Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff

[00:00:00] Hi friends! Welcome to Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff, and today we are watching X Men 97. My name's Steve Selnick, and joining me, as always, you might be Thunder, but this one is Lightning. It's my good friend, Charlie Peppers. Charlie, how are you today?

I'm good. I'm just feeling blessed. Like, the black community's eaten real well. We got Cowboy Carter and Stormcentric episode? Come on. Listen. Listen. Man.

Everything is coming up Milhouse, if, if I may say so. And also joining us today, we have our first guest to speak X Men 97 with us. We're so excited to have her on today. We're We'd like to welcome health educator and operator of geek girl strong, Robin Warren onto Charlie and Steve watch stuff. Robin, thank you so much for joining us today.

Hi, thanks for having me.

And before we jump into the episode itself, I would love to just have you tell our audience more about yourself, what you do, geek girl strong. I'm a huge fan of my partner originally [00:01:00] connected me to you because she is a. A part of your, well, maybe not a part of your patron, but she assists in the operation of your patron or one way or another full disclosure. My partner works for Patrion. And so just, we're going to clear out for you. So please tell us about yourself and all of the, the awesome things that you do in the geek and movement space.

Awesome, thank you. I have tried really hard to figure out how to tell my very long story in a nutshell. So the nutshell version is that I went to three different colleges and had five different majors by the time I landed on physical education. So I have a bachelor's in physical education, a master's in health education.

I'm a certified health coach and nutrition coach, accredited pole dance instructor, and a whole bunch of other smaller certifications. I started Geek Girl Strong when I was a New York City public school teacher. I taught health, dance, and P. E. And I was a very unassuming P. E. teacher. I'm under 5'5 I'm a black woman.

There are just a lot of reasons why no one would think that I was. I was like, I don't know, 22 when I [00:02:00] started teaching. So super young as well. And, yeah, I was right out of school. And while I was doing that, I You know, I ended up being an example for kids, because that's what ends up happening when you're a teacher, whether you like it or not. And I started realizing, because I taught 6th through 12th grade, that especially after the summer, when they would come back from 6th to 7th grade, that there was a huge change in the kids. And developmentally, that's normal. But they basically go away for the summer as little baby sixth graders and then they come back as little monster seventh graders They have different smells now.

They don't understand what's going on with their bodies and a lot of my female students would come back and it would seem like they chose something while they were gone Either they were going to be a tomboy and still play kickball and like sweat and participate in P. E. They were going to be really [00:03:00] bookish and like good at school and kind of quiet and would rather read their manga up in the bleachers and take a zero or they were really like concerned about how they looked and socializing and would come back and be like, Miss Warren, I don't sweat anymore.

I'm not changing. I'm too cute to be in this gym with any of you. And then I think it was really confusing to see me who like, I care about the way that I carry myself. I care about how I look. I also was teaching kids who were either immigrants or first generation. Americans and on my father's side, I'm African American on my mom's side.

I'm first generation cause she's Jamaican. And so neither one of my parents have college degrees. I was just relating to the kids in a lot of ways. So for them to also see that I enjoyed going to the gym, I enjoyed sports and teaching it to them. I cared about my outfits and how I looked and carried myself. And one of the only times that I would miss [00:04:00] work was to go to New York Comic Con. And I would come back with presents. So basically I started taking games in order to get kids more involved with PE. Everyone calls it something different. In New York, most of us called it steal the bacon. It's a line game.

You all get a number. They put a bowling pin or other object in the middle of the gym, and then they call your number and you try to grab it before the other team tags you. Whenever I explain it, people understand it. Basically, instead of just calling it steal the bacon, I would call it the Hunger Games cornucopia.

And I would put on a whole show and all the kids would get numbers that were districts. And in that. started realizing that there is a way to relate to people. When I started saying that to women at events like Geek Girl Brunch, which is a meetup group, A lot of them were like, do you train adults? And I said, no, but I can. So when I burnt out in a fiery glory as a teacher, I became a family planning health educator at a nonprofit health clinic in the city. And during that [00:05:00] time built up my clientele, which turned into Geek Girl Strong, which I've been doing full time since 2018. I think that was a nutshell. It was a big nutshell, but it's a nutshell.

Well, allow me to speak for both of us when I say that we appreciate a big nuts. So

Oh!

for, for telling us your story.

And, and for, for all that, I mean, I, I tried to, my partner says I'm funny when I'm funny. So you know how that goes, so we'll dive into a little bit of, of the fandom side of it, but.

Before we go into that, just, can you tell people where you currently operate for geek girls strong and where they can find you if they're also interested in sort of geeky focused things that can also get you up and moving and feeling stronger and better about yourself

So, I'm from New York, so I'm there often, but I'm currently based in Philadelphia. So both of those cities typically get in person programming with GeekGirlStrong and workouts and things like that. But I work mostly remote since COVID. My clients are all over the country and our community. through [00:06:00] Patreon. That's not planned, but yes, Patreon's one of the ways that we stayed connected because I have a private Discord server, so we have an international community that's kind of filtered onto Discord, and that's how we all keep in touch. So, in person and virtual. I, I try to be ethereal and be everywhere.

as, as we have to

be these days, apparently. And so we'll make sure that we have all of those relevant links in our show notes as well. So if, if, if, and when. You want to check out Robin's stuff and check out GeekGirlStrong. I highly recommend it. We'll have all of the things there for you to go and find it. Now let's talk about the geek side

of it. Obviously you're, you're rocking the storm earrings right

now. If you're, if you're watching on YouTube, you get to experience them in all their glory, a little shameless plug for that. For the fact that these are going on YouTube now. And so just rewind us back to the beginning, like Charlie and I, in our first episode, we kind of shared our introductions into fandom and, and what were the things that originally pulled us in, maybe it's X Men and Storm, but I just [00:07:00] would love to hear about your sort of introduction into fandom.

