1x10 Tolerance Is Extinction (3)

[7.7/10] Family is complicated. That feels like the abiding theme of X-Men ‘97 and this season finale especially. Magnus balks at Charles calling him “brother” and strains to remember his parents’ faces. Xavier challenges his old friend on the basis of Magneto attacking his “children”. Bastion plays the part of the unwanted child, resentful of the would-be father who didn’t take him in, and spouts rhetoric about the family that can't save one another simply being a suicide pact. Cyclops, Jean, and Cable reconcile as an unusual but no less tightly-knit family in unfathomable circumstances. And Scott in particular makes peace with the mistakes of his fathers, both his bio dad and his surrogate dad, and shows what he’s inherited from them by inviting a prodigal son into this motley but marvelous family of mutants, despite everything.

The idea of the found family is not a new one. You only need to look as far as the Fast and Furious franchise to see how it can be sanded down and made facile. But there’s a deeper, more powerful version of it at play in the conclusion to the “Tolerance Is Extinction” trilogy. This finale seizes on the idea that family bonds can be painful, even traumatizing, but that with people united under a shared dream and a shared solace, they can not only remind us of who we are, but spur us to become our best selves.

That is an enervating and worthwhile notion. There’s just one problem -- I’m indifferent at best to almost everything involving Bastion.

Everything involving him feels kind of pointless and exhausting. For one thing, he has that endless, Final Fantasy-style “You haven't even seen my final form!” syndrome. First Phoenix beats him. Fine, sure. But then somehow that's not enough, and he absorbs Cable’s arm which makes him the uber-powerful “Future Incarnate” somehow. Alright, I guess? And then the X-Men just keep wailing on him and wailing on him and wailing on him to no effect. All of it’s pretty unavailing.

Maybe it would feel different if I hadn't just watched the original X-Men series last year, but I’m already kind of tired of writers using the Phoenix as a narrative “get out of jail free” card whenever Jean or the team is in mortal danger. The abilities feel extra cheap when the awesome impact of the Phoenix Force is apparently enough to shatter some part of Bastion, sever his connection with his global sentinels, and short out their cyber-brains, but also leaves Bastion himself fairly unscathed. Oh, and of course, it’s then just gone, which also feels cheap.

There is at least some poetry and closure that comes from Phoenix stripping Mister Sinister of his mutant DNA and returning him to his true decrepit state. Between the story of Sinister’s backstory from the original show, and the cruel experiments he’s done on the likes of Jean, Scott, Nathan, and Morph, subjecting him to the same kind of genetic manipulation to hasten his downfall feels like his just deserts. So at least some good comes from this deus ex machina solution to Bastion’s having half our heroes in his grasp. And charitably, the idea that what spurs Phoenix is Jean’s devotion to her son has some juice to it.

But from there, everything involving Bastion is kind of a yawn. He monologues and monologues and monologues. By god, we got enough purple prose out of him in the last four episodes to last a lifetime. Some of it is solid or cutting enough, but you can only hear that kind of sermonizing for so long before it gets tiresome.

Even the fight, which has been a strength of X-Men ‘97 to date, isn’t as engaging as I might like. Yeah, Rogue taking her vengeance from Bastion on Gambit’s behalf is cool, but it doesn’t really amount to any damage to the bad guy. Sunspot coming into his powers and using them on Bastion is a theoretically nice moment of self-actualization, but it barely fazes the bad guy. (Roberto rescuing Jubilee is much more meaningful in my book.)

Jubilee calls him a sleazoid and blasts him with fireworks, and it does nothing. Cyclops blasts him with his eye beams, and it does nothing. Nightcrawlers teleports and slashes at him, and it does nothing. Beast and the other half of the X-Men squad show up and crush him with a hollowed out sentinel and...it messes up Bastion’s face a little.

What is the point of any of this? I guess if you want to sell the idea that Bastion is one tough cookie, this does it. But there’s not the sense of rousing catharsis to the X-Men coming together to take on this guy, because every attack feels fruitless, and yet they seem no less enthused or triumphant, which creates an odd dissonance. The whole fight is overblown and full of action-heavy wheel-spinning, without the sense of progress or triumph that really ought to come from toppling, or at least stymying, the season’s Big Bad.

I’m of two minds about what happens next, when our heroes seem to have Bastion on the ropes, and rather than finishing him off, Cyclops invites him to join the family. On the one hand, it feels impossibly stupid. The guy aimed to commit genocide. You’ve barely been able to stop him, and it’s come at tremendous risk and even greater cost. You just spent the last twenty minutes beating up on the guy, so why relent now?

And yet, the X-Men franchise in all media, and the 1992 animated series in particular, has often been more aspirational than realistic. The grim depictions of prejudice and societal distrust are often balanced by notions of faith in others and the belief that change is possible. While I kind of question the logic of the choice in reality, there may be no greater sign that Cyclops is ready to lead the X-Men than him adopting his mentor’s mentality that anyone can be reached, and with the right family, can be made whole again.

