"Hated and Feared" Re-Watch: "Beyond Good and Evil" Parts 1-4: "The End of Time," "Promise of Apocalypse," "The Lazarus Chamber" & "End and Beginning"

 X-Men

These four episodes were supposed to be the series finale of "X-Men: The Animated Series." Then Fox unexpectedly ordered ten more episodes. This would have been a great ending to the series and we've got four episodes to cover. So, let's not waste any time.

"Beyond Good and Evil" - Part 1: "The End of Time"

Jubilee: "Weddings are so totally cool!"

Gambit: "That all depend on your point of view, chere."

In the far future, Cable, his son, Tyler, and a group of freedom fighters attempt to kill Apocalypse while he is rejuvenating in his Lazarus Chamber. They find that Apocalypse has tricked them. He attacks and steals Cable's time traveling device. Fellow time traveler, Bishop, fresh from saving Charles Xavier from Trevor Fitzroy, tries to return to his old time. He crosses paths with Apocalypse and ends up trapped in a strange place with a seemingly crazy man, Bender. Shard, Bishops sister, travels to the present and crashes the actual wedding of Jean Grey and Cyclops. She's not the only uninvited guest. Mr. Sinister and his Nasty Boys show up to kidnap Jean.

Follow the... orange road?

When it comes to the first episode of a four part arc, there is going to be a lot of set up. That's the name of the game. And this is some solid set up. I feel like post "The Dark Phoenix," that the series has floundered but these episodes are really compelling and really great. It definitely brings in a lot of threads from throughout the series and it is extremely successful. 

It makes a lot of sense that this final arc is focused on time travel. In this series and in the comics, time travel, alternate futures and alternate realities are big parts of the mythos and some of the most compelling episodes of the series have been time travel focused. We begin with Cable, his son, Tyler and some cannon fodder attacking Apocalypse's temple that houses his Lazarus Chamber not to be confused with Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus Pits. Things immediately go awry and Apocalypse turns the table on Cable. He laments that maybe he is destined to fail over and over again. He steals Cable's time device and disappears.

You can't have time travel without Bishop. He, along with Cable, is the patron saint of X-Men time travel. So, it's not a surprise that he gets shanghaied by Apocalypse on his return trip home and ends up in some strange place that seems to have windows to other times all around. He's also tormented by Bender, a seemingly crazy man who claims to have lived in this place for eons. This sends Shard, Bishop's sister, to find the X-Men for help, who are in the midst of finally getting Jean Grey and Scott Summers actually married.

I love how they are tying things back to the very beginning of the series. Jean and Scott originally got "married" in the second season premiere. It turns out they were married by their ex-team member, Morph, so it wasn't legal. It's nice to find these two crazy kids tying the knot. It's a calm before the story. There are more echoes to season two when Mr. Sinister's Nasty Boys show up and attack Cyclops and Jean and kidnap Jean, taking her through a portal. Sinister tries to abscond with Xavier, but Rogue is able to keep him with the rest of the team.

One of the things that I really enjoy about this episode is that it doesn't give you a lot of exposition. It keeps you off center. It doesn't show its cards right away which is nice. it keeps your interest piqued because you aren't sure what is going to happen. What is Apocalypse's plan? Why does he want Jean? Why is Sinister working with him? Why didn't he take Cyclops too when he's been so obsessed with both of them for so long. The action is great too. You can always count on this show to give you solid action sequences that really show off the teams skills.

I think you all know what my biggest gripe is going to be. This was supposed to be the final arc of this series and Jean has nothing to do. She spends the majority of these four episodes in a clear glass tube being needled by Apocalypse and Sinister. She gets no real moment and it sucks. And it irritates me. 

Grade: A-

"Beyond Good and Evil" - Part 2: "Promise of Apocalypse"

Wolverine: [On Sabretooth] "Looks like the kidnappers union will let anything in."

[Pops claws]

Wolverine: "I'm collecting dues!"

In Shi'ar space, Lilandra is being attacked by her crazed sister, Deathbird. Deathbird has allied herself with Apocalypse and she believes that Apocalypse will help her usurp Lilandra. But Apocalypse is only there to kidnap Oracle, a telepath who is part of the Praetorian guard. Lilandra contacts Xavier who realizes that Apocalypse is kidnapping telepaths. He sends the X-Men to watch over these telepaths. Wolverine and Shard are present when Mystique and Sabretooth show up to kidnap Psylocke on behalf of Apocalypse.

Vengeance is his!!