And then of course, we'll get into the storm of it

all, since that's part of the reason why you're joining us today. So yeah, just kind of tell us about how you. Got to be the geeky powerhouse that you are.

Aw, that's a nice compliment, thank you. I'm getting better at taking compliments. I did not know that I was a nerd growing up, and looking back on it, it's very funny. It's very like, oh you sweet baby. And it was partially because I was an athlete my entire life. My mom put me in dance from three years old.

I'm an only child. I think it was partially like, please go do something with children and not us. And then I started soccer at five. And from there, it was basically like, you can quit whatever you want, but you have to have something else lined up that you're going to be doing. So I did softball. I did track and field.

Bye. I tried everything. I did theater because they didn't have dance at my public school. And then the theater program was gone. So I became a cheerleader. Like I was just always finding something to do. But during that time, [00:08:00] I grew up with a dad who was really into just having the newest technology at home.

He grew up as a poor kid in Brooklyn and I think that was like his thing, right? His like status thing. So I grew up with video games in my house since I can remember. My very first Christmas picture. I'm born in December, so I'm a tiny little meat nugget for my first Christmas. I'm not doing anything, I'm just laying there. my mom is holding me, my dad has his arm around her, and he has a video game gun to my head. So that also explains a lot about my relationship with my dad, but it explains that I can't remember a time without video games in my life, and I think that's kind of the first nerdy thing. that I grew up with, but then I also had a mom who really liked watching TV, and when I was younger, and she was braiding my hair, which would take hours on end we would watch Star Trek reruns.

So I grew up with The Next Generation and watching that a lot, [00:09:00] along with other TV shows. nerdy programming that I didn't notice and then the first thing that I can remember really choosing that is now treated as a fandom was that the fifth grade girls at my school were talking about this show where this teenage girl was going around killing vampires.

And I was like, I want to watch the show

Okay. I have to, I have to chime in. I have to chime in because Buffy the Vampire Slayer is still my favorite. This is like

my favorite show of all time. I was watching it with my boyfriend last night. I was like, this is season six. It's when she gets depressed. I'm gonna need you to pay attention during her struggle.

But yeah, I I was so into Buffy and I got into it when I was eight years old because I remember hearing the promo for it on TV and I was like, who is this little white woman beating people up?

I am here for it. Yes.

So I

was around the same age. [00:10:00] I was in elementary school as well. And I went home and told my mom. I was like, the fifth graders are all talking. I was in the fourth grade. I was like, fifth graders are all talking about it. So it has to be cool. I have to watch it. I have to be able to talk to them about it.

And it sounds so cool. amazing. And she was like, I think you're too young for that. And I was like, what if we just try again, only child, different relationship with your parents sometimes. So we tried, we watched it. And I think she just forgot about me cause she wanted to watch it. So we would just watch it all the time. So that was, I think the first thing that was really influenced by me was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And then it just kind of went from there. I was a kid who would leave as fast as I could from cheerleading practice to go home and play The Sims online. And no one knew, like no one in my school knew that I was running home to do that. And that I was given a credit card when I got to high school that like I could only use After asking my parents, it was like very [00:11:00] structured kind of thing, teaching me responsibility. But the, like, primary purchase on that was The Sims Online, was me asking to be on that. And I now know how nerdy that is because I will say that to people and people will be like, one, you were on the internet already.

And two, who was on the internet for The Sims? It was me. I was. Other people kept it to themselves and I was on The World Wide Web very early with The Sims, so yeah,

I appreciate that early adoption.

yeah and then, you know, the animated series, X Men and, like, Ninja Turtles, and, like, all of those things that were going on at that time. really spoke to me. They were heavily influenced by New York. So the Spider Man show at the time, all of those things were really in kind of my sphere. And I think kind of had to be, if you were into that kind of stuff and growing up in New York, you couldn't really escape it. So I was into all of that.

I was into comic books for a little bit and [00:12:00] then fell off and dated someone in college. who was really into comic books and ended up working at a comic shop near Brooklyn College. And got me back into comics and something that I didn't, since we're just on the topic of fandom, something that I didn't tell you to when I got the email.

So we've been trying to make this work and I'm sorry that I've been so busy, but I'm so glad that we ended up doing this episode because you two don't know this. I actually have a Punk Storm tattoo. That I got when

yeah.

Yes

this particular storyline influenced me so heavily. So I didn't tell you to that, but I'm very excited.

Well, amazing.

Well, yeah, quickly, just like run us through your storm fandom. Cause I mean, you're obviously your rocket, you're, you're the whole thing. And I mean, when I was, I was just scrolling Instagram and I saw you post something about storm and a light bulb went off and I was like, Oh wait, like [00:13:00] let's, cause we had already had some back and forth about coming, having you on the podcast.

