The Finale is finally here, and the very first thing I noticed is, they cut the bullshit, there are a lot of instances where it is very obvious what is going to happen or what a certain character would do but the path to get to it would be unnecessarily tedious and long, so they just cut to it.
And yes this episode obviously begins with a cut to professor X and Magneto sitting and talking about being mutants during the Vietnam war, during what at first appears to be a flashback but quickly turns out to be a mind invasion done by professor X on Magneto.
And yes, that is a violation but to be fair Magneto did send the earth many years back and declared war on humanity.
And I'll just put this screenshot here to tell you how freaking awesome it is, professor X is just clawing his way towards Magneto in a battle of minds.
This scene right here, this is where Onslaught is being created, and I don't know if he will be a season 2 villain or for later down the line, but he is being created here for sure, as the dark parts of both Charles and Magnus are mentioned and did interact with each other for a long time.
And then the power comes back, and Marvel just decides to go full on out with the cameos, we have Daredevil fighting street level criminals, Dr. Strange operating on a patient using Magic because the lights have gone out, and speaking of that, what about all the patients being operated on by someone other than doctor strange?
Just something to think about.
Also the Silver Samurai is there, just like in Tolerance is extinction part 1 he is looking at the events with a very serious face.
And then we have the two Avengers in this episode, the nineties Iron Man and Captain America.
Bastion reiterates how hopeless this situation is, as Professor X is forced to make way for Bastion's dream even as he makes way for his own.
We see Omega Red, Crimson Dynamo and the rest of their villain team(I forgot the name, Sacrilege, I know.)
Daredevil gets hit and thrown into a nearby shop and cloak and dagger teleport in to help him out on the street level.
Black Panther(T'chaka, because its the nineties) fights some prime sentinels and absolutely destroys them(my god.).
And then we see Psylocke with some other mutants I forgot the name of, but that's a me problem(sacrilege!)
And all the X-Men are just defeated and down on the ground, and we learn that Cable tried to save Madelyn around two hundred times. (Damn.)
Bastion then comes revealing himself to have become more machine than man and he is just about to start the full on attack on everyone even on humans just to replace them with prime sentinels.
And then, Deus ex phoenix! I mean sure this episode is freaking amazing but this part was like, yeah the phoenix force is just back... And then it's gone. And it just fixed the dampener and disconnected bastion from the prime sentinels and pulls out all the mutant DNA from sinister, who is still on with his mind games, but they are useless.
And then the force is no longer with them(haha star wars).
I get that this was required but like... Without the phoenix force bastion wins right? So what the other times the force just decided to not show? Well it did come to save Nathan so I guess in order to save the the future all Nathan(cable) had to do was show up.
But Nathan has hard luck as his arm is ripped from him and he is beaten with it.(Stop hitting yourself.) And bastion makes an armour out of it because I guess according to the comics that metal arm is actually the techno organic virus that cable keeps at bay with his psychic powers and we know that virus is what is used to make the prime sentinels.
Also look at him.
And in the meanwhile Magneto is still catatonic and Professor X is still connected to him. And we see all the darkness in Magneto about to overcome him represented as Deep dark waters breaking into the bar that represents magnetos mind or the safe place that Charles has created inside it.
And Magneto is just like a child scared of the dark.
And can I just say, I love all the conversations that Magneto and Professor X have in this psychic space.
Firstly, this conversation is very layered, think about it, it's two men, sitting in a bar, telling each other about something that will get them persecuted elsewhere, the X men comics have always had a larger readership from the LGBTQ community as they relate very heavily to the way the X men are persecuted.
Next, there is this line where Magneto makes fun of the victim Olympics.
Good to see they ain't biased.
And then we have this line where Magneto reminisces on how everyone leaves him, rogue, his twin children quicksilver and Wanda, and also polaris(Lorna Dean).
We realize that just like every time at the heart of Magneto's reasoning for being the way he is, is a scared little child, just like Bastion is, because his mother lied to him that she begged Charles to take him, and he refused, without that, he too would have been an X man.
And after a lot of fighting that involves Rogue punching Bastion into the moon while quoting Gambit.
Sunspot finally accepting his name as sunspot and then beast piloting a sentinel husk as a Trojan horse and trapping bastion underneath it.
And at this point Bastion has his face singed off, and yet, Cyclops chooses to embrace him as one of their own, as a mutant.
