4x09 Beyond Good and Evil (2)

[7.1/10] X-Men really is putting every ingredient in the stew for this one! On the villain side, it turns out that it’s not just Mister Sinister who’s working for Apocalypse, lured by the chance to progress his genetic experiments through the ability to jump back and forth in time. But
his old lieutenant Mystique is in the fold too, for reasons that are unclear beyond what we were told in the first Scotland episode. And if that weren’t enough, Magneto is aligned as well, with the promise that Apocalypse will resurrect his dead wife. Even Sabretooth gets in on the act at one point.

The assembly of an Evil League of Evil, replete with all the X-Men’s major foes working together, helps add to the sense of this as an epic conclusion to their adventures. Apocalypse’s promises create plausible reasons why these self-possessed and “don’t play nice with others” baddies would collaborate. And the fact that, as we see in this episode, Apocalypse isn’t above lying to his comrades in order to get what he wants helps telegraph the likelihood of more trouble to come.

I’m also glad that we finally get an objective from him, if not yet a motive. (This episode loves to fall back into the “All in good time” cliche to avoid letting the villain spill the beans.) The notion that he’s rounding up as many powerful psychics as he can creates a firm spine to build the story around, on both the hero and villain side.

On the hero side, we have the return of Lilandra and the Shi’ar, adding to the momentousness of things. And we also have the return of Archangel, who makes sense as an addition to a story about Apocalypse. Frankly, the episode gets a little crowded with so many players and places and events bouncing around, but given that 95% of them are already familiar to the audience helps make it feel not so cluttered.

The one new addition is Psylocke. Candidly, I’d forgotten entirely that she's in the show, so it’s a pleasant surprise from a fairly prominent X-Men to join the proceedings. Her fight with Archangel establishes her Catwoman-esque bona fides as a thief. And I also like her motivation here: a Robin Hood-esque plan to steal from Archangel to fund her brother’s efforts to fight for a better world and a shaming of Archangel for not using his own wealth for such revolutionary purposes. The fact that she, as the name suggests, is in Apocalypse's crosshairs as a psychic creates a plausible reason for the X-Men to get involved.

I can’t say that I’msuper compelled by the involvement of Cable and his son trying to find a tie machine in the future, so they can go back to the beginning and destroy Apocalypse’s rejuvenation chamber when it started. The temporal mechanics of X-Men continue to be nonsense. But whatever. You either make your peace with it by now or you give up on a show that seems practically addicted to time travel stories.

Overall, this puts more of the key pieces in place for a major showdown among the X-men and their allies on the one side, and a collection of major villains on the other. Seeing the path forward with a little more clarity helps give the arc a bit more momentum, and establish this as a climax of the adventures we’ve seen to date.