We enter the season’s final act with Bastion in full supervillain mode! Plus, we get a ton more cameos from other Marvel heroes and villains.
SPOILER WARNING! The following contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 Episode “Tolerance is Extinction Part 1!” Do not proceed if you wish to avoid spoilers!
MAJOR POINTS
- Bastion has an army of Prime Sentinels
- Magneto is free and shut down all electronics on Earth
- Xavier is back, and the world knows his death was faked
- We got several cameos that confirm the existence of other Marvel characters in this “X-Verse”
The Genosha Massacre is a fixed point in time that cannot be avoided in any timeline. Cable explains how Bastion used Genosha to start a 300-year Evolutionary War on mutants. As if that wasn’t enough, news spreads that Charles Xavier is alive, making matters worse for Mutant-Human relations.
Valerie Cooper meets with Bastion, who is on a remote call with Doctor Doom AND Baron Zemo. He explains how Gyrich messed things up by making Xavier a martyr. To get things back on track, Bastion orchestrated the Genosha massacre.
Cyclops, Jean, and Cable take the blackbird to Harmony, Pennsylvania, where they seemingly meet Bastion’s aging mother. She shows them pictures Bastion drew as a child, including one depicting the Genosha massacre. Jean senses Bastion’s history, how his father was infected by Nimrod, thus making Bastion a Human-Sentinel hybrid. Then, Bastion’s mother, turns into a Prime Sentinel herself, with the rest of the town doing likewise. Cyclops, Jean, and Cable try to fly off, but the blackbird promptly gets taken out by the Prime Sentinel Army. They are then forced to escape in a late-model Porsche.
Several other humans, including Beast’s girlfriend and Sunspot’s butler, also become Prime Sentinels and battle the rest of the team elsewhere.
Cooper releases Magneto, who flies to The North Pole and emits a massive EMP burst that nullifies all Sentinels… and all the electronics in the world. We get quick cameos of Spider-Man, Omega Red, and Silver Samurai reacting to the power outages. Wolverine laments, “Where’s The Professor when you need him?” Seemingly on cue, a pod falls from the sky and Xavier steps out, fearing he may be too late.
MAJOR QUESTIONS
- How long will this EMP drought last? And how long with Sentinels be impeded by it?
- Will the rest of the world join the “Magneto was right” brigade?
- And is Magneto doing this on his own? Or is he doing Bastion’s bidding?
FINAL GRADE: B-
Man, turning your own mother into a Sentinel. That’s pretty despicable. It’s also unclear whether Magneto is putting his foot down or whether he is Bastion’s pawn. Remember, Bastion told him to “Listen and obey”.
Magneto’s actions will likely have devastating consequences. Turning off all electricity in the world will surely result in the deaths of thousands if not millions of people. Traffic accidents, plane crashes, medical equipment failing, and those are just ideas off the top of my head. This is fulfilling Cable’s warning of a Human-Mutant war, and we’ll see if they can wind this up in only two episodes.