Remember Professor X? Well, he’s back, in space-consort form, as Deathbird tries to skunk his engagement to Lilandra on the grounds that he’s a dirty Earth ape. Meanwhile, Storm deals with a death bird of her own as she fights to save Forge’s life and regain her powers in X-Men ’97 season 1, episode 6. “Lifedeath Part 2,” written by Charley Feldman and directed by Chase Conley.
Following up last week’s new bar-setting episode of X-Men ’97 is no easy task. The production team clearly knew this, and instead of trying to follow on from it directly, they zag a bit, taking a step back to reconnect with some absent characters before circling around to the attack on Genosha and its aftermath. In doing so, “Lifedeath Part 2” does something the series’ runtime rarely allows it to do: take a breath.
To be sure, “Lifedeath Part 2” is not lacking in incident. Across its 30-odd minutes it tells two different stories. Each is distinctive, but they are thematically connected, with the episode cutting back and forth between the two seamlessly. In outer space, Deathbird leads the Shi’ar Imperial Guard in an attack on the Kree, the latest front in an ongoing war between the two empires. This leads to the revelation that the series didn’t forget how its earlier iteration ended. For all of Cyclops’ angst and the “last will and testament” business that led to Magneto joining the team, it turns out Professor X isn’t really dead, he’s just off in space recovering from being almost dead. Now, he’s all better. He’s got some cool armor and leg braces. He is getting ready to marry his space-bird girlfriend and become emperor of the Shi’ar alongside her.
Meanwhile, back on the planet of the apes Earth, Forge is being ministered by Storm after the Adversary bit a chunk out of his shoulder and infected him with some kind of magic poison. Her efforts are hampered by the fact that the Adversary is still hanging around, taunting Storm and periodically triggering trippy-ass nightmares. On the surface, these two plots have as little in common as the two plots in “Motendo/Lifedeath Part 1.” Yet where those two stories were held apart, here the two tales are woven together. While both pairs of stories share common ground in their depictions of two couples drawing together and then overcoming obstacles, what really allows for the cross-cutting in “Lifedeath Part 2” is that both stories are ultimately about Storm and Xavier reclaiming their power.
For Xavier, this means remembering that more than a consort, more than mutant freedom fighter, he’s first and foremost a teacher. For Storm, this means literally reclaiming her lost weather manipulation powers, accepting that Forge’s attempts to do so previously worked and she’s simply not allowing herself to access them again. If we’re being honest, neither of these quite work as well as they should. The shared thematic connection is appreciated. But Xavier’s revelation is ultimately cut short when he senses the events of “Remember It” echoing through the astral plane, prompting him to return to Earth (hopefully, his revelation will play a role when he arrives there, and he doesn’t just simply slip back into “leading the X-Men mode”).
Similarly, as cathartic as it is seeing Storm reclaim her abilities and soar into the sky, transforming into her classic costume in the process, the whole revelation that she was holding herself back more or less comes out of nowhere. As does her love for Forge, which blossoms and is declared almost as abruptly as Forge’s love for Storm did in “Lifedeath Part 1” (I get that Storm has spent some time off-camera nursing Forge and, I guess, falling in love with his near-comatose form, but it’s still abrupt *to us*).
But it doesn’t really matter. This is a case of the series getting points for the effort, even if it doesn’t quite stick the landing. The episode on the whole still works pretty well, even if the specific moments of reclamation fall short. The parallel thematic structure, the relatively low stakes (wild to consider “galactic politics” and “beating back an ancient spiritual evil” as low stakes, but here we are) and the more character-driven focus represent a welcome shift from the sturm-und-drang of the previous episode. Instead of trying to top itself immediately after the fact, the series pulls back, going from sweeping and epic to focused and personal.
“Lifedeath Part 2” doesn’t set a new standard of achievement for the series. But in recognizing the need to take a beat, to let the events of the previous episode linger in the minds of viewers before chronicling the aftermath, it shows a sophistication and level of confidence in itself the original series rarely displayed. It’s the kind of thing I wish the show’d had the time to do before “Flesh Made Fire” (or during, giving it the “Lifedeath” split treatment), but I’m glad it’s at least happening now.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- The opening credits continue to shift week to week. Though he didn’t appear in the episode, Nightcrawler gets a title card now. And, of course, Gambit has been removed. 🙁
- In the “rotating scenes” portion of the opening, we see images of Nimrod and flashes of “One Man’s Worth,” the original series’ riff on “Age of Apocalypse,” as well as more Xavier/Lilandra/Shi’ar/Phoenix stuff.
- We don’t get a lot of details regarding the nature of the conflict, but the Shi’ar being embroiled in a war with the Kree is the plot of the 1991 Avengers crossover “Operation: Galactic Storm.”
- Animated Deathbird, sister of Lilandra, and Kree Ronan the Accuser make their animated debuts in this episode.
- Marvel’s Legion of Super-Heroes, aka the Imperial Guard, return, with Gladiator getting some particularly Superboy-esque action sequences later in the episode.
- Vulcan, aka Gabriel Summers, aka the Third Summers Brother, can be seen among the Imperial Guard.
- The horse-like Kymellians, originally from Louise Simonson and June Brigman’s Power Pack, are among the species witnessing Lilandra’s declaration of her intent to marry Xavier.
- Xavier’s Shi’ar armor is reminiscent of the armor he wore when he was being impersonated by a Warskrull toward the end of the Chris Claremont/Jim Lee run of Uncanny X-Men (this Xavier sure seems like the real deal, though).
- His armor includes leg braces that give him the ability to walk, possibly the deepest continuity reference of the series since Abscissa.
- The Neramani sisters get in some banger lines in “Lifedeath Part 2”; Lilandra says, “families often mimic black holes” and later Deathbird says that to mate with Xavier would result in mixing Shi’ar blood with his “inferior freak fluids.” She also tells Xavier to go back to his “Milky Way ghetto.”
- When Forge casts a spell to (briefly) banish the Adversary, the accompanying visual effects are very similar to how they look in the MCU when magic users like Doctor Strange and Wong cast spells.
- This week in “X-Men ’97 is hornt up, y’all”: At one point, Xavier seems keen on the idea of being Lilandra’s pet. She tells him he can bark later.
- Lilandra’s psychic abilities are said to be on par with Xavier’s, which isn’t really true in the comics.
- The closing moments of the episode reveal that Mister Sinister is seemingly behind the attack on Genosha (perhaps the “he” Cable was trying to warn Madelyne Pyor about?), having obtained Trask’s DNA to activate Master Mold (a reference to Cassandra Nova using the DNA of a random Trask family member to activate the Sentinels she set on Genosha in New X-Men #114).
- I love that Bolivar Trask has apparently been wearing the same, now-tattered, lab coat since the first season finale.
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton
