suicidal. And now Frost saved the world at the cost of her own life, and a second later it's as if she was just bruised or something.
In fact, the notion of Rogue forgiving Logan for abandoning the team from the start of the season, which should be a big, grand moment, instead almost feels tacked on, included by obligation, and is over in about ten seconds. Considering this was one of the show's interesting and rarely developed character conflicts, it seemed a bit wasted to be resolved so quickly and cleanly. There simply may not have been enough time, but that is my point; there could have been if this stuff was paced differently, if this sort of stuff wasn't seen as a hinderence to action or a complicated storyline.
You can't sacrifice emotion and character interaction for action spectacules. Without that investment, even the best action will feel flatter or less important than it should. Some things you can't shortcut.
The future team manages to fight Master Mold (trading Hellion for Polaris), but aside for some nice power moves it doesn't add much to the story but more smashing, which is fine enough, but nice smashing still has to have a point. Despite having 26 episodes instead of 13 for a season, this finale seemed very crammed.
Future Xavier/Zordon (I'm sorry, he looks SO much like Zordon sometimes) congratulates the X-Men and of course Wolverine for saving the world, but warns that while the future is free of Master Mold, there now is a new threat to have to deal with; the Age of Apocalypse, where floating pyramids hover over cities, Mr. Sinister and Cyclops are his right hand agents, and Apocalypse's head looks like Kingpin's with facepaint. A mostly good and faithful rendition of the design I suppose, which may get better when the animators have more practice with it; I just thought his head looked awkward. EVOLUTION's Apocalypse had a more unique design, but everyone wants the awesome shoulderpads, the grey tubing, and an "A" somewhere.
Frankly, the whole Future Xavier thing seemed like the ghost of a former draft that should have been removed. It basically took a lot of drama and pressure of Logan actually leading the team, because he didn't really lead it. He followed Xavier's orders. It seemed a way of the crew wanting to have their cake and eat it to; removing Xavier to give a reason why Logan has to rally the team without Cyclops or Storm, but still keeping him for vital exposition or Logan ego rubbing. It didn't work as well as it could have. And now the hint that they will basically be doing the same thing again, only swapping Master Mold for Apocalypse, seems kind of lazy. Hopefully Future X is dispatched quickly, thus forcing the X-Men to actually operate without him.
Scarlet Witch takes over Genosha, and has Blink banish Magneto and Quicksilver from it. Presumably they will be leading the other Brotherhood mooks in Season 2.
And for those who look at the Age of Apocalypse from the comics and go, "Gee, this will be a big thing for Cyclops, as he was undermining Apocalypse from within and was uber pivotal at the end, and it likely won't be Good Wolverine vs. Evil Cyclops like many of you haters fear", all I say is that you are horribly naive. This show has bent over backwards to prove that Wolverine is physically and morally superior to every X-Man possible, especially Cyclops. This show would give nothing less than to have a clear cut example of Good Wolverine vs. Evil Cyclops, and I doubt AOA will be a temptation they will resist. We may get a cool fight out of it, at least. If this season has proven anything, is that this is a show for those who think character development is for sissies, that the real game is sagas, punching, and sagas that involve punching. Whatever character focus and development there is must come after the checklist of "events" have already happened.
The characters that were well fleshed to the point of being understood, even if not always sympathetic, were Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Frost, Cyclops, Scarlet Witch, and Magneto. To a lessor extent, Angel, whose fall from grace was properly developped, and Rogue was fine until about 2/3rds into the season when she rejoined the X-Men and then did little else. Everyone else had some defining moments and some fun lines now and again, but weren't as defined. Despite an origin episode, Storm was almost a non-entity. Jean was a walking Maguffin.
The finale was in a Catch 22 in a way. Had they killed off Jean rather than Frost, it would have been truer to the current comic dynamic, and left Scott with a better developed girlfriend for season two, but it would have felt flat because Jean wasn't enough of a character (even if Jennifer Hale played her exceedingly well) to care about. Having sacrificed Frost for a twist gave us a death that had more punch and meaning, but left us with a stale, boring romantic couple, and a Cyclops who, intentionally or not, appears to be a cad. In the comic books, naturally, Frost was shattered but was saved; her psyche was still floating about, and Jean used TK to piece her together (albeit with budding Phoenix power), so considering this wasn't the end for Frost in the comics, it may be possible that she will return in Season 2. Criag Kyle likes "dark chicks" in that way, such as Enchantress, and I can't imagine him leaving Frost dead forever in a series he has a lot of creative sway over. It would have been far more interesting to have Scott move on with Frost rather than always fall into Jean's arms. It was bittersweet when they basically did the same thing in X-MEN EVOLUTION, although Rogue's crush wasn't as blatently obvious as Frost's love was here (Rogue was more introverted). Despite Hale's performance, I have little interest in Jean, and Season 2 will be an uphill battle to prove why she was more deserving of a future than Frost, considering she spent much of the season off camera, or with amnesia, or wrathing in agony to unleash the Threat of the Month.
Plus, what was the point of the Hulk fight episode, beyond fan *******? Why out of anything to have Nightcrawler fight for two episodes, was it Mojo? Why did we need two Weapon X episodes when only one was good? And as much as I may have enjoyed the Silver Samurai episode, that one really does look like filler now.
My final grade of the show as a season is B. There is enough goodness in it to avoid being tagged as average at B-, but too much wasted potential or busy plots to really evolve it past B+ territory beyond a few standout episodes. Maybe season 2 will make this look better. X-MEN EVOLUTION wasn't "great" until the end of their second season, which was around episode 29 or so. But that show had deeply developed characters who were well fleshed and defined, so one could forgive some of the mundane or weak plots because the characters in them were worth following anyway. W&TXM was nothing without it's fights and sagas. Maybe that is what the X-Men have been in the past, but I did wish to see a better blend of the event-style stuff of the 90's show with the deep rich pathos of Evolution. This season didn't accomplish that balance.
It is a frustrating show to review and watch, but this show IS a good show, better than average and better than many on TV, including BATMAN BRAVE AND THE BOLD. It isn't a great show, not yet anyway, and especially not when SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN is airing. It isn't the animation or the acting that are hinderances; in fact both are highlights. It's the writing that needs to step up.
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