Picking up right from where episode 23 left off, Emma Frost and the "Inner Circle" (they do not refer to themselves as the Hellfire Club, and technically only call themselves the Inner Circle at the end of episode 23) capture Jean Grey and apparently tuck all of the X-Men back into their rooms and even change a few of them into their default civilian garb, such as Rogue and Cyclops. The timing seemed oddly paced. Of course the X-Men are frantic to find Jean, especially Scott. Wolverine searches the grounds with his tracking powers and of course that means we get more of what has been dubbed "Smell-O-Vision". Honestly, while I didn't poke too many holes at it the first two times I saw it, I think this dynamic was handled better in HULK VS. WOLVERINE, where Wolverine sort of imagined his own flashback in a single color rather than interacting with "spirits" lingering around an area. I mean, just because Logan can smell people, vehicles, and even materials, does that mean he can smell the colors of everyone's clothes? Does smell alone tell him in what order someone entered a chopper that flies off? And I could do without Logan reacting to this stuff like he is hallucinating. Considering this hasn't been explained outside of interviews, I can imagine some viewers watching at home and wondering, "I thought Logan just smelled stuff; why is he seeing dead people?" I understand that animation is a visual medium, and the writers/producers of the show wanted to find a new way to show off Logan's tracking abilities, but I don't think this gimmick is working perfectly. It cuts down on having Logan either narrate to himself or explain some exposition, but it makes his sense of smell almost akin to THE CROW's ability to sense memories from objects, which is a bit overpowered.
Plus, what also worked about HULK VS. WOLVERINE was that Wolverine's version of the attack on the village that Dept. H sent him to investigate proved to be WRONG, showing that scent and detection skills alone aren't enough to be a prophet; he imagined the Hulk destroyed the village and attacked the civilians, when the Hulk was in fact on the run from Weapon X, and was trying to save the civilians caught in the crossfire. It says something when a 40 minute slugfest cartoon manages to have more nuance than a 26 episode series sometimes. In W&TXM, Wolverine's nose and detection skills make him virtually able to go back in time and watch an event he wasn't present for, even hearing or "imagining" grunts or lines. This is a bit much. It would be akin to Cyclops being able to magically track anyone he blasted with an optic blast recently; a bit much.
The shock of this sequence is naturally Logan discovering that Frost was involved in Jean's abduction, which was inevitable and natural. For some reason, Frost remained behind at the Mansion, despite knowing that Logan likely would have detected her involvement eventually. To her credit, after Logan throws her into his all-purpose plexiglass cage for wayward females he no longer trusts (formerly the prison of Rogue), Frost claims she was the first to awaken from the psychic attack and tried to investigate, but was too late. It isn't a bad excuse, but obviously won't fool Logan's nose, and that's dead on. This of course puts Cyclops squarely between Logan and Frost; to Logan she is a traitor, but she promises Scott that she will find Jean again, as she did before. Considering she needed to be present to aid the Club with Jean, I have no idea why Frost stuck behind, when she would have needed to leave the Mansion eventually. Is Scott really so hot that spending an extra few hours with him and risking being imprisoned by the well known hothead Wolverine is seriously worth it? Considering the stakes?
Naturally, anyone who doesn't know what is about to happen hasn't been paying attention. Of course Scott will free Frost, which he does. All he cares about is Jean. That much has been made painfully clear. Not his team, or the world, matters in his obsession with the woman.
Logan painfully reports to Future Xavier that they lost Jean to Frost, and they need a new strategy. Unfortunately the timing is terrible, as right as they are having their time travel psychic-conference call, Xavier's caves are attacked by a fleet of Sentinels, having been led there by Marrow. Alas, instead of just capturing Xavier and leaving the rest alone, the Sentinels follow their programming and try to kill or capture all of the mutants there, which somehow Marrow failed to see coming in her grief for Rover (despite the Sentinels being rather predictable with their orders against all mutants since the first future episode). Vanisher manages to escape with her, even while being disgusted by her backstabbing, while Bishop and the rest are overwhelmed and captured. Well, everyone but Hellion, who has vanished into the Hole In the Plot (TM). The Professor is soon dragged into the chamber of Master Mold, who proudly has replicated Cerebro to use him to find every mutant left on Earth. Considering there is no Genosha or X-Men left alive, there are an amazing lot of mutants left.
In the present, Logan is furious with Scott for releasing Frost, and for once manages to get some payback for all those cheap-shot optic blasts, throwing him about a hallway. Scott's only defensive plea is, "I trust her", which Logan dismisses as, "You've got stars in yer eyes, Summers!" which frankly is totally justified. Releasing Frost without any means of tracking her is poor strategy. While of course it is understandable that Scott would trust Frost, perhaps more than many of his fellow X-Men at this point, it doesn't say much for his tactical skill. It would have been cute if he had secretly placed some sort of tracting bug on Frost when he freed her, but only Wolverine is allowed to be cunning. Unfortunately, there are other pressing matters at hand. Mystique has taken Kelly's place and the Sentinels are now back up and running on a collision course with Genosha. This is all part of Magneto's plan; to destroy Genosha and blame it on humanity (which "would have attacked eventually") as a symbolic call to arms worldwide for his war against humanity. Scarlet Witch discovers the plan when Pietro outright shows it to her on his return to Genosha, and is appalled. Warning Nightcrawler about it, she is naturally and rightly against Magneto here.
Some debate has come up regarding this plan, whether it was "in character" for Magneto. Honestly, if you're looking for comic book evidence, you could easily find it. Before the Claremont era started in 1975, Magneto was a fairly typical supervillain from 1963-1970 who wasn't beneathe much. I mean he proudly led a team called "The Brotherhood of EVIL Mutants" after all. Now, Magneto is someone who always thinks "ahead" and is a "the ends justify the means" kind of figure; he is more than aware of symbolic trigger moments in history, having experienced WWII firsthand. He knows full well that the notion of the "peaceful" mutant nation of Genosha being destroyed by humanity will be the "trigger" he needs to rally mutants around him to fight, which Magneto outright admits. Perhaps this would swallow better with some if not for the prior reveals that Magneto was working with Kelly when it was convenient to work both their agendas. One also could claim Magneto had more than enough reasons to rally his figures without the Genoshan attack; Kelly had just sent Gambit to basically perform a terrorist strike against Genosha, which Gambit succeeds in doing. In the wake of 9/11, such an attack could easily have been used for Magneto's goals. At the very most, as soon as the Sentinels arrived at Genosha, Magneto could have stopped them easily, and it would have been easy to reason that he would have defended Genosha vigorously from a definite attack; instead he "lets" the Sentinels destroy Genosha practically brick-for-brick before stopping them with a nice homage of ULTIMATE X-MEN #5 I believe. Honestly, the point that was too far for me was Magneto claiming that any mutants who died by his stalling were just broken eggs, which I thought was a bit much for a figure who avoided killing even the X-Men, who always messed his plans, because he had hope of one day turning them. He won't kill the X-Men to make his life easier, but will gladly stand back and slaughter mutants already loyal to him just because they're not quite gung ho on fighting? Most illogical.
With the threat of worldwide gene war about to burst, Wolverine calls off the search for Jean to rally the X-Men to stop the Sentinels at all costs, making extra notice of this to Cyclops that "nothing else matters". Cyclops follows along and it seems clear that he is an odd man out among the team, at least from the nasty look Iceman gives him on the Blackbird. Of course, from episode 20, one could easily imagine what Iceman was thinking; "That eye-beam chump couldn't cut it five years ago, why the hell would anyone expect him to cut it now?" Unfortunately, Mystique/Kelly launches the Sentinels as soon as all 15 of them are powered up, smashing through the roof of the base and downing the Blackbird jet in a hail of giant machines, causing it to crash into the ground. While Wolverine once was able to recover quickly after falling about 20,000 feet onto the pavement within a minute or two, for dramatic effect a crash inside a jet with a seatbelt lays him out longer.
Back at the Inner Circle, Jean has been changed into a red dress and Frost cures her amnesia, before explaining that the Phoenix inside her is an entity that manifests inside potent psychics every few generations or so, feeding upon them and using their bodies to gestate before triggering worldwide chaos throughout the ages. Frost's cabal, according to her, are dedicated to finding these unlucky psychics and containing the Phoenix long enough to release it into the upper atmosphere to save the planet. The rest of her club are naturally Shaw, Selene, Pierce, and Leland, although only Selene and Shaw actually talk. The Stepford Cuckoos, or "The Cuckoos" as Shaw later calls them, are also part of the team as house psychics in ritual robes, which I thought was a nice detail. Heaven help us if Season 2 decides to use Morrison & Pak's Weapon Plus cluster**** origin for them (they're all cloned Frost babies, and are five of hundreds, basically), though. Of course, as episode 25 dawns, we learn that the rest of the Club have changed their objective; no longer wanting to release the Phoenix, they want to control it using the Cuckoo's.