So I was like, Oh, this would be perfect if we could, it's only a couple of weeks away. Like let's, I'm sure you're watching the show. Let's do it. So yeah, just quickly, like not, it doesn't even have to be quickly. Tell us as much as you want about your fandom of storms specifically. And then we'll, we'll jump into the episode from there.

I was definitely One of the little black girls who was like, I am tired of having to relate to characters like Nala. She's very cool. She's not human. She's in Africa. And that's the closest that I've gotten. And like, constantly having to relate to characters like that in life. And Storm was one of the main black female characters that you constantly saw in you know, nerdier, animated type stuff.

And there were some others, but she spoke to me the most. And I ended up as an adult coming back and reading the life death [00:14:00] storyline. And I don't think that any of this would have hit the same when I was a kid. So I'm kinda glad that I didn't read it as a kid, cause it's pretty heavy material. And of course I loved her in the animated series, and was just kind of starry eyed about her as a character, When I was in my late teens and got back into comic books and started reading more about her, I actually realized that we have a lot in common. A lot of people think that she was raised in Africa, but she actually spent her really early childhood in New York with her parents. She, her dad is African American, her mom is an immigrant. Her mom was from a country in Africa, but like, I had that same multicultural black home, and a lot of people don't even think about that as a thing. Like, I'm not biracial, but I am multicultural in my home. So Storm relates to that a lot. She had a lot of trauma in her childhood. Unfortunately, I relate to that a lot. And she talks about her mental [00:15:00] illness on the animated series. The, the original one. with her claustrophobia comes up quite a bit and like early on in the series. for all of those reasons, I just got like super attached to her in a deeper way as an adult than just kind of in the representation way, which is important but just different when I was younger. And because I'm such a nerd and I was like, I gotta at least have an idea of what I'm talking about.

There was a flood in New York a few years, and I lost a lot of my comic books in the flood. It was very sad. And one of the ones that I lost was the Life Death comic. And a friend of mine, Ivan, shout out to Ivan, Two years ago now, I think. Or maybe last year. Time is weird. Surprised me with new ones. I can kind of see it.

There we go. So, I actually have all of them. I was flipping through them before we started. And then I have, like, collections of Claremont stuff. Yeah. So. [00:16:00] Pretty serious about my Storm fandom. All my friends have a ni like, no.

Incredible. Incredible. Well, thank you for

sharing that all with us. We truly appreciate it. And I think that's a great jumping off point. Let's, let's jump into this thing. Let's talk about this episode of X Men 97. The last one titled life death part two released a couple of days ago, April 16th.

2024 written by Charlie Feldman and directed by Chase Conley. And the plot of the episode is Storm is forced to face her worst fears in order to free herself from the grasp of the adversary. Meanwhile, in the Shi'ar Empire, a place that I was wholly not expecting us to go, a familiar friend, we have to talk about the intro credits at this point, because they've told us so much at this point. My, the only one I'm going to call out is because I was, I actually had to, I was on a train from New York city to Connecticut when I watched the episode.

For the first time, I just watched it twice, once for me, and then once for the notes. And I did have to hold back in screaming out loud [00:17:00] for the other two people that were on my very off peak train going to New Haven. But yeah, really stoked to see Nightcrawler in those opening credits. Obviously we, spoilers, we're not going to see him in this episode. But, I feel like this is the writing team kind of throwing us a bone after Remember It. Being like, okay, so we broke your heart into a million pieces, but now you don't, Nightcrawler is going to be here too. So at least you have that going for you, but Charlie, I want to hand it off to you and let you talk about some of the other you know, we get the flashes of the scenes, a lot of which have actually happened at this point.

So we're kind of taking all of it as foreshadowing at this point. So Charlie, what did you notice in these opening credits that you want to shout out?

Well, the first thing is I'm a pour one out for my handsome booboo gambit because he's no longer in the credits I was like, ah So that was good, but I really like that this show is changing their credits because For decades, those opening credits for the X Men, they stay the same. They stay [00:18:00] exactly the same, and just seeing them move around, it makes it something that you don't want to skip, because it's part of the story.

It's it's a method of foreshadowing. I really appreciate that we also saw Apocalypse again. We saw Cable fighting Apocalypse, and I read a lot of theories about who was responsible for the mutant massacre in episode 5, and Apocalypse was high on everybody's list for that. I don't believe that it was Apocalypse, and it turns out I was right because Apocalypse wouldn't use sentinels, but I found that to be interesting.

We also see Nimrod, who is a ultra sentinel. He's like the pink robotic figure. Who gets blasted, and then we see, I believe it was Bishop, Wolverine, and Storm coming out to kind of confront him, and that was part of a alternate reality storyline that we had in the original series, so I thought that that was really cool.

[00:19:00] What else? We see Forge and X Factor again, so I'm really hoping that we do end up seeing some members of X Factor, particularly Iceman, cause I love him, he's one of my favorites. And we see Charles and Lelandra smooching. I have so much love for the storytelling on this show. Do you have any thoughts about the opening credits, Robin?

Yeah, I

one, didn't notice everything that you just listed, so thank you. But also I feel like the creators are doing a really great job of including all of these things because they know how beloved the theme song is and that, like, we want to listen to it, but at the same time, it's like, do people want to watch the same opening over and over again in order to get that feeling from the theme song?