We keep getting references to the X-Men's greatest hits. The episode opens with an epic space battle. Deathbird, deranged sister of Majestrix Lilandra, is trying to overtake her sister. Gladiator does his best to stop her, but things look bleak when Apocalypse shows up. But things take a turn when Apocalypse betrays Deathbird almost immediately and takes off with Oracle. 

We haven't seen much of Lilandra since the end of "The Dark Phoenix" saga. It seemed like she and Xavier were done. I think they find a really organic way to bring Lilandra back. And it is a catalyst for Xavier figuring out part of what Apocalypse's plan is with the kidnapping of the psychics. 

Xavier comes up with a plan to use the psychics that Apocalypse is trying to kidnap as bait. Storm is understandably upset that Xavier and Cyclops are willing to cavalierly use these people as bait and put them in danger when they have no idea. I think Storm makes some solid points, but she is of course stampeded by Xavier and Scott. Has anyone noticed how Scott shouts all the time in this show. He has two volumes. Soft and LOUD. And when he wants his way or someone is questioning him, he definitely reverts to loud. It gives very petulant child and of course, Xavier backs him up.

This episode introduces one of the greatest X-Men: Psylocke. Psylocke is Betsy Braddock. She heads to Castle Worthington to relieve it of some of its priceless artifacts. If you have Apocalypse, you have to Warren Worthington aka Archangel. One of the things that I really like is that even though there is a lot going on, they still find time to give Betsy a proper introduction which she definitely deserves. Its not like she just arrives and she's being kidnapped by Apocalypse. 

At this point in the comics, Betsy and Warren are a couple so it makes sense that they lean into that here. There's a lot of playful flirting here. It reminds me of like Spider-Man and the Black Cat or Batman and Catwoman. It is a little creepy that Archangel takes time out of trying to stop Psylocke from burgling him to objectify her, but Psylocke uses that to her advantage. She puts her self in peril to get Archangel to save her, but she ambushes him with her psychic knife and gets away. These characters have some great chemistry and Psylocke goes for the throat with Archangel when he tracks her to the warehouse she is storing the liberated artifacts and she's not shy about reading him to the ground.

Things lean towards the action in the last half of the episode when Mystique and Sabretooth show up, working with Apocalypse to bring in Psylocke. I love a Wolverine/Sabretooth showdown. And I think it is hilarious that Sabretooth and Wolverine are having this fight and are destroying all these things that Psylocke has stolen. It looks like they are going to stop Psylocke from being taken when Magento shows up. It is really interesting to see Magneto working for Apocalypse. Magneto was told that Apocalypse was going to bring his wife back to life. I thought it was great when Magneto wraps Wolverine with the anchor and then drops the entire ship on the ground. It is extremely extra and extremely Magneto. 

We end things in the future with Cable and Tyler trying to break in to a government facility that houses his old time machine.

Grade: A

"Beyond Good and Evil" - Part 3: "The Lazarus Chamber"

Cable: "He's pure evil, and that's why he's gotta go."

Beast: "If Apocalypse is indeed the personification of evil... it may be impossible to destroy him."

Cable: "Why?"

Beast: "The conflict between good and evil is part of the fabric of existence. If Apocalypse is destroyed, evil may only take another form."

In the future, Cable and Tyler work together to break into a government facility to steal Graymalkin, the only time machine left. Cable wants to use it to go back to when the Lazarus Chamber was first built and destroy it, stopping Apocalypse preemptively. He stops in the present to pick up the X-Men. Will this plan work or is Apocalypse one step ahead?

Knock, knock.

The opening of this episode was kind of hit or miss for me. I don't know why they felt the need to include Cable's super obscure son. That's a lie. I actually do. It's the same reason that they gave Jet a daughter in the live-action "Cowboy Bebop." It's an easy way to inject drama and pathos. Cable is even more committed to taking out Apocalypse because he has a son that he needs to take care of! You can only care about the future if you have children!!

Other than that there are some interesting moments. I enjoyed the force field circling the facility and how it would circle it and you'd occasionally get glimpses of it. There are some good action moments. I loved the sentry robots going after Cable and the door closing on one while it is half in and half out so its continuously shooting at Cable while he tries to get to where Graymalkin is being stored.

