X-Men '97: Episode 4 Review/Spoilers

[Rift]

Sorry I'm late, I wasn't going to wake up at 3am for a Mojo episode.

Gambit made coffee ("with cream") for Rogue. But Magneto made coffee for her first, and he knows how she likes her coffee. Gambit asks for a cappuccino, if Mags is taking orders. But old metal man says that he isn't - he gives orders.

Anyway, he wants everyone to train in case Sinister comes back. The blue Rogaine ad suggests that Jubes sit it out and celebrate her 18th birthday, but Magneto says that she'll be able to celebrate a lot more birthdays if she learns to master her powers. Morph teases Magneto about not getting a pony from his parents on his birthday, but Magneto plays the Dead Parents card.

Jubes comes in. Everyone else is willing to join her at the arcade, but as Jubilee would later explain to Roberto, Magneto had a titsfit over it. Even now, they're not celebrating her birthday because everyone else had to get political at the United Nations, as Genosha was now entering the UN. (Which I guess is why Jubilee is allowed to have a boy in her room without any sort of supervision.) Roberto interrupts her complaints to point out how she has video games. Jubilee doesn't recognize the "Motendo" console she now mysteriously has, but assumes that it might have been a mysterious surprise birthday gift from the X-Men. Jubes is so in on playing it, but Roberto is less interested.

Anyway, the console shoots out tentacles that ensnare them and send their mines into a video game.

They wake up in a recreation of Jubilee's room. A Sentinel rips through and grabs Roberto, but Jubilee manages to fight back and free him. But now they've left the mansion and are somehow a destroyed downtown, much to their confusion. They're beset by Sentinel and the Friends of Humanity. Roberto refuses to use his powers, in case anyone will see him. They find a ringing phone and Roberto answers it, which teleports them away.

Now they're in pre-mutant liberation Genosha, when everyone was enslaved. They're attacked by guards, but they're defeated by a "Hot Topic stalker," Abscissa. Jubilee tries to get closer, but bumps into a transparent wall, and the woman disappears. Jubilee figures that they're now in a video game. Something that Mojo confirms when he pops up through a rift. He explains that they're in a video game based on Jubes' own memories. She's the star of this game!

Also, Mojo got surgery to become a skinny legend. He's been flopping in the ratings, so he's pivoting to video games. And he offers Jubilee a choice: she doesn't have to grow up. Instead, she can be forever young and live amongst her nostalgia-tinted memories forever. This is X-Men: The Rise of Jubilee.

They're transported into a 16/32(?) bit world, where they first face off against Sentinels. The world and the enemies are bit, but Jubilee and Roberto look normal - except when we see the screen from the Mojoworld audience's perspective; then they're also portrayed as bits, and their dialogue is seen in speech bubbles. Mojo is so happy at their success, he becomes fat again.

Stage 2: Savage Land. They beat up some dinosaurs. Jubes sustains some serious damage and her health bar nearly depletes. But the screen temporarily flashes to the Hot Topic stalker. When we go back to the kids, Jubes' health bar has been filled up, much to her relief and confusion. Abscissa is seen as a glitch, a bug. Spiral and Mojo are determined to squash her.

Final Stage: Asteroid M. (And technically I just realized that everyone is watching Roberto and Jubilee play the game, which makes them one of the world's earliest Let's Players.) Roberto recognizes this place from the news, which he watched with his mom. And remind me to go on a rant sometime about how bilingual people are portrayed in media because the way many are written, it feels like I'm watching Dora the Explorer. I'm looking at you, America Chavez, peppering your sentences with kindergarten-level Spanish and adding random words at the end of your sentences like some anime character going "desu." It's not a big issue here, Roberto's not a bad case or anything. But yeah, it bugs me and I want to complain about it. Like his Portuguese just reminded me of characters with awful dialogue and how their flow between languages isn't nearly as natural as it is in real life. Like I get they want the foreign languages to be simple enough for people to understand the one or two words they say. But it sounds so fake half the time.

Anyway, Roberto, still closeted at the time, acted like he hated mutants. A mãe dele saw the news and thought there were also good mutants in the world, though he could tell she was spooked. But he reassured her by being racist. Jubilee relates by complaining about Magneto making her train on her birthday. Roberto makes this funny aside glance at this, then reminds her that they should look for a way out. But Jubes doesn't want to rush her nostalgia trip. Roberto says that she has to grow up eventually. One can't live solely in nostalgia, and that sooner or later, reality will smack them right in the fa- AHHHH. He gets smacked in the face by a giant ball, which sends up crashing into a window and HARD drops him into some control board, breaking it. It looks very painful. He's dead, so he gets a Game Over screen.