So I think it was a really great idea. To say, let's change the characters, and like, make this a part of the story, not separate from it. I think that's sort of how I've started to view the opening credits, as just a part of the [00:20:00] episode, not separate.

100%. And I feel like this is the second time we've referenced Game of Thrones in as many episodes, but not a lot of shows take advantage of that opening credits scene. So I think they're used to people binging and skipping and stuff like that, where you would watch the opening credits because you wanted to know where we were going in that episode.

It would only show places on the map where the episode was going to go. So it became sort of this other sort of thing. Foreshadowing thing, however you feel about later game of Thrones aside. And so it's, it is really nice that X Men 97 is taking advantage of this and obviously taking advantage of their advanced technology, speaking of advanced technology, that's a professional toss right there.

Let's go into the opening of this episode where we open on. The Shiar Cree war, a place I just a thousand percent didn't expect. Robin, just to kind of fill you in, Charlie is the, the comic reading has watched the series multiple times person. And I'm the person who plays too many video games to do that. So most of my intake is sort of just my old memories from the [00:21:00] nineties and

what I do now.

So maybe,

caught that in another episode. You know a lot about the Simpsons.

I may or may not own the first 10 seasons of The Simpsons on

DVD, which was

I did want to tell you while I was here, because there was something about like, does anybody care about Bart Simpson anymore? Does anybody relate to him at

I asked that! I wanna know! Yeah!

I know someone with a Bart Simpson tattoo. So just to,

to, to make you feel seen. Some people

There's a, this is, I love this detour. I have this, the book is probably somewhere in my parents house right now. Actually. I used to read Bart Simpson's guide to life more than any book ever, which I don't, I don't know how problematic that

is. The, I haven't reread it since I was like maybe 13. I met, I had the opportunity to meet Matt Groening once.

This is such a detour. I, I worked for a G4 back in the day. I got to. Like right before it died, I moved out to LA and I was a, an intern and then a production assistant on [00:22:00] the show. And I got to work there last E3 of existing. And it was the year that Halo. Not three, Halo four was coming out. And so they had this whole experience or whatever.

And a lot of VIPs at E3 wanted to do the experience. And I was the person with the clipboard getting the famous people to either be like, yeah, I'll give this to my PR rep or I'll sign it. And yes, you can use my image and likeness inside of Microsoft's promotional material. And. My person that was sending me to go talk to people was like, Hey, that's Matt Granning back there.

Can you go get his signature? I'm like, I'm sorry, what?

And I admit like, like a lot of amazing people that day, but that was the first time. And he just, he sees me coming at him with a clipboard in my hands and he just puts out his hand and he goes, hi, I'm Matt Granning. What's your name? And when I tell you, I almost choked on the spot.

It was a good

one. It was a very good one. Him and Aisha Tyler, the MVPs from that day.

She was awesome.

is very cool.

But anyway, back to the, the Shi'ar Cree war, not as smooth of a transition, but we, we get this amazing epic [00:23:00] space fight. Anyone who has any sort of familiarity with the MCU kind of registers that when Deathbird plunges into the ship and starts fighting people, you realize that she's fighting Ronan the accuser and his legion of Cree and you would think that Ronan would put up more of a fight, but he doesn't really at all.

The Imperial Guard comes in. We have namely Gladiator and a, I missed this one. Charlie called out. We've got Vulcan in there as well. One of Scott Summers's brothers. They don't call that out in this episode, but maybe that's something that we're gonna see later. There's one of one of his three brothers.

Thank you. And one of two, I guess? He is one of three. I understand. Yeah, you know, another only child over here not understanding how sibling dynamics work. So we get this whole cool fight scene. Gladiator and the rest of the team and Deathbird make quick work of Ronan. And she's, she's speechifying. And all of a sudden she gets interrupted because her sister, Lalandra, is announcing her engagement to one Charles Xavier, who is alive, if that was a surprise [00:24:00] to anybody.

I guess they, like, sort of sell you, like, he's not alive, but Charlie, you said in the very beginning of our time covering the show, he's like, yeah, he's actually up there, he's, they're doing his thing with him, and he can walk. So that's, that's news. And her sister just kind of goes, well, shit, and then stomps her heel into Ronan's head and kills him.

And just like, all right, we're out of here. I thought that was so funny. It's just like, okay, this is not actually what we're doing here. We're going to go off and do, do this thing. Do you, do you have anything to say about that, that opening sequence before we head off into the garden conversation between Charles and Lalandra?

I just remember her first stepping on him before she kills him, and if you notice her heel goes into his cheek. And it just stays there during the rest of that scene. Like, she's just stepping on him with her heel in his head, and he's bleeding. And no one says anything about it. It was just all very interesting.

Death bird does a lot. I remember the death bird action figure from when I was a little boy, and I remember it [00:25:00] being so fierce and just thinking, yes cause I, one thing that I love about my dad is that he was like, no, no, no, they're not dolls. They're female action figures and you should be able to complete the set with them.

But also I manipulated them into getting me a Charlie's angels doll as well. With Cameron Diaz, just because I was like, you know what, this is also an action figure. It's just a different sort of plastic. So let me have it. one thing that I want to double click on from that fight scene is that Gladiator has a very interesting power set.

