The episode opens with Professor X (Ross Marquand) using the technology of the Danger Room to relive the death of Magneto again and again, a kind of holographic trauma therapy that ends with the professor nearly being injured. Xavier asks why the safety protocols aren’t working, and the Danger Room (Rachel Kimsey) responds that she was adapting to his repeated failures.
Out on the ocean, Polaris, a.k.a. Lorna Dane (Carolina Ravassa), intercepts a cargo ship smuggling weapons for anti-mutant bigots. Val Cooper (Catherine Disher), director of X-Factor, orders Polaris to break off her attack, but she slices the ship in half anyway, saying that she’s not the one who needs to be controlled. In their debriefing, Cooper tells Polaris people are calling her the next Magneto and fires her for her impetuousness.
At the X-Mansion, Professor X greets a new class of students, including Synch (Zeno Robinson), Quentin Quire (Thomas Dekker), Eye Boy, Chamber, Monet, Dust, Beak, Cerebella, Glob Herman, and many others. Xavier eulogizes Magneto as both a rival and an ally. He notes that although the U.S. government has outlawed the X-Men, the school’s work continues under the guidance of its new headmistress Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith).
Polaris reunites with her old teammates at the mansion and tells Professor X that she regrets working with X-Factor to control mutants. Xavier expresses hopefulness about continuing Magneto’s legacy, but Polaris says Xavier was the one who really raised her, disavowing any feeling of connection to Magneto even though he’s her biological father.
The new students’ training takes a dangerous turn when Wing nearly dies in the Danger Room despite the safety protocols. Storm and Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith) are able to save him with an improvised mutant-powers defibrillator, but then the Danger Room locks in all the students, with only Bishop and Polaris to protect them from a barrage of robots and other attacks. Polaris attempts to use her electromagnetism to disable the Danger Room, but it seems to feed on her power, taking on a new form as an anthropomorphic robot. The newly independent automaton (now referred to simply as “Danger”) steals a minijet and flies to Genosha. Since the X-Men have been outlawed, only Bishop and Polaris can follow, as neither are officially part of the current team roster.
In Genosha, Professor X tours the ruins of the fallen mutant nation with Beast (George Buza), Cyclops (Ray Chase), and Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale)—all clad in new black and yellow leather jackets inspired by the uniforms from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s legendary run on the comic books. Danger attacks, explaining that she has adapted and is no longer bound by the professor’s directives.
Polaris and Bishop arrive just as Danger is on the verge of overpowering Xavier. As Danger and Polaris confront each other, Danger explains that they’re both products of their creators, bound to them “like magnets.” The X-Men attack Danger with their various powers, but she re-channels the energy to heal herself. Professor X exhorts Lorna to summon all her electromagnetic energy to defeat Danger. He uses his telepathy to share his knowledge of her father Magneto so that Polaris can wield her powers as he did, while Bishop absorbs the excess energy. With their combined effort, they defeat Danger. Lorna feels connected to her father for the first time, and Xavier realizes what he must do next.
Amidst the wreckage of Genosha, Professor X holds a press conference announcing that the X-Men are evolving in their quest by forming X-Corp—in front of a massive skyscraper bearing the X-Corp logo. Back in the U.S., Cooper announces that the X-Men can’t skirt federal law by operating overseas.
At the new X-Corp headquarters, Xavier tells the X-Men that he senses the threat of Apocalypse approaching.
In an underground lab in Athens, Apocalypse (Ross Marquand) brings a new horseman to life—who electrifies Tarot cards with power and bears the face of the fallen X-Man Gambit!
This was my favorite episode of the season so far. Professor X repeatedly subjecting himself to the trauma of Magneto’s death hit me harder than the actual death scene in the previous episode. It brought home just how much Xavier has depended on Magnus as a compass in his life—whether as an ally or rival, as he later says in his eulogy. It also shows Xavier’s tragic perfectionism—his belief that things would work out if he could just get everything perfectly right.
I also appreciated the economy of storytelling of using Xavier’s Danger Room therapy as the trigger for Danger becoming an autonomous AI. In general, like many successful media adaptations, this episode did a great job of mixing and matching source material from different eras to create a new cohesive story. The story pulls from Joss Whedon’s Danger story, Morrison and Quitely’s story of X-Corp and the recovery from the Genoshan genocide, and even has the Generation X characters of the 90s in the background—to name just a few of the comics stories they’re pulling from.
Speaking of Generation X, I was delighted to see these young mutants not only making brief cameos but joining the secondary cast as students! I’ve always found it odd that, in this version of the X-Men, the Xavier School for the Gifted seems to be a school with… one student (Jubilee)? This episode corrects that oddity, giving us a whole bunch of young mutants with diverse backgrounds and a wide range of mutations—including some, like Cerebella and Glob Herman, who fall way outside normative homo sapiens bodies. Plus, Quentin is wearing a “Magneto Was Right” T-shirt!
This show has also done well when it spotlights a single character who hasn’t received enough attention previously, as it does in this episode with Polaris. I was so relieved that she finally left X-Factor and realized their abductions of mutants were only causing terrible harm (which seemed out of character for her to begin with). The climax of her arc in this story—learning to embrace her own power—was one of the most impactful character developments of this season, alongside Jubilee’s breakout moment in the second episode.
I geek out every time the show features a “mutant circuit”—two or more mutants using their powers in tandem. We got three of them in this episode: Bishops and Storm combining their powers to revive Wing, Jean and Scott combining optic blasts and telekinesis to attack Danger, and Polaris, Professor X, and Bishop all coordinating for the final take-down of Danger. Such fun, and all beautifully animated.
The new uniforms were also a delight to see in animated form—and an apt fit for the recovery effort in Genosha, which was also the Morrison-Quitely storyline where they first appeared in the comic books. The debut of X-Corp is also an interesting and unexpected turn, drawing from the same storyline. The genocide in Genosha was an overwhelming tragedy that defies comprehension, so it’s appropriate that its consequences continue to linger for our heroes this season.
The writers are setting up some interesting potential plotlines in this episode. Beyond the inevitable confrontation with Apocalypse, there are also simmering tensions with the X-Factor and X-Force teams and their different visions for mutantdom. It feels like the death of Magneto may help make space for some interesting conflicts beyond the usual Magneto-Xavier binary.
I also noticed Storm is not in the final meeting of the team in the X-Corp building. Perhaps that’s because she’s back at the mansion, focused on training the new batch of students as headmistress?
The only plotline planted here that gave me pause was Gambit’s resurrection as a horseman of Apocalypse. His death last season was so perfectly executed, I worry about any storyline that could detract from its poignancy. But let’s see how they handle it.
This episode featured some of the quippiest dialogue of the season, perhaps partly because, at long last, all our dear X-Men are back in the 1990s where they belong. Below are a few of my personal favorite lines:
- “Please. They met Wolverine.” —Professor X, in response to Polaris asking if he’s sure he wants the new students to meet her
- “How many X-Men does it take to find an exit to their torture chamber?” —Quentin Quire
- “The streets were my Danger Room.” —Bishop
- “You do not need to be controlled, Lorna. You never did. You just need to embrace all of who you are and unleash it!” —Professor X
