X-Men ’97
Season 1 – Episode 9
Episode title: Tolerance Is Extinction – Part 2
Original release date: May 8, 2024
Plot: Part 2 : Xavier is met with some distrust, but the X-Men focus on stopping Bastion and convincing Magneto to reverse his blackout. Magneto re-establishes his mutant haven on Asteroid M, choosing to leave Earth without power and reject Xavier’s dream of mutant/human co-existence. He invites the X-Men to join him, which Rogue and Roberto do. The rest of the X-Men return to their former base on Muir Island to regroup, before splitting into two teams: Cyclops’s Blue Team goes to Asteroid M to confront Magneto while Storm and Jean’s Gold Team heads to Bastion’s hideout in the Galápagos Islands. Beast and Forge create a collar that can block Bastion’s technopathy and sever his control over the Sentinels. The Gold Team battles an army of Bastion-controlled Sentinels as well as Sinister, who takes control of Cable’s mind and uses him to overpower Jean; she sends a desperate psychic message to Cyclops. On Asteroid M, Xavier attempts to take control of Magneto’s mind but is blocked. Wolverine stabs and seriously injures Magneto who begins ripping the adamantium metal from Wolverine’s skeleton.
* * *
You turn off the power, this is what you get!
You thought Genosha was bad? Just you wait!
Too bad the hospitals ain’t got no power!
‘Cause you’re gonna need one!
No power, no peace!
It’s finally quiet, Mother.
Storm!
The world is going to end in 12 hours, so you two better make this fast.
Magneto, sir? Really?
What did you expect was going to happen when you tossed him the school?
I wanted you two to be free.
To finally be together.
To have a family. A child like Nathan.
The choice should’ve been ours.
I wanted to spare you the weight of your loyalty to me.
You… Both of you have done everything I have asked since you were teenagers.
You were my first students, and you graduated a long time ago.
And what would freedom have gotten us?
I still would’ve had to send Nathan to the future.
I’d still be pulled into dealing with Bastion or Magneto, or whoever else threatened the world.
No matter what, I’ll always end up here.
Don’t you know that?
That was my fear, from the moment I first met you, that you would help build a world where mutants could live however they wish.
But that you would never allow yourself to enjoy it.
Perhaps that was a mistake.
Because just like you, I’m right back here.
Remy!
I…
No!
Rogue?
How do you feel?
I feel like I’ve been run over by a hay baler fixed with a jet engine.
Trask.
Did he…
Much has happened, fräulein.
Trask survived. And so did…
Remy?
Oh, shucks, we missed the hoedown.
Ororo, you’re back!
Your powers…
Restored, thanks to Forge.
Please. Ororo’s doing her modest goddess routine.
It’s been too long, my friend.
Wish it were under better circumstances.
Your augmented prosthetics remain functional despite Magneto’s blackout.
This old thing? Rigged together an electrostatic deflector ages ago.
Oh, me, oh, my!
How, my friend?
Thought about it.
Oh, Jean!
What happened?
I know. We’re actually relocating to the old base on Muir Island for gear and supplies.
Its Shi’ar tech should be operational.
This was our home. A haven.
If it is this horrible here, how bad is it out there?
Thousands are feared dead.
All First World infrastructures are in ruin.
Without warning, Magneto’s thrown the entire planet back centuries.
I can feel the Earth’s magnetic field dying even now.
When the sun sets tonight, it sets on the future.
We need to find Magneto and convince him to reverse the damage to Earth before it becomes permanent.
Well, Magneto ain’t gonna change his mind just because we say “please.”
The man just declared war on the whole planet.
His day ends one way.
Logan, if you must punish someone for today, then start with me.
I brought us here, my X-Men.
Do not make Magnus pay for my designs.
Rogue, you’re going with me and Blue Team to find Magneto.
Storm and Jean will lead Gold Team to shut down Bastion at his headquarters in the Galapagos Islands.