He's pretty much Superman, but his power level is dependent upon his confidence in himself. So if he's super confident, then he's super powerful. But if somebody is able to get him inside of his head, or if he has imposter syndrome, which I want to get to later on in this episode, because I feel that something storm [00:26:00] has his powers suffer.

the writer in me almost wanted that to be. A compliment to what Storm was going through in the episode, as well as what Charles was going on, because I think he's just a very fascinating character.

I didn't know that about him. That is really

Me neither. Yeah, that's cool. We have sort of a, almost like a download conversation between Charles and LaLondra in this garden where He thinks he's like, hopefully I've done enough to satiate whatever weird rituals going on here. And I skipped over this in the notes, but everyone seems pretty dubious of this announcement.

There was no one like, even in the crowd that was like, yeah, this is great for everything that's happening here. We totally want this. And Charles is saying things like maybe we could go to earth and hang out there. Like, I'd love to, to make, like, you could tell that he's like, okay, yeah, I'm healthy now.

Like maybe I can, like, there's a whole earth back there that I, I think I've left. In a good place, but I just miss it and stuff like that. And, and we start to also get the seeds of what he's going to talk about later, [00:27:00] where Charles is going to be important to the reeducation of the Cree once they've been crushed as the words that she literally says out loud. And he gets to play this veil of peacemaker. And we also get the opportunity to see that. Hit this armor that he's wearing is the only reason why he can walk. So this is just some sort of, she, our technology along with all of the technology that healed him from his almost being killed before in at the end of the animated series. And then we're back with the adversary. Now, Charlie, I know you, you had something you wanted to say by how surprised you were by the scene. Do you want to kind of elaborate on that?

I think that Charles was just so willing to acquiesce I wish that the episode were almost a little flipped. I wish we would've started with Death Bird dropping in and saying, you have to Scrub all of your memories of Earth and your X Men, and that that was what Charles was struggling with the entire episode.

Just so that he could match Storm in trying to rediscover his personhood. [00:28:00] Cause I felt like, structurally, the episode, it felt a little busy. With all of the space opera of it all. I I really, not that I didn't appreciate it, I think that if they were gonna do that, it should have been its own episode. Not stepping on my girl Storm.

Not doing that. She had to share a Jubilee, and now this? Come on y'all. I just thought a little bit too much was happening, and I think that there was a cleaner way for us to do it. Robin, did you feel the

same?

yeah, because, especially as someone who was really into the source material, so to speak, right? And I don't want to get too far ahead in the episode, but, like, Storm deals with the loss of her powers for a long time in the comic books. I understand that they have to condense things for a 30 minute episode and whatnot, but the fact that she's split so many times for this very big storyline, for this very important character in the X Men, I think they could have, they could have given her a little [00:29:00] bit more time with this storyline if they did something like that.

I totally agree with that. We'll get into Storm's storyline right here. And where we get back into Forge's cabin where he has this nasty purple infection and is looking pretty bad and the adversary is just like, just leave him, just like, just let him go. He fucked you over. Just like, let him die. Watch it.

I don't care. Whatever you want to do, like do it yourself, whatever, like even better. And, you know, she was like, get out of here. I'm not going to do that. Tries to get out of the cabin. Can't. she gets, we get this whole, like another almost like fear vision thing where she gets shut in this coffin and, and the adversary starts stressing her down for basically being like, I know you don't fear death, it's living that you fear, it's that you don't want to embrace your powers, you don't want to be who you are, you're hiding, even with the X Men, you're hiding yourself about who you truly are.

And so I'm. I'm feeding on all of this, like, misery you're feeling for not being able to truly be yourself. Just when it seems like she's gonna cave in, Forge runs in all bandaged up and starts throwing some fuckin Dr. Strange magic at at this thing, which is a [00:30:00] a nice nod to, again, the MCU. If you've if you've ever been an MCU fan, you recognize that magic right away.

And then also sort of a nod that he said he learned all this stuff from his mother, so His mother was involved with the Sanctum Sanctorum, but that animation looked amazing. It was very what if. Honestly, it's almost like what if came in if you've seen what if they have some of that magic in there and it's almost Like it got inserted into the x men 97 show which was a really cool touch and that He also absorbed from his mother's knowledge that there's this cacti the midnight challah Which has the aloe that could potentially heal him and then they accelerate the love story again where storm is like Well, then we ride together my love Which is I think In, for what you said, Robin, one of the first examples of like, okay, where did this, cause we said this in our coverage of the first life death where forge is like, but I love you.

And we were like, from fucking what? Like what, since when, where did this come from? And so I, I feel like that's one of a couple of things that were maybe condensed in a like, okay, this is just what it [00:31:00] is. And you're going to have to be okay with that. The time has passed and we're not explaining

it. Sort of thing.

Do you agree with

There were a lot of nods to, like, and I think they're doing that overall, right? Like, every story that

they're taking from the comics, there are so many really thoughtful nods to the original story. But maybe just because I'm so attached to this particular story, I'm noticing those really big gaps where I'm like, Well, at least make it appear like my girl, like you got to work a little bit harder than that. Why is she in love with him? And you know, I saw online someone talking about the choice in her costuming. is something that she wears in the comics, but something that you don't realize is that she first takes a dress, this like, pink, really pretty, sexy dress, and puts it on and comes out and forges like, you know, jaw drop, thinks she's gorgeous, and that's the first time that you really see them have [00:32:00] this Like sexual tension romantic moment in the comic and then she's like he doesn't know what to say They're both very awkward.

