X-Men ’97 S2 Ep. 7 Review: “Strange Land, Savage Heart” Feels Out of Place
I’ll admit, Magik is one of my favourite X-Men characters, but even putting bias aside the opening to this episode, “Strange Land, Savage Heart”, is unbelievably stupid, as we see Magik, the X-Men’s main long-distance teleporter, just kinda stand there as she gets blasted by a very slow moving giant robot. It’s unbelievably contrived, and the very definition of fridging, killing her off just to make her older, more boring brother, sad. The worst thing is, Illyana in the original series was just a child, yet to go through the ageing and soul-sword forging of her time in Limbo, so aside from a brief cameo in X-Men ‘97 S1, there was really no reason for her to even have her abilities here. If you want to fridge Illyana, at least when she’s younger it wouldn’t be so damn stupid.
With that out of the way, “Strange Land, Savage Heart”, is a mixed bag, largely repeating the usual mistakes of the series and rushing through plots and characters that ultimately feel like wasted potential as they leave as soon as they enter. We center on a team of X-Men travelling to the Savage Land to rescue Graydon Creed, brother to Nightcrawler, son of Sabertooth, all around worst guy alive, from the Acolytes, who have kidnapped and intend to kill him for all those times he has been, as mentioned, the worst guy alive. While X-Men ‘97 has largely done a good job of not being beholden to the original series, Graydon has had next to no role in ‘97 so far and the episode doesn’t do enough to catch the viewer up on his importance, and the extent of his crimes.
The Acolytes, a staple of 90s X-Men, appeared surprisingly little in the original animated series, only a single two-parter. Often tied either to Magneto or his death, it makes sense for them to show up after his death, as usual carrying on whatever their most recent charismatic leader has decided his message was. Here that leader seems to be Exodus, last seen doing a little dance on Genosha. The Acolytes are joined by Colossus, mourning the loss of his sister, and a variety of C-listers, like Frenzy, Amelia Vought, and Uniscione who all get next to know story or lines. It’s a little hard to oppose the Acolytes here though, as we meet them setting up their own little mutant homeland in the Savage Land, seemingly quite peaceful and even taking in other random mutants we see in the background like Rusty and Skids.
Yes, they’ve kidnapped a prominent politician to kill him, but it’s pretty hard to say he doesn’t deserve it considering he founded a hate group and has probably killed countless humans and mutants in the name of that cause. None-the-less, his half brother Nightcrawler is here to tell us all how Graydon Creed deserves to live despite it all, that his jealousy of being born to mutant powers has driven him to his hatred. It’s a solid argument for a teenager posting mean things on the internet perhaps, but for a genocidal grown man? It falls flat as he consistently fails to show any real remorse. As the episode descends further into chaos it becomes increasingly unclear what the show is actually trying to say with Graydon’s trial, and the show itself makes no effort to make it clear.
There are some highlights in this episode however, although Exodus may feel wasted after being introduced with no real explanation of who he is or what he stands for and subsequently killed off, Bo Paraj gives a great performance that I would’ve loved to see more of. Exodus is sanctimonious, self-important and self-righteous and all of that comes across perfectly in his limited role. We also see more of the budding relationship between Bishop and Polaris, a bizarre pairing that I can’t help but enjoy. The two bounce off each other really well and I hope it keeps being developed. Polaris gets a great “New X-Men” style costume too, although I’m not as big a fan of Bishop’s.
X-Men ‘97 tries to make a “very important episode” about how hatred is rooted in insecurity, but ultimately fails to land any real point in yet another episode that suffers from rough pacing, leaving it ultimately unsatisfying despite some great action and strong performances. It’s also the first episode to feel beholden to the original series to this extent, and it suffers as a result and feels out of place in the larger season, especially considering the big tease at the end of the previous episode.
Check out our review of the first few episodes!