Have we figured out how to remove these Prime Sentinel upgrades?
Or eliminate his control over them?
Learning how to safely remove Sentinel nanotech will take years.
But Forge and I believe we can restore the Prime Sentinels’ innate humanity.
Hold up. These guys hated us before Bastion drafted them into his killer robot army.
We don’t even know how many are out there.
Unplug them from Bastion, but then what?
Sounds like just another day that ends in “y” when you put it that way.
Precisely. And we face it as we always have.
As a family.
There is one wrinkle to our plan.
The Prime Sentinels are controlled by a central command server.
Alas, I was unable to find it before the blackout.
Bastion is the command server.
When I first founded the school, I visited Sebastion’s mother.
The boy could communicate with machines.
Cerebro had detected him, so I assumed he was a mutant.
His mother slammed the door when she heard the word.
Forbade him from returning with me to the school.
In another world, Bastion would be in this portrait.
Once Bastion is no longer a threat, I believe Magnus will be open to turning the power back on.
Well, didn’t you also believe it was a good idea to hand the bad guy your school?
That’s enough.
Blame game is over, people.
The world ends in less than 12 hours.
Kurt will teleport us to Muir Island.
Let’s get to work, team.
Impress me.
Charles described Bastion as a technopath, which is essentially telepathy for machines.
And this mnemonic scrambler shut down Jean’s powers when she was the Dark Phoenix.
So we calibrate the scrambler to Bastion’s frequency and sever his hold over the Primes.
But we may be able to do more than just that.
If Bastion’s abilities operate like our mutations, we can use neutralizer technology to permanently disable his control of Prime Sentinels.
Okay, no neutralizer technology.
Part of me wonders if Gambit should’ve been buried here, on our grounds.
He was always trying to outrun his past with the Thieves Guild.
Remy was the most Cajun man I ever met.
As much as he wanted to escape the bayou, he knew our lives are about what bits of us we leave behind and what we carry into the future.
Maybe if you saw us as people and not students, you’d have realized that.
I’m so sorry, Rogue.
For you, for Remy, Moira.
So many. And despite the power of words, nothing spoken can heal this pain.
My heavens! Magnus…
Looks like the search came to us.
Please. Not this, Magnus. Be reasonable.
I am not the one who needs to be reasoned with, Charles.
There is a large asteroid hovering over my home that begs otherwise.
Your home?
When you abandoned us for your Shi’ar Bird-Queen, you bequeathed it to me, asked me to walk your path.
Are you prepared to walk mine?
Magnus, your path leads to total destruction for both humans and mutants.
You must undo the damage you’ve done.
Will humanity undo Genosha?
Old friend, you should’ve seen it.
It was just as you said that day in the bar, a promise realized.
We have a plan to stop Bastion, but we must also repair Earth.
I promised a boy a future free of fear, only to watch his frightened eyes be vaporized inside his tiny skull, because he believed in me.
In the dream you had me sell.
How many more of your bones will pave the way to Xavier’s future, where we simper like beggars for tolerance?
Your professor’s dream is dead.
So I offer a new one.
A home to replace what they stole from us. A new Genosha.
We have gotten here by walking this man’s path.
We are left with but two choices.
Cling to this dying world, or rise to your future and look down upon this fallen pigsty planet.
We are not gods, Magnus.
Gods abandon those who believe in them.
Mutants do not.
Decide, my X-Men.
Rogue, no.
In Genosha, I made a choice.
To lead our kind to a new age.
I stand by that choice.
Rogue, do not turn your back on family.
You were gone, gal.
None of you were there the day Genosha fell.
Who dies next, Professor?
Jean? Ha! Been there, done that.
Who knows where Bishop is?
And hell, Morph was barely on the team 30 minutes before we tossed them to the wolves.
Jubilee, Roberto…
I will not see any more mutants die.
Roberto?
My mom handed me over to the Prime Sentinels, Jubilee.
They collared me, my own family. What’s left here?
