This text accommodates spoilers for “X-Males ’97” Season 2, Episode 5 “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs.”
“X-Males ’97” hasn’t given Wolverine (Cal Dodd) a lot time within the highlight, however contemplating how usually Logan has hogged that gentle in different “X-Males” comics, films, and cartoons, that is not a flaw. Nonetheless, Wolverine continues to be very a lot a part of the present and the newest episode “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs” focuses on his nook of the “X-Males” universe.
Again in Season 1 finale “Tolerance is Extinction,” Magneto (Matthew Waterson) ripped out the adamantium coating Wolverine’s skeleton. Choosing up in Season 2, Wolverine solely had his bone claws left. Nevertheless, Episode 4 “Rise of Apocalypse Half II” ended with Wolverine getting some key intel on the Weapon X program, which initially gave him the adamantium skeleton, and inferred he was going after them. (The information got here from two of Wolverine’s buddies on the Avengers.)
Wolverine and his finest bud Morph (JP Karliak) have assembled a workforce of different Weapon X-connected superhumans: Sabretooth (Darin De Paul), Girl Deathstrike (Erika Ishii), Maverick (Crispin Freeman), and Garrison Kane (Ben Pronsky). They plan to storm Weapon X, supposedly as a result of the scientists there have began up one thing new. Certainly they’ve; they’re experimenting on the Brood, parasitic hive aliens that take in the powers of their sentient hosts.
The Brood are analogous to the xenomorphs from the “Alien” franchise; “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs” features as an prolonged homage to James Cameron’s “Aliens,” with a squad of troopers trapped inside a small outpost surrounded by deadly extraterrestrials. Maverick even quotes Personal Hudson (Invoice Paxton) by declaring in panic that it is “Recreation over!” On the finish of the episode, Logan and co. additionally take off and blow your complete website up, as a result of it is certainly the one manner to make sure.
On X-Males ’97, Wolverine discovers Weapon X experimenting on the alien Brood
The Brood debuted in 1982’s “X-Males” #155 by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum. A heavily-altered, redesigned model of them referred to as “The Colony” appeared within the authentic sequence episode “Love in Useless,” however they seemed extra like big lizards in cyborg armor than xenomorph-esque bugs. Conversely, whereas the comedian Brood are clever beings, “X-Males ’97” retains them silent and ravenous like a xenomorph.
“Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs” can also be sequel to an episode of the unique sequence: “Weapon X, Lies, and Videotape,” the place Wolverine, Sabretooth, Maverick and Logan’s outdated flame Silver Fox tore aside an deserted Weapon X facility to study the secrets and techniques of what was executed to them. Their discoveries solely raised extra questions, as a result of they discovered Weapon X programmed them with faux recollections, leaving them unable to know which components of their pasts have been actual and which have been fiction.
The reminiscence modification plotline is picked up right here, when Morph, Sabretooth, and Deathstrike uncover a DVD recording left by head scientist Abraham Cornelius (Todd Haberkorn). Cornelius sees the Brood’s hive thoughts as a solution to good Weapon X’s psychological reconditioning procedures, the ultimate step to wiping somebody’s soul and leaving solely a human-shaped weapon. In fact, all of it went mistaken and the Brood overran the scientists attempting to regulate them; when Wolverine and co. encounter Cornelius, he is been taken as a Brood host.
So too, finally, is Wolverine. However having discovered from Cornelius’ documentation that the Brood cannot survive the adamantium bonding course of, Morph, Sabretooth, and Deathstrike lure Wolverine into the bonding chamber. He is purged of the Brood and will get his shiny claws again… which, it seems, is the actual motive why Logan staged this journey.
X-Males ’97 places Wolverine and Morph’s friendship to the check
Morph was famously used within the “X-Males” pilot, “Evening of the Sentinels,” as a disposable character, meant to be killed off to set the sequence’ excessive stakes. Besides, due to how common he was, he returned in Season 2 having been revived by mad scientist Mister Sinister (Christopher Britton). Wolverine by no means gave up on Morph, so Morph refuses to desert him on this episode even when Sabretooth and Deathstrike wish to hightail it.
However the episode additionally forces Morph to confront Logan’s darker aspect. The truth is, for a Wolverine-centered episode, Logan spends a lot of it offscreen or managed by a Brood parasite; the POV protagonist is Morph.
Wolverine recruited his workforce by claiming Weapon X was beginning up once more, as a result of he knew the workforce needed revenge on them. However finally, Deathstrike and Sabretooth notice the reality; Wolverine simply needed his claws again. (Wolverine’s bone claws are lots weaker than his unbreakable adamantium ones.) The workforce he assembled would by no means assist him for that motive alone, so he lied.
There lies the contradiction at Wolverine’s beastly coronary heart; he is each a noble hero and a surly, murderous thug. In “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs,” he bought two of his personal buddies (Maverick and Kane) killed. The episode ends with a tense dialog between Wolverine and Morph. When Morph asks if Wolverine is barely “an animal with claws,” Logan replies “That is what I am the most effective at being.”
“Does not that make you unhappy? It makes me unhappy, Logan,” Morph solutions, disappointment dripping from their voice. Logan silently stares at his newly reforged claws. As soon as Weapon X cursed Wolverine with the adamantium, now he did it to himself as a result of he thinks he cannot be something however a weapon.