Let's talk about the club. Everyone looks as they should, although with no time describing or hinting at the specifics of the members, only hardcore fans may not be confused as to their powers or natures; is Pierce a cyborg here or a mutant? Is Leland's power something different from telekenesis? Is Shaw absorbing energy used against him, or just impervious? Again, I know, but if one isn't a fan, these are very obscure figures. It also is hard for me to take them as, basically, the villains of the whole season when they've never been shown before. What I find interesting about future incarnations of the Hellfire Club as come up with in cartoons, like the 90's series, or in alternate comics like Ultimate X-Men, is that they are now defined ENTIRELY by Dark Phoenix. In the comics, they existed before that story, and have had plots after. But in the eyes of alternate media, those stories don't really matter. I might argue they have become more defined by that saga than Jean herself has been over the past 15 years in alternate media. This isn't a deal breaker, I just find it interesting; the 90's X-Men cartoon basically did the same thing, just didn't rely an entire season finale on them.
Fortunately, the show does a good job handling Frost; she doesn't come off as outright "evil" here. She was operating under the noble auspices of her organization in the past, even if her fellow compatiots weren't. This change of heart on their part was a shock to her. As they later reveal, all they intended for Frost to do was to use Cerebro after it had been rebuilt to find Jean, not join the X-Men or, essentially, to fall in love with Cyclops. This finale doesn't alter Frost's status as a tragic figure, and in fact cements it.
Let's talk about Jean. At the end of episode 20 I complained that this show had chosen to take every criticism of Cyclops' character and portray it as true; to basically choose to create a Scott who was defined by his worst and most exaggerated faults, with NONE of his strengths. In some ways they also do the same with Jean, although to be fair, she has less airtime. By that I mean, people who dismiss Jean often claim she is a boring, generic heroine defined by two things; being Scott's lover, and the Phoenix. She literally has no character beyond those two attachments to other things, a boyfriend and, essentially, Cosmic Bird-Themed PMS. I should know; I myself usually dismissed Jean with such claims; I usually find her very boring and nearly every relationship Scott has had besides her, I usually enjoy more. Yet in no other cartoon but this one is Jean LITERALLY only defined by these traits. She offers nothing else to the show's dynamic. This is of course in contrast to the last time these guys took a stab with Jean in X-MEN EVOLUTION; given more time to handle her, the Evo crew chose to make Jean a bit more assertive, more of a "Big Woman on Campus" who was a star soccer player and dated quarterback Duncan Matthews, who was basically the "Flash Thompson" of Bayville High. They also gave her a bit of Racheal's personality from FRIENDS; in that Evolution Jean seemed incapable of seeing Scott as anything remotely romantic unless someone else did, as well. She couldn't even admit he was cute unless Kitty was gushing about it. She didn't even acknowledge having feelings for him until Rogue was already crushing on him, and he was outright dating Taryn. It made their "destined" true love at least a little more interesting to watch blossum. W&TXM, by contrast, is a Cliff Notes version. Learning something like Jean literally having a psychic connection to Cyclops should be a powerful reveal; here it just serves as a means to an end, an excuse to get Frost to include him.
Wolverine naturally comes too before the other X-Men from the crash, as the MRD are arresting the X-Men and overwhelming him with sonic weapons. Frost is working with the Cuckoos to undo Xavier's "mental blocks" inside Jean's mind to unleash the Phoenix; when Jean "senses" Scott's distress, Frost deems it incredibly important to end it to get Jean stable. Selene, however, is suspicious and sees it as Frost being the one unable to handle Scott's distress. And so Emma manages to speed to the Sentinel launch site in top speed in her white porche and mentally mucks with the soldiers before freeing Cyclops and driving off with him. All Frost has to say is that she found Jean, and Cyclops has ZERO qualms about abandoning his own team to the clutches of the MRD. What a class act, that guy. How can anyone say that Cyclops was "redeemed" in this finale? He's just as obsessed and selfish as he ever was. He cares about nothing but Jean; even Frost's sacrifice at the end barely gets a wayward glance from him, because of precious Jean. Fortunately, enough of the MRD were laid out for Wolverine and Beast to free themselves and the rest of the team (except Forge, who is missing from much of this). Wolverine pursues Frost while ordering the rest of the X-Men to wait for Magneto's countermove, and defend the city accordingly. When Magneto attacks the city with his 15 Sentinels, the X-Men all leap into the fray to stop them.
, and I agree.
And it kind of explains why she had always supported Scott even when others didnt. Her sacrifice scene was beautifully done. And it's nice to see Scott yelling another woman's name in worry 
I'm eagerly hoping to see her back in season 2.
Wolvie has his claws between her throat. Can anyone translate what they say?
