“X-Men: The Animated Series” Review – Night of the Sentinels Part Two

Previously on X-Men, Jubilee did a lot of stupid things, Gambit serenades some pretty ladies by saying three words, and all of the X-Men made their introductions. Let’s see what “Night of the Sentinels Part Two” has in store.

Not-So-Short Summary: A bunch of the crew are trying to break into the Mutant Control Agency in DC and Wolverine stops Storm from walking right into a trap. Cyclops, Gambit, and Rogue are on perimeter duty. Storm, Beast, and Wolverine are erasing all of the mutant files in the database with Morph as backup.

Jubilee is in Detroit, Michigan, tied to a table, not answering the questions about who the X-Men are. We get to see Bolivar Trask, who wonders why his cohort has a mutant.

Here’s the part I remember as a kid, barely five minutes into the episode–the X-Men get surrounded by a bunch of sentinels. Morph runs out to stop Wolverine from getting ambushed and sacrifices himself in the process (for now!)–or does he? We jump forward in time to the X-Men arriving back at the Xavier Institute, missing a few in their ranks.

Wolverine is ticked about leaving Morph and Beast behind and attacks Cyclops, but rarely does he need a reason to confront Scott. He ends up destroying a couple of cars, makes Cyclops car into a convertible, and takes off to retrieve their two compatriots.

We get a flashback of their fight against the sentinels where everyone flies in every directions and the crew is struggling just to get back to the jet in one piece. Wolverine was in the process of going back to get Morph and Beast when Rogue stops him.

Cyclops finds Wolverine hustling pool at a bar somewhere along the way, destroys a pool table in the process, and asks if Wolverine would want to locate and destroy the sentinels’ home base.

We find Cyclops at the house of Jubilee’s foster parents’ house to tell them that Jubilee’s been captured. Too bad, because her father has already called in Cyclops and a sentinel is waiting outside. Cyclops blasts off its arm and, conveniently enough, the sentinel announces to the world that it’s going back to base for repairs. They follow in the X-Jet.

With the arrival of the sentinel, Jubilee gets out of her shackles and begins to make her escape. Cyclops takes out three of the sentinels and in comes a wonderful montage of the X-Men beating up on the sentinels while Trask flees.

The episode ends with Jubilee leaving her foster parents’ home and moving into Xavier’s school.

Best One-Liner: “It’s locked,” says Storm, attempting to open one of the hard files. In comes Wolverine with his claws, ripping out the lock. “Unlocked,” he growls.

Kickass Moment of the Week: Cyclops takes out a guard tower with one quick blast. Pretty impressive.

It’s strange watching these as I’m older. I thought Morph died (or “died”) a lot later in the series. But no, it’s the second episode. (Of course, he comes back later, but we’ll get there when we get there.)

So sentinels are being built in Detroit. Interesting. I may have to take a trip downtown and see if I can’t locate it. There’s plenty of buildings they could be using. Why do evil things always seem to be taking place in Detroit?

There’s a distinct contrast between movies-Rogue and cartoon-Rogue. Movies-Rogue is…well, she’s a wuss. She’s constantly getting the rest of the crew into danger (i.e. unable to buckle her seat belt in X2, making Nightcrawler save her) and talking about how she hates her powers and ends up taking the (temporary) cure in The Last Stand. Cartoon-Rogue kicks butt and like we saw in this episode, takes off a glove and holds onto Wolverine long enough to knock him out. She has no qualms about using her powers.

Then again, there’s also an age/experience difference between these two versions.

And speaking of all the sentinels, there’s a fair amount of focus on Trask, but who else wants to know when Mastermold comes into play?