So then it’s awfully convenient that Cyclops gets to make that noble choice and Bastion gets destroyed anyway. In keeping with Bastion’s sneering oratory, I like the idea that for all the X-Men’s optimism, humanity still sees them as unwanted children and launches nukes at Asteroid M out of a fear that Magneto’s gone mad. Even a sympathizer like President Kelly, who is admittedly in a tough position, will use the most terrible weapon known to we mortal men on mutants when humanity is threatened. (Over the objections of Captain America and Black Panther no less!

But there is something awfully convenient about Cyclops and company getting to be the noble good guys, and their devilish foe being eliminated anyway, albeit by the random actions of a third party rather than choices made by our heroes.

So why do I still enjoy this one so much? Well for one, pretty much every piece of the material involving Professor X and Magneto is gold.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for these “theater of the mind”-type conversations. I’m a sucker for the rocky but unshakable bond between Charles and Magnus. I’m a sucker for the inevitable clashes between their worldviews. I’m a sucker for mutual journeys where one friend helps another emerge out of great hardship and great pain. This is all basically catnip for me.

That mix between conflict and devotion gives their every interaction a certain charge. Starting with what is essentially a flashback to one of their earliest meetings, with Xavier ever the optimist who imagines how mutant powers might better the world, and Magnus ever the cynic, fearing another term in the camps, comes with an early electricity. They essentially come out to one another. And when the scales fall and Magneto realizes it’s a ruse, the debate continues, extended to recent events, and whether they mean a new possibility for humanity or a final insult that requires saying goodbye and letting the chips fall where they may.

In Xavier’s trademark style, he tries to stop Magneto, but also saves him. Charles binds their fates together, delving into his friend’s mind so that he can unwind the degradation of the magnetic poles that Magneto unleashed, but also making it so that if he doesn’t repair Magnus’ psyche in the process, at least enough to help him remember who he really is, that Xavier will perish too. That is self-sacrifice, in the form that's familiar in the world of the X-Men (as we saw from Gambit, see from Cyclops, and as Scott himself mentions, have seen from Jean repeatedly). But it is also devotion, a relentless commitment to a purpose and an ideal that Charles has long held dear, but more so to a friend whom he’s long held dearer.

That's the other interesting throughline in all of this -- there is a romantic undertone to all of Charles and Magnus’ interactions in part three of the “Tolerance Is Extinction” triptych. Xavier wraps his arms around Magneto and says, “I have you, Magnus; I’ll always have you.” The two of them coming out to one another as mutants plays like a metaphor for them coming out otherwise. And there is a familiarity, a devotion, that toes the line between what can be shown on Disney+ and what is intimated for the audience. I doubt it’ll go anywhere, but it’s interesting subtext to include.

So is what we get from the rest of the mutant crew. Nightcrawler speaks of Xavier’s vision through his own religious lens, with the show isolating the part of The Lord’s Prayer that discusses forgiving others’ trespasses and being forgiven for them oneself. Cyclops and Jean returning to say goodbye to their son, and Cable telling his parents that the old legends don’t do them justice tugged at my heartstrings. Morph turning into Jean to provide solace to a dying Logan while also expressing his true feelings is all kinds of complicated, but also moving.

(And not for nothing, we see frickin’ Peter Parker and Mary Jane(!!!) of Spider-Man: The Animated Series vintage, in the crowd reacting to all of these proceedings.)

In the final tally, the X-Men are willing to give their lives to save humanity, That is Professor X’s legend and legacy. After everything, after being nearly destroyed by a madman from the future, and after being nearly nuked by the humans who fear them, they still try to save the world. Whatever else Charles has done, he instilled those values in his children, that optimism and altruism in equal measure, that bears out in even the most extreme circumstances, bound up in a dream of a better world.

It is that dream that makes them family. He reminds Magnus of who he is, of how he can have a family despite the tragic loss of his parents, about how dark waters can bring us together, and how that wish for something more, for your own people and the world, can weave you together into something more as well. It revivifies his old friend, and there may be no more rousing moment in the whole damn series than Magnus emerging into the sky, declaring “Magneto lives”, and using his powers to save the day.

Even those who are lost can be rediscovered. Even the maligned and the damned can be redeemed. Even the ones whose identities are lost and whose connections are severed in a torrent of anguish and indignity can be restored and reborn, in the bonds of something greater. Magneto, Professor X, and the unusual, uncanny, unparalleled family they have forged together is proof of that.

I’ll admit to not caring much for the tease of Apocalypse in the past and young Nathan in the future. But so it goes with these types of comic book stories. The next adventure always awaits, as it must.

But for now -- Bastion or not, Magneto as friend or foe, human or mutant or future hybrid -- X-Men ‘97 still ends its inaugural run on a high note, with a tribute to parents and children, and more importantly a dream that holds them together -- in a season that met and in some places far surpassed the original. A late revival like this had no business being this good, and even in a finale I had serious problems with, what I loved managed to far outweigh what I didn’t. Family remains complicated. The X-Men stories remain convoluted. But in the right hands, and with the right people, both can still be great.