It's very cute and she's like, oh, i'm so stupid and you see this you know, omega mutant when she's without her powers right now feel like insecure like a girl right again and she goes back to the closet and that's when she changes into the overalls and then like he gives her alcohol for the first time and something They don't show it.

She says, I don't drink in the comics as well. So, like, there's just so many things happening in this relationship and for Storm that I can understand that they don't put in her saying, like, no thank you and him being like, you don't have powers anymore. What do you care? Just try it. But something like them falling in love could have been explained a little bit.

I wanna, yes, Anne, what you just said, I think it's so interesting [00:33:00] having, now I wanna buy that comic, I've never read Life Death before, so I'm gonna treat myself and consume it, but Something that I really like about Storm is that she has to have such a tight rein on her emotions all the time, which is also something Robin and I want to know if that metaphor lands for you.

Just as a black woman, having her have to constantly have double consciousness about how she's coming across, otherwise it'll all come down. That's a metaphor that's always really spoken to me. So her being offered a drink and being able to cut loose and be her full self would have been a nice color to that story that I wish they would have capped.

She's like, Oh. You know, I never really get to just be, you know,

so this is really, really, interesting.

a hundred percent. One of the reasons why I have this tattoo is because of that because to me [00:34:00] this particular storm really represented something about womanhood that I really related to and it's not separate from being a black woman. Like, I can't really separate those in my life. So, I was apprehensive when I first saw her in this new animated series because she has the mohawk. And I have been very specific and, like, frustrated about them overusing Mohawk or Punk Storm, because it is a very specific storyline, and it is a very specific reason why she cuts her hair like that. In the original story, she still has her powers when, just like in the show, but one of the reasons is that they go to Wolverine's wedding with his Japanese lover.

He has so many lovers, if people don't know. Wolverine is out here in these streets constantly. And while she's there, X-Men stuff happens. X-Men [00:35:00] drama happens and she partners up with this other woman there. Not romantically, but that's when she's like, I am tired of being so responsible. She had this thing with Calypso beforehand and like she's just going through all of these things and that's when she makes the decision to cut her hair and no one and change her outfit, and no one knows until she shows up at the wedding. And that's the tattoo that I have. That's her pose. She shows up and she says, hello, kitten. Cause she's talking to Kitty Pryde, who like, they have a mentorship kind of relationship in the comic books. And it's this huge moment because Kitty is like. What? Who are you? Like, where is Mama Storm? This is complete, like, you cut your hair?

You're wearing leather in a studded belt? Like, who are you? You're wearing a choker? You're wearing all of these things? So it's a very specific moment for her. And then while she's in that, like, garb and costume and everything, she [00:36:00] loses her powers. So it's, like, all connected. The story is so long that it doesn't end the same way that it does on the show. And I'm really sad because there's a big moment in the comics that I also think is big for her. And the only other time that I really liked their use of a mohawk on her was the second time that I saw it, and then they started using it a lot, was after her divorce from T'Challa. So, for a while, the comics were really using, like, her hair to express herself, which is also something that's very big for Black women. And this haircut, to me, always signified this breaking out of some kind of mold for her. Because in the opening of that particular comic, which I can't remember which one it is, but she talks about having been a queen and leaving it behind because that wasn't what she wanted. Like, that wasn't the deal.

She loved [00:37:00] T'Challa, wanted to be his wife, was not interested in the rest of that stuff. She wanted to be with her X Men. So yes, I relate to so much of that stuff and I guess that's why, like, I'm very protective of the character in general, but definitely this particular version of her.

As you should be. As you should be. Thank you for Yeah. Going down that with me. That was fun.

Oh, this

is, the fact that you all ended up asking me on for this particular thing, I was like, I don't have to like, watch anything I'm not already watching, I don't have to study anything. I have to flip through some comics to refresh my mind, but this is one of those things that people can get me talking like, at a bar, at a party, in the comic shop, on the convention floor, like I will talk about this particular thing anywhere.

Well, we're incredibly here for it. So

thank you for, for sharing. So willingly all right, so we're gonna the next and Charlie, I agree with you that there's a lot of sort of skipping here.[00:38:00]

I actually, the reason why I watched it twice in a row was because I was maybe five minutes in and immediately closed my doc. Cause usually I can take notes while I'm watching it the first time. And after the first couple of scene jumps, I was like, Oh, absolutely not. There's no way I'm going to be able to keep up with this. So these, the, if it feels like we're kind of jumping around a little bit for the next couple of minutes, it's because the show kind of jumps around for a little bit for the next couple of minutes. So we start with the quote unquote revealing of the Royal couple. One of the advisors to the, the Empress is just immediately and very publicly like, Hey, not sure if this is a good idea.

Things are kind of hard right now, or I don't know if you notice we're in the middle of a war and we don't even fucking know this guy. So maybe if you just like took a little pause and Deathbird is less subtle, if you could be subtle about it,

of my favorite scenes in this entire episode, because not only was this woman like, Taryn, Earth is ghetto. She said, your entire galaxy, the whole thing, the entire

Milky Way

[00:39:00] The Milky Way ghetto.

The Milky Way Ghetto. I, I was just like, see, this is why I ended up reading Marvel comic books. It was moments like this that roped me in.