Boss Battle! Jubes vs Magneto. Jubes thinks in video logic and decides to watch Magneto for attack patterns. She waits for him cycle through his patterns and hits him at the best opportunities. She wins and it's a flawless victory. Roberto is on the verge of death, but Jubilee finds an X on the ground (an X-tra Life!) and gives it to Roberto to revive him. Meanwhile, Mojo is furious because he never put it there. The bug is back.

Roberto shows that my earlier complaints about language were wrong, because he breaks into justifiably angry Portuguese. But Jubes at least beat Magneto, so there's that... Except he's back now, for another round of battle. But now a portal opens up, and a giant hand carries the kids away from the stage. Abscissa hacked them out of the game server and into a broadcast server to buy them some time. Roberto accuses of her being a plot twist planted by Mojo. The two Jubes move in unison and tell him to zip it at the exact same time, in the exact same way. With this clue, Abscissa is forced to reveal that she's an older Jubilee.

They need to get out of there because Mojo could "download" himself in there any second. (What?????) Jubes asks for an explanation on what's going on though. Abby explains that the game was beta tested by digital duplicates of the kids countless times before the real ones showed up. Abscissa is the only survivor of those trials, having escaped via exploiting a glitch. She then goes into a speech how it's escapism! Can't you see? It's not healthy!

Don't trust this hoe, Jubilee. Life only gets worse as you grow older. Kill her. Kill her now and live forever.

Mojo downloads into the server and initiates a boss battle with them. He's now 5 times larger, 15 times fatter and carrying 50 pounds of crack. Abscissa hard carries them with her sparkling roller skates, fireworks energy disks. Roberto uses his powers to turn his arm black and throw a fireball at Mojo. Jubilee and Abby combine their powers into a super giant energy ball that fires Mojo's ass. The scene is perfection: the music is fantastic, the animation is stellar, the visuals are so pretty. I love it.

Mojo is defeated and the kids are sent back to their world. The Motendo console is fried. Jubilee appreciates Roberto taking a risk to help her, then kisses him. There are fireworks as they lean down on the bed together.

[Rift]

Now for the Lifedeath part of the episode. At Forge's ranch house, he's whipped up a candlelit dinner for him and Storm. Bison chili. They chat about Forge's powers. They get on the topic of Forge's prosthetics, and he explains that he lost his parts in the war. Storm makes this all about her by saying how cool it is that he could fix herself, and how she misses flying. Forge says that they should go for a ride.

Cut to Storm, who's bouncing up and down while riding something and looking pretty content. And I think only focusing on the top half during this scene is deliberate. But in reality, it's nothing scandalous - she and Forge are riding horses. Based Storm outraces him and reaches the edge of a cliff first. Then she talks about the wind and weather and crap. Also, there's an owl.

That night, they return to Forge's house discuss getting Storm's power back. The trick to undoing X-Cutioner's damage wasn't to make an inverted version of his weapon's radiation. It was creating a machine that could safely channel such power. Forge puts her in a tube and blasts her with some light.

They go outside to test if the machine worked. Unfortunately, it didn't. Storm tries to confidently command the wind, but this devolves into her tearfully begging the wind to hear her. She still can't believe this is happening. Also, there's an owl.

At a later time, we see Forge is still working on the machine. Storm wonders why he's so determined to fix her. Forge is forced to admit that, after the war, the Defense Department offered him resources to build things, as long as he built them weapons to neutralize dangerous mutants. Storm is horrified and left in disbelief. She looks to a power-negating collar on Forge's desk and asks if he made this, but Forge clarifies that that particular device was made by a scientist in Scotland. A lot of the devices we see now are broad strokes modifications of his inventions, made by others long after he left the government. Storm is pissed that he trusted the government in the first place, because... come on.

Forge admits to keeping the truth from her, but only so she'd go along with him and he could help her. But it wasn't all a lie. Storm tries to head him off, but Forge tries to rizz her up: he could live forever, but his creative mind would never be able to conceive something as perfect Hellion. Storm's also cool, too. Storm dismisses this as him just wanting to help her so he can absolve himself of his sins.

Forge insists that she's a goddess. Powers or not, she needs to see that she's amazing. He'll let her go if she wants, but he wants to tell her one thing: he loves her. She slaps him and leaves.

So Storm rides off on a horse. But glowing red eyes appear before her, and she falls off a cliff and into an abyss of shadows. She crash-lands through Forge's roof and finds herself back in his house. Forge is pretty confused by it, too. But the house magically repairs itself. Also, there's a demon owl. It bites Forge's shoulder and infects him with something.

The bird hugs Ororo. She is the Adversary, and she's keeping them trapped to feast on on Storm's misery.

Overall, I liked both stories. Jubilee's ep was more exciting than I thought it would be. I always loved Storm/Forge, the time they spent together and the inevitable heartbreak, so I was predisposed to liking the Lifedeath story. Thb though, I wish we got a full episode of them together so the betrayal could sting more.