There are some kind of ridiculous moments in this episode, which I kind of appreciated. You'd think that it is all very serious, but we definitely have time for Wolverine to lock himself in a cell and play bad cop with Sabretooth. This just involves him beating the dog shit out of him, but its fine. He tosses Sabretooth's unconscious body onto the table in the war room and no one really has anything to say. He wants Xavier to use his mental powers to get the rest of the information out of Sabretooth's noodle. Xavier is hesitant for 2.5 seconds. But it doesn't take any time at all for him to rescind this moral rule he set for himself and go spelunking for information in Sabes's noggin. It was really dumb but I did chuckle when Graymalkin like sideswipes Bishop and he makes a joke about bad drivers.

Aside from these comedic moments we get some nice small, poignant character moments. I'll never stop saying that Storm, much like Jean, is woefully underused in this series, but I'm glad they acknowledged that she had history in Egypt. It was a wonderful moment when she and Warren are talking and Ororo mentions her time living in Egypt and how it was a special part of her life even if bad things happened there. We get an exchange with Beast and Cable that is a little on the nose in spelling out the overarching theme of these episodes, but also fits with Beast's personality. Cable is raging about how Apocalypse needs to die, but Beast brings up that even if they kill Apocalypse a different evil will most likely rise up to take his place that may be worse.

The remainder of the episode is the X-Men and Cable trying to take out the temple and fighting with the Four Horsemen. Apocalypse knows they are doing this, because of course he does, he's in the timestream and he's finally able to abscond with Xavier.

Grade: B+

"Beyond Good and Evil" - Part 4: "End and Beginning"

Wolverine: "That's some fancy shootin', Cable. REALLY brought the house down."

Now that Apocalypse has Xavier, its time for him to put his plan into motion. Can the X-Men save Jean, Xavier and the other psychics and stop Apocalypse? Will Bishop finally do something?

Now's not the time for this, Hank.

This has been a really great four part story, so I'm sad to say that it kind of falls apart in this last episode. It's still entertaining but it's kind of a mess overall.

One of the things that I have liked about this arc is that they have kept Apocalypse's intentions kind of vague. We know he's trying to do something with time. He needs psychics and he's enticed a lot of the X-Men's enemies to help him with promises that we all know he isn't going to keep. Well, in this episode we finally learn what his plan is and it is... something? The gist of his big master plan is that he is going to kill the accumulated psychics and use the energy from that to remake time in his image in the Axis of Time... or something? It's super convoluted and really makes zero sense when you think about it at all. I kind of wish they would have kept things vague because I think that is always best when it comes to time travel.

The episode also can't decide how stupid it wants the characters to be. I thought it was really dumb that Cable, Xavier and the X-Men would go through with this plan to go back in time and destroy Apcoalypse's temple while its being built when Apocalypse is in the time stream and can most likely figure out what they are doing. But at the beginning of this episode, Cable reveals that Xavier anticipated this and is wearing a device that allows the team to track him. OK, I can get behind this.

But then there's Magneto. Magneto is working with Apocalypse this whole time and we think its because of the promise of his wife being resurrected. But when he learns about Apocalypse's true plan he freaks out and then he's like, actually, I never trusted you in the first place. You didn't trust him, but you still helped him abduct all these mutants so he could put this plan in place? The same with Mystique. It's crazy. And it definitely feels like the script needs these characters to act this way so they are acting this way. And it kind of takes the wind out of the episode's sails. Though I did appreciate and believe that Sinister knew what Apocalypse was going to do from the start and still followed him.

Bishop has been basically doing nothing this entire episode. Twiddling his thumbs and being accosted by this Bender dude. You are smart, tv literate people so I bet you had a feeling that Bishop was going to be instrumental in helping to defeat Apocalypse in the final battle. And you are sort of right. Bishop being stranded in the Axis of Time, continuously doing a "who's on first" routine with Bender was helpful in the end. He sees the psychics floating in the glass tubes and he shoots at them breaking a lot of them free and disrupting Apocalypse's plans. But that's about all he does...

This whole final battle is super anticlimactic honestly. There is one funny moment where Wolverine jumps on to the floating platform that Apocalypse is on and does his whole machismo routine only to almost immediately fall off of the platform. The psychics come together and use their powers to trap Apocalypse in the real world... and that's it. Pretty lame honestly. Though, I'm pretty sure one of the psychics was a guardian of Oa in disguise. Which is weird. They also reveal that Bender is actually Immortus, who is a variant of Kang the Conqueror. A super abstract vague reference that makes no sense to include especially if this was the final episode of the series. Everyone heads back to their own times and alls well that ends well.

Grade: B-

Season 4 Grade: B

Next up, the X-Men try to survive the Phalanx covenant.

What do you all think? Did you enjoy this almost series finale arc? Am I being too hard on the last part? What did you think of season four overall? Let me know in the comments.