Yeah.

Where you realize that Greenwich, Connecticut is actually the Shi'ar Empire. Yeah. A hundred percent. Death bird invokes the right of him, Dasha, which requires a non, she are to complete a challenge of their choice to essentially be considered worthy of marrying a Royal. And Charles is like. Yeah, you got it. What do you got for me? I can do whatever. And this is honestly really smart. Renounce earth and all of your memories of it, including your X Men. That's the only way we're going to trust you that you're just about the She R and that you're not just trying to like get us aligned with earth when the time comes. And then the only other thing I'll talk about quickly, because it ends up mattering towards the end of the episode is that Charles and Gladiator have a conversation in front of. A couple of statues of the Shi'ar [00:40:00] gods about how they were the first ones to have a marriage and this other culture was assimilated into Shi'ar culture and that that's how they sort of keep their empire in order.

And essentially Charles goes, well, I know somebody on earth that would agree with what you think that the best for the safety of your people is to make everybody your people or to only have a space for your people in any other place. People are a danger to that. And it seems like Charles is going to go the other direction and be like, no, I can't do this.

I got to go back to my X Men and stuff like that. But LaLondra just kind of like bats her eyes at him and he's like, okay, I guess I can try.

Bringing me out like I'm your pet and I don't hate it or something like that. I was like, Charles, excuse me.

I bet she's like, you could bark later.

I mean, y'all said Charles, excuse me, but in my notes I just wrote a . But I just,

I

that she

I mean, Charles, get it, the fight and the struggle is long, you better, demerits, [00:41:00] demerits, young man, demerits, but I think that this would've been an opportunity for the writing, to have Gladiator bring up Magneto, and for Charles to go into a little bit of his reasoning of leaving the X Men in Magneto's care, and for him to kind of elaborate on that, cause he did, he doesn't, I find it odd that that doesn't come up, that he doesn't, Say that.

Or, yes and, to that, I think Lalandra could have pushed back and said, but your friend Magnus is looking after them right now. You wouldn't have left your X Men in his care if you didn't think he was capable of it. It's like, yeah, but those aren't just my students. Those are my kids. And I, I still want to see what's happening.

You know, I think I wanted to get into Charles's head a little bit more. And I think all of the scene with him and gladiator is the closest that we got to it but all of the politicking kind of Made it a little congested for me

I think that's what, I didn't [00:42:00] think about her at least using that as a reason to keep her man where he is, right, and being like, didn't you set them up? You set them up. They're fine. Don't worry about them. It's a really good point.

Yeah, that's a good call. And before we get to the actual rite of Amdasha that happens, we get another quick scene with Storm and Forge getting to Snowstake Tower, where the cacti are living, and they have an incredibly casual conversation. about each other and how they feel about each other and about the fact that they were both miserable and did things because they were miserable and they seem to reconcile here. And then the show reminds us that, Oh yeah, Forge is fucking dying. So we should maybe like, go get that cactus for him. And then we kick back over to the Shiar empire.

I will say that they

go ahead.

her claustrophobia a tiny bit by him

pointing to him saying like, Hey, it's a small space. That's why I wanted to come with you. So I think that was a little bit of an Easter egg kind of thing for people who know the character really well and remember the old series, but it was nice for [00:43:00] them to give like at least a little nod to something that this powerful woman struggles with.

Yes, I really like that moment. That's where I bought their love story the most because if you, they've had intimate conversations like that, that's not something she would tell somebody that she didn't feel safe with. So that was a really nice couple or like something you would tell a partner or somebody that you're really tight with.

So I really enjoyed that detail as well.

And I think it also further explained why she would have been in the casket, freaking out in the very particular way that she was freaking out and being like, let me out. I thought that was really great for them to explain that a little bit as well. If you knew what to look for.

We kick back into space real quick. And Charles is, is having Lilandra holds her hands up to his head. Cause she's the only one powerful enough to do the, Psychic pull of the memories out and he's like, yeah, I'll renounce earth and my memories But when we get to the x men he hesitates and he hesitates for like [00:44:00] just enough of a fraction of a second that death bird decides to stage an entire coup and It's just basically like this guy's never gonna forget his x men I should be the one who rules this empire.

And Lelandra is like, this is sedition. This is a traitor, like arrest her right now. And you get this moment where you see gladiator kind of looking back and forth between the two of them. And you're legitimately not sure which way he's going to go. And then he jumps in front of Deathbird as she tries to attack her sister and punches her out of the way.

And

Really hard by the way. I was like, damn, gladiator.

Yeah. And,

Protecting his

queen.

they choose Lelandra to do it because she was the most powerful or because it was the most messed up? Because I read it as her sister choosing her because it was the most messed up version of that.

