X-Men '97 Season 2, Episode 2
"A Force To Be Reckoned With"
Writer: Anthony Sellitti and Mariah Wilson
Director: Emmett Yonemura
Cast: Voices of Chris Potter, Ray Chase, Jennifer Hale, Holly Chou, Gui Agustini, Adrian Hough, Catherine Disher, Teddy Sears, Carolina Ravassa.
Old man yelling at clouds here, but I miss the days when TV shows released one episode each week (and were regularly 18-22 episodes long). The whole "drop three, then weekly" schedule is still better than the annoying "release 'em all at once" model (Who has time for that?!?), but still, won't someone please think of the internet content creators who need to grapple with three episodes of the same show in one week?
Anyways, this episode is pretty good.
Absolutely Nothing!
Unlike the previous episode's fake cold open, this episode has an actual cold open, in which a group of young mutants, including Monet St. Croix (aka M, aka Penance), Wing (who got killed in the comics by the X-Men's Danger Room), Quentin Quire (of "Riot at Xavier's" fame) and someone the closed captioning tells me is named "Mark," feverishly race to the X-Mansion. They find it run-down and abandoned — which, as one of them points out, duh. The group is accosted by X-Factor, the U.S. government's mutant strike team, under the direction of Val Cooper. Jubilee watches news footage of X-Factor from a video arcade where she's hanging out with Roberto, because the show is set in 1997 when TV news and arcades still existed. Jubilee is chafing at the feeling of helplessness in the face of the X-Men's absence, only for Cable to choose that moment to show up and recruit her and Sunspot into … X-Force!
Cue the opening credits!
Which, in a delightful twist, aren't the usual updated X-Men The Animated Series credits, but have been completely rejiggered as if this were another episode of an animated X-Force series. The attention to detail — mimicking the structure and rhythm of the usual credits but with new characters; highlighting each character with an introductory logo in a classic font; or the way Psylocke's pose in her title card is lifted directly from her pose in the Jim Lee-drawn first series of X-Men trading cards — is truly impressive. Even the bystander mutants running up to the fence or racing out of the clash between the two opposing sides (X-Force and Apocalypse's horsemen) at the end are updated to be the young mutants on the run from the beginning of this episode.
Back to the episode itself. X-Force is in Rio de Janeiro trying to track down War, one of Apocalypse's Horsemen, who has recently resurfaced. (He was also part of the group that, during the original series, introduced Apocalypse and Archangel.) Their hope is that he'll lead them to Apocalypse. War, who in the comics is a bit of a jobber, puts up a decent showing against X-Force, but Psylocke's psychic blade ultimately knocks him out. When he awakens, Psylocke telepathically forces her way into his mind only to find it blocked by a wall of diamonds. Unable to get anything more out of him, Cable has Archangel kill War. To Jubilee's credit, she is … disconcerted by the cold-blooded killing of their prisoner. So she leverages her knowledge of a telepath with a thing for diamonds — Emma Frost — to get Cable to agree to be a little less trigger-happy going forward.
The team proceeds to the Hellfire Club in London, where they meet with Emma Frost. She gives them the address of the warehouse in Switzerland where War paid her to help him smuggle some equipment. Inside, they discover remnants of advanced tech, but whatever Apocalypse and War were up to, they've clearly moved on. Cable angrily turns on Emma for leading them to a dead end—at which point X-Factor emerges from the shadows. A fight breaks out between the teams while Emma hilariously sits on the sidelines, unfazed. In the end, X-Force mostly manages to escape, but Jubilee is captured.
Volcano Girl
Jubilee is interrogated by Havok and Polaris aboard X-Factor's helicarrier headquarters floating above Washington, D.C. Havok is a dick, but Polaris takes a softer tone when talking one-on-one with Jubilee, drawing on their shared experience as foster kids taken in by Professor X. But Jubilee seems to pierce Polaris' bubble of self-righteousness when she asks if the professor would be proud of either of them at this point. Just then, Havok returns and escorts Jubilee to her cell amongst dozens of collared, captured young mutants, including the little mutant girl from Marvels No. 2, whose mutant power is presumably making people watching or reading about her sad.
Elsewhere, Cable's not too concerned with Jubilee — he trained her after all, so she'll probably be fine — but Sunspot argues that just because she can go it alone doesn't mean she should have to. Back on the helicarrier, Polaris' heart has grown three sizes, and she disables Jubilee's collar, telling her she can buy her five minutes. Because she's awesome, Jubilee doesn't just free herself, but sets about freeing all the mutant kids X-Factor has rescued.
Cueing up Veruca Salt's "Volcano Girls," she fireworks and rollerblades her way through a bevy of guards, using a captured radio to call in X-Force to help with the "extra cargo" as she explodes the locks on all the cells. The group of escapees reach the deck of the carrier just as X-Force arrives, helping load the kids onto their jet when they do. As it blasts off, Jubilee races to the edge of the helicarrier and grabs a parachute, only to have it blasted out of her hand by Val Cooper's gun. Standing at the edge of the carrier, Jubilee is offered a collar by Havok and Val tells her it doesn't have to go this way, to which Jubilee responds, "it sure doesn't" as she knocks the collar aside and leaps off the helicarrier in a burst of fireworks, at which point Sunspot races in and catches her before she hits the ground.
Later, X-Force watches a televised press conference declaring them fugitives. Cable is dismayed by the heat this puts on the team, but Jubilee argues there's no point in fighting Apocalypse if they're not going to defend the world he's trying to destroy. As Jubilee checks in on the kids, Archangel tells Cable he agrees with her, but he says where they're going is no place for kids. Cable responds that kids are tougher than you think, which serves as a neat segue back to the future and the moment which carried us to X-Force last episode, when Li'l Nathan gets his fancy arm infused with Ship's intelligence.
Cyclops wants to spend some more quality time with his son, but Ship insists Nathan needs to send the X-Men back ASAP, as shadows are descending on the past, which needs the X-Men to help protect it. Cyclops and Jean give their son a final farewell, then Lil' Nathan tells Ship to time-slide the X-Men, and they disappear into the past.
Recommend Reading
Very much a team book, the first year or so of Generation X still serves as an excellent showcase for Jubilee, striking a similar note as her depiction in this episode: someone who is a seasoned veteran superhero-wise, but still young and with much to learn.
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