But they are too late as the Magneto protocols are activated, and asteroid M starts falling.
The X men all cycle through over who will do the self sacrifice but in the end decide to work as a team and hope that they all survive.
During this time Morph shows us what a true friend he is as he transforms into Jean to keep wolverine going, even Cyclops tells Wolverine to not die and not break jeans heart, man that's a true man. And on the other side Cyclops and Jean psychically talk to Nathan and Jean stops his optic blasts to show his eyes as this could be goodbye.
Morph turns into Jean and confesses his love for Wolverine to keep him going.
Just as all seems lost ERIK MAGNUS LENSHER comes back and Magneto saves the day, but then they are all pulled through time.
Six months later, X mansion is boarded up with chains, Senator(sorry, president, I'm still used to the movies.) Kelly is facing some flack and the Friends of Humanity leader is winning over him, showing, how just like in the real world, while support for a marginalized community goes up in one part of the world, opposite happens elsewhere.
Polarization increases.
Bishop comes back to tell forge that the X men have been pulled through time.
And my immediate thought was, Kang, who did appear in the orginal series, as Immortis, and this suspicion is increased even further as we see ancient Egypt and then there is this mutant warrior that we save, and then... It's En Sabah Nur, or Apocalypse.
At first I was intensely hyped and intensely bummed because Apocalypse is awesome but also Kang... But then I did some reading and it seems, that the Rama-Tut variant of Kang was the one who sent the soldiers against En Sabah Nur(at least that was the case in the comics.) and(in the comics) he got so scared of Apocalypse, after he merged with the Eternal tech to grow more powerful, that he left and made it deliberately so that he won.(Which was a story line in the original cartoon where Immortis manipulated Bishop into doing his bidding.)
And it certainly seems like Onslaught is set up as the dark parts of both Xavier and Magneto are focused upon, and th combination of those two is what lead to the creation of Onslaught.
And on the other side of the time stream, Jean and Cyclops are in the far future, lead by Mother Askana aka Hope summers and Nathan is just there.
In the comics Mother Askana pulled Cyclops and Jean from the past into two people called Red and Slim, and they brought up Nathan, it seems the rebel leaders that told Nathan about the X men were actually his parents.
And it seems the age of Apocalypse storyline is next as Apocalypse comes to present day Genoshia and picks up Gambit's Queen of hearts card that he uses for Rogue, and mentions Death.
So it seems that Gambit will be revived by Apocalypse as his horseman Death, and we don't know where Storm, Morph and Wolverine are, it seems that being a Horseman of Apocalypse will fix all their problems(as Apocalypse likes his Horseman in Prime condition.) So this is how Wolverine will get his Adamantium Claws back, Gambit will come back to life and Storm and Morph are going to be there.
To speak, I really wish Storm had joined the X men without her Powers first and then had gained them back through Apocalypse but then whatever.
And Morph, if he is a Horse man it's game over right? Cause he can use all the powers I'm the bag, I mean this show has just been using him as a Cameo factory, even in this one, where it's Cameo central, we get a Reed Richards Cameo as Morph transforms into him while Asteroid M is going down to save himself.
And speaking of Cameos, the nineties era Peter Parker is back with his MJ, meaning he found, her, cause in the nineties Spider-Man show they ended it with MJ being lost in the multiverse.(HE FOUND HER!!!) and no, even though th show ended in 98, in universe it was 96 so X-Men'97 is definitely after the ending so... HE FOUND HER!!!!
And there flash Thompson also(looks like)
Also I don't believe Bastion is dead, in the comics after he was defeated, his head was still kept alive using wires attached to it, and in tolerance is extinction part 2 there is a scene where he looks like that, so clearly, they are foreshadowing it, I believe he went through time like the X Men, and we will see him again.
And with that the most awesome Disney Plus Show comes to an end, and this show definitely, definitely saved Marvel, just like the golden age, when Marvel was going out of fashion, X men saved them, and so did they Save the cinematic side of Marvel again from falling.
Like legit, this show is so good that even serial, haters like the yellow flash have turned to supporters. A show that is so good, that it's literally hater proof.
And the soundtrack, the animation, everything is so top notch, its ridiculous, and all this, from what was expected to be nothing more than a cheap nostalgia hit for the nineties and was advertised as such.
But it came, it saw, it conquered.
And I for one, can't wait for Deadpool and Wolverine or X-Men'97 season 2, or for a revival of the other nineties shows.