Me.
The offer was made.
The door is open.
Hitchin’ a ride to Asteroid M.
Just when we started working well together.
Look, if I had it my way, I’d be on Isla Morada with you and Jean instead of space.
But she’s…
Not my mother.
It’s confusing to me, too, you know?
Jean, Madelyne.
But what I know for certain is that they’re two of the strongest people I’ve ever known.
Trust her.
And, son…
Let me guess, “Be careful?”
No. Give ’em hell.
Oh, hey, almost forgot.
Am I going to war or a circus?
What’d you expect? Black leather?
The Magneto Protocols were drawn up for exactly this sort of crisis.
An attack against Magneto will only enflame matters further.
Trust that I will reason with him.
You expect me to trust you?
The world is falling apart because you left your legacy to a lunatic.
Not a lunatic.
Merely a man trying to survive in a world that has proven his worst fears true, time and again.
In under an hour, civilization as we know it ends.
Much like in the past, my X-Men and I are your best hope to avoid that future.
If you’re wrong, Xavier, my hand will be forced.
We have been here before, President Kelly.
If you don’t trust me, trust my X-Men.
They approach. Open the silo.
Mutants, surrender to the future.
Shouldn’t Magneto’s blackout have shut these things down?
Bastion must be powering their circuitry using his technopathy.
Hang on.
Forge and I will draw their focus in the air.
The rest of you continue to the ground.
No, that’s an army out there.
I thought of you while away.
Of when my sister faced her darkness and emerged stronger.
A survivor. A phoenix.
All this change? It’s all the same.
Let us do what we do.
Believe not in a dream or our gifts, but in each other.
Make them mind your weather, sister.
And them weather your mind.
The source of the frequency is coming from inside the volcano itself.
Then that’s where Bastion is.
Bastion’s building his own ideal future.
Unfortunately, he’ll have no one to share it with.
Try as you might, X-Men.
You cannot stop me and my kind.
Morph smash!
Let me lend you a hand, friend.
To pose the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Cable!
I’ve waited for this moment.
I know your genes, Jean.
Your strengths, weaknesses.
Only I know where you end and Madelyne begins.
If you ask nicely, I can tell you when I switched you.
It doesn’t matter. Madelyne fights with me today.
Should we knock?
Damn it, elf.
And so you have chosen your side.
Oh, good, we’re skipping the blabber.
Time out, sugar. You’re playing to kill.
Magnus, please.
Thousands are dead and more will follow unless we–
Thousands more died on Genosha.
Whose lives matter more?
Hey, I’m sorry, Jubes, you okay?
Jubes, I said sorry.
Magnus, for all your talk of ruling the world, it is the world that rules you that has made the bitter man before me.
Oh, how I’ve waited to say these two words to you, old friend.
Shut up.
Cyclops, his helmet.
I must hijack his powers to repair Earth.
Sir, what about the Prime Sentinels?
There is no time. We must trust Gold Team to neutralize Bastion.
Bastion, Xavier’s brats have breached the base.
We must retreat.
Know your role, mutant.
A snake like Sinister would never risk his life for another.
Yahoo!
Forge!
I have studied you, Jean. Dissected you.
Then face me.
I’m shocked that such a coward hasn’t abandoned Bastion yet.
I was waiting for you to bring me what I want.
Look who’s here. My writhing thing of chance.
Nathan, stop! Please, listen to me!
Sinister’s controlling you just like he controlled your mother.
My real mother was a world-class telekinetic, just like you.
Stuff tends not to skip a generation.
Scott!
Scott…
I love you.
No!
Jean. Nathan.
You’ve left me no choice, Magnus.
I’m sorry, sir.
Gold Team still needs more time.
Charles, now you have finally found the mettle to do what is necessary.
You are a traitor to your race.
Been in a lot of wars, bub.
The brave always die first.
Logan.
Finally,
this feud is over!
No, Magnus!
For the love of God, don’t do this.
