"Day of Reckoning, Part II"
Writers: Cydne Clark and Steve Granat
Directors: Steven E. Gordon, Gary Graham, and Frank Paur
Original Air Date: May 11, 2002
Synopsis/Review: After the obligatory
recap of the previous ep, Part 2 begins right where Part 1 left off: with
the Sentinel about to destroy Wolverine. Suddenly, the Sentinel shuts off,
and the lights all over the large room turn on as the entrance doors open
and scientists flood into the room. Trask tells the scientists to repair
Sentinel, and fix any weaknesses that were apparent during the fight. And
then, they'll try all this again...
We then zoom back to
the Mansion, as Jubilee enters the main entryroom, wondering where everybody
is and what's going on. Iceman manages to tackle her out of the way just
as a defense system gun fires on her, and with the help of him and an entering
Berzerker, they manage to destroy the couple of guns in the room. Iceman,
Cannonball, Jubilee, and Berzerker all agree to find the others and figure
out if there's anyway out of here, and they take off.
Meanwhile, a frustrated
Scott falls down from an attempt to climb the cliffside below the Mansion.
He mentions that there's no way that they can climb up there, but there
is an extension of the X-Mansion that extends far enough down here, that
should be on the otherside of the rock face. Tabitha gets ready to throw
one of her booms at it, but Scott holds her off- the last thing they need
to do is start an avalanche. So, Magma melts her way through the rock face,
and they come out in that half-constructed corridor seen in "Walk
on the Wild Side". They quickly make their way up the stairs and into
the main computer room, destroying any defense systems that get in their
way...
Next we go over to the
abandoned warehouse complex, and the Blackbird and Velocity have landed,
and the teams have dispersed. Xavier's staying in the Velocity, and Storm's
the "sub-commander" of the operation, and they both note Magneto's abandoned
giant metal pinballs- five of them. Storm alerts the team members via comlink
that they'd better be careful- Magneto's brought some friends along this
time.
The X-Men and Brotherhood
members acknowledge this, but they still aren't finding anything- Lance
is especially angry, he wants to know what the heck's going on. Quicksilver,
near the back of the party, just smirks and continues on.
Suddenly, Rogue, Nightcrawler,
and Jean see a fiery card descend onto the ground next to them, next to
a gas canister. Yep, they're here. The three X-Men run away as the card
and canister explode in a huge fireball, and the others are alerted. Lance
is finally stoked for some action, and he and Blob take off towards the
source of the explosion. However, Quicksilver snidely mutters "You have
no idea..." before taking off as fast as he can in the opposite direction.
Wanda urgently yells to the others that it's a trap, but it's too late.
A entire nearby warehouse comes apart in a very decorative manner- obviously
from the efforts of an unseen Magneto- and in it are the four members of
his team, Sabretooth, Gambit, Colossus, and Pyro, who's playing around
with a bunch of fire giddily. And so then the fight begins! Pyro
summons up a huge flame-hand to take out Spyke, who is teleported away
to safety by Nightcrawler. Storm then disintergrates Pyro's flame-hand
with some rain and flings a lightning bolt at him, taking Pyro out of the
picture.
Meanwhile, Beast and
Sabretooth are having a little tangle. Sabretooth gets up on a tall radio
tower (banging his head on it after Beast pushes him up there), and Beast
goes up after him. However, one of the metal bars on the tower raps around
Beast, trapping him. Wanda, merely watching the battle for now, notices
this and glances around the area, searching for Magneto.
Back at the Mansion,
Scott, Amara, and Tabitha make it to the computer room, where the other
New Mutants are trying to figure out how to stop the countdown clock, which
has less than a minute left before the Mansion self-destructs. Scott asks
frantically how this happened as he tries to stop the sequence, but, of
course, nobody knows. Scott mutters that he found his answer as he glances
at something out of screenshot on the main monitor. He tells them that
he can't stop it, and Berzerker tells him to forget that, just get them
out in whatever way he and the two girls came in. Scott says that there's
no time, and the New Mutants start to panic. Scott tells them quickly that
he may know of a place where they can all be somewhat safe, and he tells
them to follow him, quickly! They make their way out of the room, and ten
seconds later, the Mansion explodes...
