This was my least favorite episode so far. I had been so impressed by the previous ones, I was ready to see Fall of The Mutants and all of that condensed into one episode, only to find they used over half the episode on Charles/Lilandra, and barely used anything from the actual story of how Storm got her powers back. When someone pointed out Beau didn't write this one, it made more sense.
Sure, the owl skinwalker design for Adversary SLAPS, and the weird head twisting this episode was creepy and all, but like, Adversary was such a huge threat in the comics, and the whole team had to be sacrificed so Forge could banish him the same way he summoned him(which I thought we would actually get a bit of; the battlefield incident where Forge was maimed and used the souls of his platoon to summon demons to kill the opposition forces), but we didn't get ANY of that. Also, Ororo reciprocating Forge's love without the year on that alternate earth alone with him felt WAYYYYYY too fast, but this is the same girl who was ready to marry Arkon in one episode, so I guess it tracks.
I'm not going to harp on this too much, because I loved the actual sequence with Storm getting her powers back and summoning her diadem and everything, but they definitely skipped the part where Ororo realizes she's still very dangerous even without her powers and could still operate with the team just as a strategist and hand to hand fighter. I was hoping we'd get a scene of her slicing up a horde of demons on the way to the top of a magic mountain with just a knife, but alas, it was not to be so, so we could see the most boring space empire scenes. I agree, new Xavier's voice just isn't hitting right. And his classroom session was pretty weak. Oh well, whatever, Storm's back in the game and ready to smite Sentinels again, bring on the next episode.