X-Men '97 Season 2, Episode 7
"Strange Land, Savage Heart"
Writers: Brian Ford Sullivan and Beau DeMayo
Director: Emmett Yonemura
Cast: Voices of George Buza, Isaac Robinson-Smith, Adrian Hough, Lenore Zann, Ross Marquand, Carolina Ravassa, Robert Cait, Bo Poraj, Ben Pronsky
The episode opens on a flashback to "Remember It," specifically, the Sentinel attack on Genosha. We see the attack from the perspective of the Rasputin siblings, with Illyana teleporting a group of mutants to safety shortly before being blasted by the massive Spider-Sentinel as Colossus watches (why she's a teenager when she was a child when she last appeared in the previous series, why she's wearing an X-Men training uniform when she's never been part of the team, and why she doesn't teleport away from the blast is not made clear). Needless to say, Colossus is devastated by the death of his sister.
Team Magneto Was Right
Cut to the present day, where anti-mutant rabble rouser, leader of the Friends of Humanity (and son of Sabretooth & Mystique) Graydon Creed is holding a rally to announce his candidacy for president on an anti-mutant platform. Just then, the Acolytes of Magneto, led by Exodus and including Colossus, attack the rally and kidnap Creed. Via a televised broadcast, Exodus later demands that all mutants held captive by X-Factor must be released in 24 hours, or Creed will die. Val Cooper wants to send X-Factor, but Professor X has already dispatched a team of X-Men — including Creed's half-brother, Nightcrawler, and their adopted sister, Rogue — to free Creed from the Acolyte base in the prehistoric Savage Land.
Nightcrawler and Rogue are joined by Beast, Bishop and Polaris. Upon reaching Savage Land airspace, the X-Men are hit by the energy field previously used by Mister Sinister to nullify mutant powers, just as a pair of surface-to-air missiles take out their jet. Bishop is blown out of the crashing jet, but Polaris dives after him, using a parachute to get them both to the ground safely. They set out to shut down the tower generating the inhibitor wave. Meanwhile, the crashed X-Men are retrieved by Colossus and a group of Acolytes. Colossus refuses to give up Creed, but Nightcrawler convinces him to show the X-Men what they're trying to build, in the hopes of winning them over.
Colossus shows them the memorial to the mutants who died in Genosha, including a portrait of Illyana painted by Colossus. He then takes them to meet with Creed, whom Nightcrawler greets as brother. Just then, Exodus appears, telling them they're welcome to help build a better world. Nightcrawler counters that this world doesn't seem better when a man is condemned without a trial, and convinces Exodus to hold a mutant trial for Creed, to prove he is capable of redemption. Exodus will serve as prosecutor, and Nightcrawler defense, with Colossus serving as judge & jury and Nightcrawler offering to stay with the Acolytes if he loses. Meanwhile, Bishop and Polaris come across the wreckage of the X-jet, and retrieve Bishop's guns, with Polaris hatching a plan for disabling the tower.
"You Can't Handle The Truth!"
Creed's trial begins with Exodus laying out his crimes against mutants: founding the Friends of Humanity, creating a mutant-killing virus, framing a mutant for the killing of the president, crimes for which human justice exonerated him. For his defense, Nightcrawler probes the source of Creed's hatred of mutants, his mutant parents. Abandoned by Mystique and abused by Sabretooth, Creed longed to become a mutant so he can stand up to his father, but when puberty hit and he remained powerless, Sabretooth abandoned him too. Nightcrawler tries to make a distinction between hating his parents and hating ALL mutants, that he needs to forgive himself for thinking he wasn't strong enough — words Nightcrawler pointedly directs to Colossus as well. Exodus demands a verdict, and Nightcrawler urges Colossus to see Creed as he does, someone who is haunted like they are. But before Colossus can issue his verdict, an angry Exodus turns on Colossus.
Just then, Bishop and Polaris come flying in on pterodactyls, and manage to blow up the inhibitor tower with Bishop's guns, restoring the X-Men's powers. In the ensuing melee between the X-Men and the Acolytes, Colossus intervenes on behalf of the X-Men, while Nightcrawler duels Exodus over Creed's life. Nightcrawler gains the upper hand, but Creed, lost in the fight, picks up a gun, and when Exodus is at Nightcrawler's mercy, kills him. Enraged, Nightcrawler teleports Creed outside of the Savage Land, to the swirling snows of Antarctica. Nightcrawler admits he isn't sure if it's better to let Creed live or die, and leaves that to a higher power to decide. Before teleporting away, he does admit to Creed that while he's not a mutant, he is very much his parent's son.
Later, Val Cooper tells Professor X that X-Factor found Creed wandering in the snow, alive, and cautions him that she'll take away his school and his corporation if he crosses a line. Meanwhile, the X-Men return to the X-Mansion, with Colossus in tow. Nightcrawler asks Colossus what his verdict would have been, and Colossus admits that Nightcrawler didn't convince him — but he would have convinced Illyana.
And in another post-credits sequence before the credits roll, X-Force rolls up to the Grecian temple where Apocalypse resurrected Gambit last episode, only to find nothing there but the desiccated corpse of Apocalypse himself — and a synged playing card.
Recommended Reading
The clear inspiration for this episode is Uncanny X-Men #315, in which Colossus must act as the defense attorney for fellow Acolyte Neophyte, on trial for helping the X-Men in an earlier encounter. It's not a bad comic. But I'll also direct you to a bit of a deeper Acolyte cut, Cable #9-11, in which Cable and the Acolytes, including Colossus, are drawn into the conflict between Omega Red and the Acolyte Katu. It's a rare story which features Colossus as "just" one of the Acolytes, in which he's part of the group but the story isn't about him probing his place with them, as well as a slightly less rare example of an Acolyte — in this case, Katu — being allowed to separate himself from the pack a bit and receive some backstory.