We then shoot over to
the top-secret facility that Trask and his cronies are in. An operatives
informs Trask that there's a huge Mutant battle going on in the complex
above the facility site. Trask informs them to get the Sentinel back up
and running ASAP...
We go back up to the
main battle taking place at the abandoned warehouse complex, and Rogue,
away from the main battle, hears a noise coming from behind the crate,
and quietly takes off her gloves and runs over there... and runs into Gambit.
Surprisingly, though, she doesn't DO anything... Gambit seems to almost
have her in a love-trance. He smiles and hands her a flaming card, which
she accepts, still in the love-trance. Gambit just smiles, waves, and runs
away, and Rogue finally realizes that she's holding a flaming card, which
she chucks away right before it explodes.
Meanwhile, Colossus
is tossing stuff at Toad, who nimbly dodges it all. He eventually catches
Toad, though, and then Blob steps up, hoping to "out-strength" Colossus.
Colossus tosses Toad aside as Blob rams into him, knocking the weaker Colossus
several feet away and into a building behind him. Shadowcat reaches out
from the inside of the building, and phases Colossus into the building
with her, then rushes out of the building, phasing only herself through
the wall this time, and she tells Avalanche to hit it. He sends some huge
waves of seismic activity toward the warehouse housing Colossus, which
collapses in on itself, taking care of him.
In the meantime, Beast
manages to wedge himself out of the twisted metal, and Sabretooth SLAMS
into Beast from above, knocking them both down onto the ground far below-
Beast under Sabretooth, though, and this knocks him out. Rogue sees this,
and touches Beast for a sec, gaining his powers long enough for her to
take Sabretooth out of the picture.
Meanwhile, Wanda has
finally managed to spot Magneto on the top of a skyscraper on the edge
of the city limits. She slowly makes her way towards her father, quaking
in anger, and her powers show it. Storm sees Wanda making her way towards
Magneto, and tells the others that Wanda's spotting Magneto, let's go!
He IS their primary target, after all. The others run over to catch up
with Wanda.
Meanwhile, Quicksilver
is up with his father on the aforementioned skyscraper, and he tells Magneto
urgently that the X-Men and the Brotherhood members have found them and
are heading towards them- and Wanda's leading the charge. Magneto says
that they'll just have to wait, as he has other plans in store for them-
he uses his magnetic powers to suddenly shift the ground under all of the
advancing Mutants, and it finally caves in and all of them fall down into
the pit with the rock- Wanda manages to hand on by just her hands, though,
and glares angrily at her far-off father. Magneto emotionlessly raises
his hand again, though, and dislodges the rock, sending Wanda falling into
the pit along with the rest of the Mutants...
They all find that they've
fallen into a rather familiar-looking huge room, which we recognize as
the room where Wolverine fought the Sentinel. The Mutants wonder where
the heck they are as several operatives run up the railed walkways above
them, all of them aiming their cocked guns at the Mutants. Trask comes
up and tells all of the operatives to hold their fire, though, and for
them to all move out. The operatives leave as quickly as they arrived,
and huge footsteps resound throughout the room, the Mutants grow increasingly
worrisome, when suddenly a huge robot (the Sentinel) breaks through the
room in front of them.
Quicksilver, on the
top edge of the pit, sees all this and speeds back up to Magneto, telling
his father that the Sentinel has been released. Magneto tells his son ominously
that it's time for the world to finally become aware of the Mutants' presence,
once and for all... He outstretches his arms, and his metal pinballs, now
full with his recovered minions, close up and the four are zoomed out of
there. Back in the "Sentinel pit", the platform all of the Mutants and
the Sentinel are on suddenly starts moving up to the ground above. Trask
has no idea what's happening, but he is powerless to stop it as the platform
finally gets to ground level, and the Sentinel starts attacking the Mutants,
which hurriedly run away/throw occasional ineffectual strikes back at it.
A passing news helicopter, which has been up until this point giving a
sky report of the traffic throughout Bayville, sees the ruckus going on
in the abandoned complex, and the newscaster urgently tells the cameraman
to focus his camera on the action- whatever the heck's going on, the whole
world has got to see this! The camera focuses on the X-Men and the Sentinel
as the battle continues...
