The
concept
of
tolerance
has
weighed
heavily
upon
Disney+
series X-Men
‘97.
And
now
as
the
world
and
what
is
left
of
mutantkind
looks
upon
the
ruins
of
Genosha,
the
series
is
ready
to
grit
its
teeth
and
show
some
fangs,
giving
us
righteously
bitter
examination
of
just
where
the
morals
of
that
tolerance—the
morals
cast
in
the
shadow
of
its
greatest
idealist,
Charles
Xavier—have
gotten
its
heroes
and
villains
alike.
X-Men
‘97
gave
itself
room
to
breathe
last
week
in
“Lifedeath
Part
2,” even
if
that
room
wasn’t
exactly
afforded
to
the
characters
who
needed
it
in
that
episode.
But
in
distancing
“Bright
Eyes”
from
the
immediate
fallout
of
“Remember
It”
by
even
just
a
few
weeks
lets
the
event
sit
with
the
audience
and
our
characters
alike:
and
the
grief
and
anger
that
lingers
here
hits
all
the
harder
for
it.
If
Genosha
represented
the
very
best
of
Charles
Xavier’s
dream—a
home
where
mutants
could
exist
as
themselves,
be
seen
by
the
world
as
themselves,
and
embraced
as
just
another
part
of
the
planet—then
the
aftermath
of
its
destruction
plays
out
across
“Bright
Eyes”
as
a
refutation
of
that
dream’s
ultimate
equivocation
by
asking
a
simple
question.
Where
does
tolerance
get
you
in
the
face
of
genocide?
This idea deftly plays out across the episode’s opening beats, from Jubilee’s futile frustration that Rogue didn’t attend Gambit’s funeral, to Cyclops’ frosty conversation with the U.S. president—a moment where once again X-Men ‘97 finds itself oddly best suited for the time in which it is releasing even without intention, as we see a world leader prevaricate over optics and elections instead of taking a stance against the near-extinction of a people. We see it again, when the X-Men travel to Genosha to try and aid relief efforts, only for Trish Tilby to re-appear—seemingly to offer comfort, but really to play the human face of asking our heroes and the survivors if it’s worth looking angry after everything that’s happened, to ameliorate their feelings amid the ruins of that amelioration’s most profound of failures. We see it again when Bobby and Jubilee visit the former’s mother, to finally reveal his mutant heritage, only for her to blessedly, casually, embrace his identity... and immediately tell him he has to keep being a mutant quiet, because good heavens, what will the shareholders think?
Image: Marvel
But while this is all extremely compelling, ‘97's best bite is saved for not dealing with the human optics, but the superhuman. As a furious Rogue tears through U.S. Army facilities trying to hunt down Trask and Gyrich—and the mysterious “OZT” that connects them both—she eventually finds herself crossing paths with none other than Captain America. Steve has been looking into what OZT is himself, and notes to Rogue in frustration that Gyrich has been extradited from U.S. custody by the entity, tying his hands further. But even in noting the red tape of American politics—not like that’s stopped Steve from doing the right thing before!—Steve remains a tool of compromise in X-Men ‘97's story, when he begs Rogue to try and step back from her anger, no matter how valid she is in feeling it, and when in turn he tells her that he cannot help her continue the hunt for Gyrich outside of U.S. borders. Again, it’s that word again, the optics of it all. Captain America can’t be seen in hostile action in a foreign country unless it’s in the interest of America, and he most definitely can’t be seen as a friend of mutants in the process. And as Rogue rightfully tells him (after hurling his shield into a distant mountain, showing it for all its real worth in the moment), in not taking a definitive stance, Steve, and the image of Captain America as an ideal, is taking one: a cowardly, deplorable stance in the face of genocide.
It may have taken the hurt and horror of Genosha to lift the lid from the X-Men’s eyes, but it’s finally lifting—even as it’s already lifted from their enemies’ eyes. Of course, we’ve known this from the very beginning: in imprisonment in the very first episode, Gyrich gloated to the gathered X-Men that “tolerance is extinction.” We know it’s the thesis the series will explore in its denouement, as we head into a three-part finale to this season with that phrase as its title. Time and time again in “Bright Eyes,” mutants are told to keep tolerating, and time and time again the forces gathering against them are shown growing in power and ego because they’ve long abandoned that idea themselves. So as Rogue re-teams with the rest of the X-Men to chase Gyrich and the leads of OZT and Trask all the way to Madripoor, we see what’s been gained for the enemies of mutant kind in being shielded by humanity’s appeal for tolerance.
Image: Marvel
The X-Men find Trask’s facility filled with Sentinel technology unlike anything they’ve seen before—more advanced, more human-like, seemingly impossible for the material of the time. Even Trask himself twists and turns after Rogue lets him seemingly commit suicide, only to terrifyingly transform into a shambling human-Sentinel corpse that lays the X-Men out in seconds, almost adding them to Genosha’s death toll if not for the timely return of Cable (it wouldn’t be X-Men without personal drama, and poor Scott isn’t even given the time to deal with the realization that Cable has always been his son). But “Bright Eyes” lays out its best trap last for the audience, while the X-Men are left to ponder just where tolerance has left them in the face of this overwhelming enemy. Trask wasn’t working for Sinister; Sinister was working for someone else. And as we cut away to a strange, pink-hued being holding an alive Magneto captive, we learn the true mastermind behind it all is none other than Bastion.
Introduced in 1996 ahead of the franchise-wide event “Operation Zero Tolerance,” in the comics Bastion is the apex of the Sentinel project: an unholy amalgam of the Master Mold and Nimrod to create the ultimate anti-mutant weapon. With all the power of a sentinel in human form, in “Operation Zero Tolerance,” Bastion develops the Prime Sentinels—much like what we see happen to Trask this episode, nano-technology that can transform an ordinary human into a mutant killing machine. In many ways, it lets the mask of what the Sentinels always represented truly fall: no longer giant, robotic, monstrous forms—familiar but distant and extrapolated—but the image of a human, one given the power to exterminate mutantkind with its own hands. The endgame of where human finally leads, and the ultimate folly of Xavier’s dream of assimilation.
Image: Marvel
But
as
the
X-Men
stare
down
the
barrel
of
extinction
once
more,
they
too
have
realized
where
tolerance
gets
their
cause:
six
feet
in
the
ground.
With
that
lesson
bitterly
learned,
they
just
have
to
make
it
out
alive
to
prove
to
the
world
that
mutantkind’s
liberation
will
come
from
its
own
hands.
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