Real late game, but I wanted to quick drop a mini review of X-Men 97 episode 4! This one was really two minisodes, and while I think both had strong aspects, I ultimately feel like both would have been a lot better as individual, full length episodes.

First, Motendo. It occurs to me that when I did my post on romance drama in the series, I completely left out Jubilee and Roberto? xD Partially because they really don't have that much Drama yet, and partially because my entire reaction to them this whole time has been 'lol okay' so I forgot they existed when I was writing the post initially.

But I actually do like them well enough as a duo, or at least I don't especially dislike them, so I'm peaceably neutral towards them as a couple. Like their dynamic is a little corny I guess and a little fast, but it's not doing anything to really annoy me. I just like Jubilee mostly and think Roberto is Okay (the internalized mutant bigotry thing is an interesting angle to explore but they're almost being SO casual about it that it doesn't formally feel like a Thing yet, but I'm sure more will happen with it later)

BUT BACK TO THE EPISODE. The relationship development was decent, and the action and comedy of the Mojo section I thought was superficially super fun to watch. And seeing Jubilee get some attention and even build up her powers more was really cool! She never got to fight enough with her powers in the original show, so seeing her action was a ton of fun. The video game references were really entertaining as well.

But I do think the 'deeper' part of the episode didn't...make a lot of sense, or at least was executed in a rather confusing way. We start off with a Team Scene, and the initial conflict is that Magneto shot down any chance of the team celebrating her birthday against the popular vote (literally the whole team was judging him SO HARD for saying no to the arcade, which I did appreciate lol). Once they're in the game, though, they act as if she had some kind of conflict about getting older or wanting to stay in the past? Which...she never really showed at all, so that being the conflict that got 'resolved' at the end felt kind of random.

At first I was like 'are they...trying to say liking video games is childish and she is acting like a kid by wanting to go to an arcade with her family to celebrate???' except no, because Old Jubilee still thought video games were cool. And then I realized, the few lines about things being more confusing now and the old days being 'simpler' was supposed to be a stand in for actually having an episode arc about wanting to avoid thinking about the Big Plot Drama, and that was probably more what they thought they were resolving with the whole 'let go of the past' thing. Which...isn't a terrible idea? Except the execution was really confusing - there wasn't much set up about her specifically trying to avoid thinking about the current real world issues, she literally just wanted to celebrate her birthday instead of spending the whole day training.

And the whole 'Magneto was right' bit fell flat for me because the only part he could have been right about was when he said training was important so that she had a higher survival rate - except that was said before she entered the room, and their argument wasn't even really about that. And we've never seen her seriously try to get out of training that I remember anyways.

What I would have really liked for this episode is if more of the team - including at least Magneto but preferably some others as well - got wrapped up in the Mojo plot, so the team dynamic could be developed a lot more since that was what we opened with as our conflict. Plus, with a full episode length we could have really SHOWN some more of Jubilee's struggles - with grappling with the current team drama, or aging, or really whatever as long as it was set up right - and Magneto learning that the team functions as much as a family as it does a professional team, and he has to embrace that a bit if he expects the others to warm up to him. He and Jubilee could have bonded! He learns about the family stuff from her, and she gets to learn some elder wisdom from him. AND IT COULD HAVE ENDED WITH THEM ALL GOING TO THE ARCADE TOGETHER AND MAGNETO CLEARLY BEING A BIT AWKWARD THERE BUT CLEARLY A WILLING PARTICIPANT IN IT ALL.

And I dunno, they could probably still fit her bonding with Roberto somewhere in there lol, I am admittedly a lot more invested in the team found family dynamics than any individual romantic ones. X) But still, even if it was more of a b-plot, the romance could still happen and maybe Roberto could even have some kind of more interaction with the team - and get a better first hand idea of why it means so much to Jubilee and what the potential benefits of 'coming out' could be.

I still find the minisode they actually made to be fun to watch, but the writer in me can't help but think about how good of a bottle episode this COULD have been with more time and focus.

AND THEN we get Lifedeath Part 1. I personally felt this was the weaker half of the episode? They're telling a much more 'serious' story, but it got far less screentime. Storm and Forge's scenes felt...awkward? And like either some amount of time had passed that we kind of needed to see, or else Forge was just really weird and fell in love SUPER fast. It felt odd and rushed to me, in a way even episode 3 didn't. Episode 3 was EXTREMELY rushed but it didn't leave out anything essential for understanding the heart of the story, whereas this felt fast in a choppy way where I did not feel I was understanding the heart of the story fully. Storm struggling with her loss of powers was the strongest part to me, since that carried on from where we left off better. And I'm already very invested in Storm as a character, so they didn't need to work as hard to make me care about that struggle.

The editing was also kind of surreal and confusing in a dreamy way? But given the OWL TWIST I am willing to grant some of this was deliberate and simply would have landed better with more time to bake. I DID LIKE THE OWL TWIST, THOUGH. That had tension and was a lot more interesting to me than her sorta kinda bonding with Forge. AND WAS JUST VERY SPOOKY, AND I DIG SPOOKY. It doesn't make much sense yet and probably also could have used a bit more build up, but I dug it overall and it made me wonder about where they were going with it. I think the second part of the arc will probably be a Lot better since it's a full episode.

So yeah, of the first four episodes I do think this one was the weakest so far, but I didn't think it was outright awful or anything. It had stuff going for it! I just once again wish we had more episodes this season, or that the writers had been less stubborn about fitting x amount of plot things in and had managed their episode count a bit better.