[7.1/10] Most of this episode is forgettable. “Child of Light” does its best to make the stakes here feel incredible, both inside and outside the Crystal. In the regular world, a giant black hole-like spatial phenomenon is sucking up energy across the universe, causing environmental devastation on Earth. There is some juice to seeing a raft of familiar Marvel faces (or in the case of Spider-Man, hands) working across the globe to protect humanity. It's pretty standard global catastrophe stuff in superhero comic book stories, though, so it doesn’t do much to pull the needle.
Inside the crystal, we see an overextended interlude of various heroes and villains, including the X-Men, striving to beat an unstoppable, power-infused Emperor D’Ken.There’s no progression, no twists, not even any real novelty to the battle. Instead, all we have is a bunch of goons, most of whom are interchangeable, throwing the usual array of magic powers at an unstoppable, ten-foot-tall demigod who cackles and cackles ‘til you wish they would at least plug his mouth even if they can’t beat this undebatable guy.
Except, of course, Phoenix can beat him, by sealing him in the crystal. It renders the entire rest of the fight pointless. That's uncharitable from me. I take the point to be showing that D”Ken is so invincible in this guise that it would take a massive sacrifice from Phoenix to stop him. But the combat with the laughing moron stretches on forever.
And yet, once Phoenix decides to sacrifice herself to contain him, things really pick up. It’s sudden, but her goodbyes to Scott and Logan are touching. The show hasn't done much to earn it since Jean’s been pretty sidelined for most of the show to this point, but her summoning the strength and friendship of her comrades on the X-Men in order to find the will to hold back D’Ken is the kind of thing I’m a sucker for. Likewise, while the imagery gets a tad silly in places, I like the show going big and impressionistic to represent the way she's trapping D’Ken in a prison of his own making, rather than going more literal with it.
The aftermath isn’t bad either. Xavier and Lilandra still feeling a connection but resolving that they each have responsibilities in their home planets that will keep them apart is appropriately bittersweet. Cyclops losing his almost-wife to a madman, at the same time his father avenges the loss of his wife at the hands of the same madman has a certain poetry to it, and the show takes their mental states seriously. And the whole team mourning the loss of Jean in all of this is heartrending, is pretty standard.
On the whole, there is a long, dull wind-up to get through most of the local/intergalactic/interdimensional threats at play in this one. But once the episode gets to the heart of the matter, namely Jean’s big sacrifice as Phoenix, you can understand why this story had such an impact on fans.
Shout by Reiko LJVIP 6BlockedParent2021-08-30T20:06:15Z
Heads up gang. Onwards from this point you should ignore the episode order on trakt and Disney plus (if watching on there) as the air order and listings are incorrect to the actual scripts. If you Google for the correct watch order there's a good 4 eps between this and the savage land double. The pacing and events make far more sense if watching those first. Esp with 'No Mutant is an Island' being next.