With the fanatical Friends of Humanity
stoking the public’s fear of mutants, the X-Men are faced with unprecedented
levels of paranoia and hate. To make matters worse, their mentor Professor
Xavier has gone missing and the villainous Mister Sinister has set his sights
on capturing Cyclops and Jean Grey for his wicked experiments.
The second season of the animated ‘90s
classic X-Men contains 13 episodes, airing
between 1993 and 1994. It features the voice talents of Cedric Smith, Norm
Spencer, Catherine Disher, Cathal J. Dodd, Lenore Zann, Alison Sealy-Smith,
George Buza, Chris Potter and Alyson Court.
After a strong debut, the X-Men’s second
season on the small screen fell short of the quality established in its
preceding year. This season establishes an ongoing subplot involving Professor
Xavier and Magneto forming an alliance to survive in the Savage Land, while
Mister Sinister plots behind the scenes in order to acquire Cyclops and Jean
Grey’s genetic material. The X-Men remain oblivious to the circumstances of
their mentor’s disappearance and are unaware of Mister Sinister’s machinations.
Instead, they become embroiled in a series of episodic conflicts. Unfortunately,
most of these are forgettable and lack depth.
What can be appreciated about the cartoon’s
second season is that the writers made a more concerted effort to develop its
characters by creating episodes that focused on individual members of the team.
For instance, “Whatever It Takes” featured Storm and Rogue travelling to Tanzania
in order to protect Storm’s spiritual son from her hated foe the Shadow King.
It’s an admirable effort as it attempts to emphasize Storm’s undeniable willpower
and maternal instincts, but falls flat in its execution. Similarly the Beast-focused
“Beauty & the Beast” tells the story of the titular hero falling for a
blind girl, who is subsequently kidnapped by the Friends of Humanity due to her
connection to him. It concludes the conflict with the Friends of Humanity, who
acted as the season’s pseudo-Big Bad, and does a satisfactory job of handling
the comparable topics of racism and homophobia. However, the most successful
and entertaining character-centric episodes are “Repo Man” and “A Rogue’s Tale.”
The former focuses on Wolverine’s return to Canada, where he is ambushed by his
former team Alpha Flight. It’s a loose adaptation of Uncanny X-Men #121 and helps to
elaborate on Wolverine’s past. The voice acting is questionable, but the action
is well done and the plot is engaging. It’s definitely one of the best episodes
from the series. “A Rogue’s Tale,” meanwhile, details Rogue’s past prior to
joining the X-Men. It’s a much needed episode that helps to fill in the blanks
of a character who had been quite enigmatic up until this point. We learn that
she was once Mystique’s pupil and was a member of the Brotherhood, leaving after
a mission gone awry. The episode itself blends together elements from Avengers Annual #10 and Uncanny X-Men #269, which means the
writers take a concerted effort to align Rogue with her comic book persona.
Understandably, her origins are sanitized in order to make her far more
sympathetic. Where she was a psychotic villain in the comics, here she is
portrayed as a sympathetic victim in Mystique’s schemes. Aside from getting
some great character work on Rogue, we also see rare interactions between her
and Jean Grey. These tender sisterly moments always stand out within the series.
When season two pulled its focus away
from the individual members of the X-Men, the quality suffered tremendously.
The two-part “Time Fugitives” sees the X-Men working to stop further panic
after an outbreak of a mutant virus. Bishop and Cable guest star as allies to
the X-Men with contrasting goals. One wants to stop the virus, while the other wants
to allow it to continue on. It’s a Groundhog
Day-style two-parter that repeats events with different outcomes, which
makes it cliché and predictable. Furthermore, it was a very shallow attempt at creating
a storyline analogous to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It pulls elements from X-Cutioner’s Song and Fatal Attractions, but lacks the depth
and heart required to tell such a meaningful story. Similarly, the two-part “Reunion”
serves as an unremarkable way of concluding the season. It does a satisfactory
job of tying up all of the loose ends – Professor Xavier’s disappearance,
Mister Sinister’s schemes and even the re-appearance of Morph. However, it
feels like a very paint-by-numbers story wherein the X-Men land in the Savage
Land to rescue their mentor and find themselves without powers, they must then
find a way of beating Mister Sinister and his henchmen without the benefit of
their mutant abilities. Naturally, there’s a device that must be destroyed and a
subplot involving Ka-Zar. That said, the worst episode of the season is easily “Mojovision.”
In this filler episode prior to the finale, the grotesque Mojo kidnap the X-Men
at a mall and transforms them into stars of television shows in his dimension.
The episode itself parodies TV and the programming on it, but there’s really
not much depth and it features some terrible attempts at humour. It’s also got
a rather glaring continuity error – when the X-Men are kidnapped from the mall
Rogue is not amongst them, but when they all appear in Mojo’s dimension she’s
with them.
For the most part, the second season of X-Men is skippable. Aside from a few memorable
episodes like “Repo Man” and “A Rogue’s Tale,” the quality of the stories told
is inconsistent and lacks the same tension that was present in the preceding
season. The development done on characters like Rogue, Wolverine, Gambit and
Beast help make them even more likeable and relatable, while others like
Cyclops and Jean Grey remain somewhat stodgy and one-dimensional. Jean Grey,
for instance, continues to be portrayed as little more than a woman caught
between Cyclops and Wolverine and who is easily quelled in battle. The
Xavier/Magneto subplot is lackluster and Mister Sinister never quite delivers
as this season’s Big Bad quite like Magneto and the Sentinels did in the first.
My recommendation is watching the best episodes of the season – “Red Dawn,” “Repo
Man,” “A Rogue’s Tale” and “Beauty and the Beast” – and moving onto the third
season.
RATING:
C
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