Also, Forge has a picture of him shirtless and in booty shorts. His chest and arms have a little bit of stubble, but otherwise he seems clean-shaven. I just thought I'd mention it, for anyone curious.

• In the virtual world, we see THAT poster from that Days of Futures past cover on a wall. Disney+ won't let me screencap.
• Cameos: A Longshot doll; Blob, Sunfire and Domino are seen on Genosha; Dazzler is referenced by Mojo; Colossus and Magik are listed as playable characters in the game. We see Forge have a picture of him with the X-Factor team, so throw in Multiple Man, Strong Guy, Quicksilver, Havok. Polaris and Wolfsbane.
• Mojo references Barbie Girl: "You're a gamer girl, in a gamer world."
• Possible (but doubtful) reference to the 2006 movie, Stay Alive: "If you die in the game, you die in real life."
• Magneto's voice is echo-y and sounds compressed, like it did IRL arcade game.
• No Jean, no Scott this episode.
• Mojo wonders about throwing to commercial during a video game. Kind of depressing when you look at EA 30 year later, having in-game ads and scenes for other products.
• Abscissa is never referred to as "Abcissa" during the episode, but she's referred to as such in subtitles.

[Factor]

Feral instead of Wolfsbane with X-factor?

[Veni]

Feral instead of Wolfsbane with X-factor?

That's Wolfsbane, not Feral.

[Rift]

Feral instead of Wolfsbane with X-factor?

Oh dang you're right, oops. I forgot Wolfsbane looked like Feral in the original show.

[Catlady in training]

This was great! I'm not even a fan of video games, but I loved the nostalgic animation.

[Malachi]

The mojo episode worked better than anticipated. It might be because Mojo himself works better in small doses. So far it seems he peaked with the longshot mini.

Lifedeath p1 was too compressed. Forge and Ororo’s relationship happened to fast and felt unnatural, which meant that it didn’t hit as hard as it should have.

Maybe it would have been wiser to have it run as a subplot through more episodes during the season, spacing it out so it feels like more time has progressed.

[Saturius]

1st story was fun. As an 80's and early 90's child, how could I not grin from ear to ear. But Mojo's voice was bad. It just didn't fit the character at all.

2nd part was OK, but the rushed nature of the series really is showing itself far too much now and weakening the show as it goes on. Trying to get us to believe Forge loves Storm was just too big of an ask in that short amount of time(a flaw in the comic story as well). I hope Lifefeath pt. 2 can rebound and maybe retroactively salvage pt. 1 a bit.

[Primal Slayer]

they updated the intro

[MentalManipulator]

they updated the intro

Nice catch. Now it's really Jean.

As for the episode itself, it was not my favorite. Don't get me wrong, I did think it was good, but close to the other ones it was a little more shallow. It could have benefited of more story development. But I'm feeling this will be a recurrent ''issue" this entire season. Maybe they wanted to fit as much as possible because they were not sure we would get a second one, but I hope the next seasons this gets fixed. I hope they are giving more room for things to breathe in season 2 and 3, that are both confirmed.

Because the animation is stellar, the characters are spot on but a lot of things are starting to feel out of the blue sometimes. The clone revelation, the Goblyn Queen's name, the decision to send the baby aways, Maddie choosing her name and going away, Storm and Forge's romance. I'm really hoping the next episodes don't commit this errors too much or else we are not getting the good story payoffs.

[Jackraow21]

they updated the intro

Oh wow. I'm gonna have to start paying more attention to the intro. The attention to detail here is inspiring.

[Havok83]

They really should have had a PSN/mobile game tie-in to this episode that dropped this would have been fun

Jeez, Forge is a jerk in this show just as he was in the comics. He loves Storm? How long has he known her, a few days?. That was some manipulation tactic

Oh wow. I'm gonna have to start paying more attention to the intro. The attention to detail here is inspiring.

You should already be! It changes every episode

[Hi-Fi]

Ugh, they really didn't do Lifedeath justice. Why oh why wasn't it a whole episode (yes, I know this is only part 1, but look at how much story it's covered in it)? There was no set-up for that emotional pay-off between Storm and Forge to work. 5 minutes and he was already declaring his love. It could have been a really beautiful episode, but it was so rushed (like last episode was) that it just seemed like DeMaio going "check, check, check" in a list of stuff he wanted to cover.

The Jubilee half of the episode was fun, even though I really disliked Mojo's voice.

Overall, I'm still really enjoying it, but I wish it took its time when needed.

[Mormel]

EDIT: What Hi-Fi said. I took way too long formulating my thoughts, lol.

Uncanny X-Men #186 is a fantastic issue, and was double-sized, to boot.

[Primal Slayer]

This is a 2-parter so we can't forget that.

Also the OG jubilee VA voiced old woman Jubilee. That was a nice touch