...The battle eventually
makes itself into downtown Bayville, and people all around are fleeing
the chaotic scene as the Sentinel tries to take down the X-Men, destruction
prevalent. (Wanda is curiously absent from the battle, however...) Buildings
are cratered, the streets are ruined, and cars are destroyed as the X-Men
unsuccessfully try to destroy the Sentinel. The Sentinel manages to shoot
a bunch of green goop from one of its hands- the same stuff used by that
metal ball in Part 1 to freeze up Wolverine.
It effectively manages to freeze up Spyke, Rogue, Beast, and Blob.
As all this goes on,
we go to the newscast being played on television sets throughout the nation,
as the newscaster described to the viewers the events taking place, and
the "beings with superhuman powers" fighting the giant robot. Principal
Kelly, Duncan, Terran, Paul, and Amanda all see the broadcasts...
Eventually, the Mutants
manage to retreat away from the now-damaged Sentinel where it's not fast
enough to be able to keep up with them. It sights another Mutant target,
though, on a skyscraper ahead- Magneto...
Magneto is surveying
the scene before him, when suddenly he hears Quicksilver yelp in pain behind
him- he turns around to find Wanda hexing Pietro into unconsciousness.
She then turns to Magneto, who quickly tells Wanda that he had no choice
but to put her in that mental hospital- she couldn't control her anger!
Wanda growls that Magneto hasn't SEEN her anger, as she hexes Magneto so
his powers are no longer effective- just as the Sentinel hovers up to the
skyscraper top, intent on destroying Magneto. Magneto begs Wanda to release
his powers so he can deal with this. Xavier, meanwhile, angrily rides up
in the Velocity behind the flying Sentinel and unleashes a machine gun
barrage on the Sentinel. Wanda angrily tells Xavier to say out of this,
and hexes the Velocity away from the Sentinel. This takes her attention
off of Magneto, however, who manages to deflect two incoming Sentinel missiles
right back at their smoking origin. This does it- the Sentinel explodes
partially, and the thing falls down directly on a terrified Magneto, the
explosion blowing a surprised Wanda off the building. Kurt manages to teleport
up and catch her on the way down, though, teleporting them both safely
into the ground where the others are. Storm tells the group that they have
to leave now, as the military choppers are closing in without Magneto's
ability to hold them back. They'll come back for the others later, she
says, and they all reluctantly pile into the landed Velocity, which takes
off again and heads back towards the Institute, a couple of news choppers
following distantly behind it...
As the Velocity nears
the Institute, though, the occupants are devastated and surpised to find
the Institute almost completely destroyed! The Velocity touches down, and
Jean and the others run out quickly. Jean at first can't find the students,
but Cyclops and the various New Mutants run up to them from out of the
surrounding trees, all of their clothes torn and shabby. Cannonball and
Iceman respond that they're okay- Scott led them into Cerebro just in time,
and it held up- barely. Jean runs and hugs an angry Scott, but he just
takes Jean's hands off of him, and continues over to Xavier, angrily picking
up up by the shirt and shaking the X-Men leader. He angrily yells at Xavier
that HE did this, that HE destroyed it all! He throws Xavier down onto
the ground, and is about to pummel him when a bewildered Iceman and Nightcrawler
hold Scott back from their supposed leader. Xavier just laughs, though,
and stands up, morphing into Mystique, admitting that, yes, he/she DID
do it... but now things are about to get MUCH worse, Mystique says menacingly
at the surprised/angry assembled Mutants...
Last Words: Wowzers, was this episode cool! Excellent dialogue, and an incredibly involved plot. Dang, now we know why Magneto and Mystique both laid low for so long- they HAD to in order to come up with such complicated plans as this! And now the cat's out of the bag, Mutants are revealed to the world... and the Institute's destroyed... and GAH, so many loose ends! Such a cliffhanger! Man, waiting through the entire summer for Season 3 was pure torture... The animation was a little sub-par, however, and the Rogue/Gambit scene was a little poorly constructed, even if it took up not even a minute of the episode. I mean, I don't care if you think the guy is the most attractive male you've ever met, you don't just stand there while he hands you a flaming card... Many people have told me that Gambit seems to have an almost hypnotic effect on some females, almost like it's a Mutant power, but if it is, I consider it a rather corny one, and not one that I'm happy got incorporated into the Evolution universe. Still, an excellent season finale, excellent! That little poorly-done bit was certainly not enough to take off a point, over all the awesomeness that was this episode.
Overall Rating: 10/10 ...Wow.