They seem to not disagree that she was also the only one who could

do it But that is like it probably would be better if it was

you because then it's a the collective effort Yeah, and so Charles is like this is not [00:45:00] what I wanted He was giving principle and mean girls being like, oh hell. No, I didn't come back from from a tour for this shit

All junior girls, report to the gymnasium. Immediately. Immediately.

it was giving that he puts, so he basically uses his vast psychic power to place everyone in the astral plane. They're all stuck in a classroom. He's got the apple. It's honestly one of the coolest Xavier moments. An iconic sort of pose for him and we get classes in session. It's time to educate you people on coexistence But before we do that, because we can't stay on the same scene for more than two minutes, we're back in storm crawling up a very claustrophobic feeling mine shaft. The adversary is back somehow Cooing and clawing her way up the tunnel talking her shit as she does. She offers Storm's saving from herself and it kind of clicks for her that the last thing that was holding her back is her lack of, you know, embracing who [00:46:00] she is and not worrying about that, that public persona or the, the fear or whatever, that's going to come for her. And the adversary is like, no, believe the lie. Like you'll, that you believe that you'll make humanity safer by not being yourself and, and like resist the thunder that will come for you just existing. And, and she says here,

listen, my girl came in hot like she was the spoken word part of Beyonce's Flawless, the way that she just snatched, snatched all of the edges off of this script and just, I think my rating for this episode went up to what it was just because of the way that Allison ate, ate this part of the script, the scene cut to black and she said, No, not a daydream. And then we go to her just pushing the rocks apart. I felt something. I got a little emotional. That was so powerful and that was just [00:47:00] I think if people didn't go into this cartoon being fans of Storm, they're leaving as fans of Storm.

Because you just get what she is about in that moment of her just being like, You know what? I am Storm, you know, I'm gonna take my power back, and I'm also so tired of making myself small for all of y'all. Yes, I was tired, and that's why I got my head, but then we get this Man of Steel moment for her, where she just is flying, and she has the outfit on.

Robin, question for you, with this outfit change, I find it very interesting that they picked Storm's debut outfit. For the outfit that she's getting revamped for. Is that the outfit you would have picked, or would you have gone with something different? Mm

It's not that I don't like that outfit and it is one of the images that comes up in my mind when I think of her, right? But I was surprised and I was surprised by the scene in [00:48:00] general. It's interesting because this also influenced my rating of it, but possibly in the other direction. And it's not because I don't absolutely love that she got her powers back I think I do lean more towards the other costumes that she has than the very first one that comic book illustrators put her in very early on. So you can imagine, it's pretty small, she's wearing high heeled boots, what you gonna do in that?

I mean, she flies, so I guess she's fine with like, fighting people in those or whatever. It wouldn't have been my first choice but now that we've said this part of the episode, what I've been biting my tongue about is that one of the huge reasons why I like this storyline and I have a little bit more empathy for Scott now that I'm in my mid 30s.

I feel like I understand Cyclops a little bit more than I did when I was younger. He's always

Well documented Cyclops haters over

here. Just me,

I'm not a huge fan of him, but I have a lot of empathy now that I'm in my mid [00:49:00] thirties, and people annoy me, and I'm just trying my best, and I'm always having a bad day. That being said, one of the things in the comic book storyline, which happens much later, is that she battles Cyclops for leadership of the X Men while she has no powers. and she wins. And I won't, like, give away how she does it, just in case folks listening want to go and, like, see that part themselves. But that's such a big moment for this character that it was a little sad, I think, that she didn't get more of an arc of her, like, powerlessness, because she shows how powerful and smart she is, even without being able to control the weather. And then I think that this moment would have been even bigger and even brighter to me. And also just that I could not remember the adversary battles in the comic books. I know it happens. I don't think it's in her [00:50:00] mind. Like, I don't think it's Storm that's bringing it up. I think it's something that's actually connected to Forge and his culture and his story. So I think all of that, I was just kind of like, wait, no, wait, this is good, but like, can we wait a minute? Can we give her a little bit more of a story? And then, yeah, I think that you're right. I don't know if that was the most empowering costume choice after such a big moment.

Yeah, it also, yes and, it's not the most empowering, it's also not the most practical. but then again, Psylocke is one of my favorite characters, and I just, I kind of love it. I can't say shit because that

is really, I know, they,

I know of like, how do you put that on? Also, how do you, like, how do you quickly get into that?

It just seems

like it's painted on,

like, it's, like, that is just, it is so impractical. If they were gonna go with the Storm [00:51:00] outfit, after this, I would, and this is probably me just showing how, Like nerdy I am for this run of comics. I like Storm's purple outfit that didn't have a cape, but she still had her crown from the late 2000s.

I just love Storm in purple, but I digress.

I'm kind of hoping that we get a whole bunch of her looks. I kind of feel like that

Me too.

for and that's,

Just so many. Absolutely.

a lot. Yeah.

I'd be here for that for sure. I just want to shout out in that moment, my favorite little bit of that was when she's looking into the water as she's flying and you see the reflection of her face and you just see her smirk get a little bit bigger because she's back where she wants to be. And then she, taking up as much space as you want her, her performance there literally goes into

space.

You see it from a satellite. So that's pretty damn

cool. She's taken up all the space as she

I've ever seen her do that. outside of getting this is a whole other storyline, outside of her having some of Thor's powers [00:52:00] and hammer and

things that happen in a completely different storyline. I don't think I've ever

would be worthy.

high and I feel like that is a really awesome, like, symbolic thing

I think this is gonna be something that Steve nerds out about once we mention what we're talking about. Alright, so, Robin, are you referencing DC vs. Marvel when Storm and Wonder Woman fight each other and Storm wins and then Storm picks up Thor's hammer

and she's worthy and you just see her Yeah, I remember that from when I was a kid.

That was a really badass moment. Steve, that We gotta find you that comic book. It's so cool.

to read comics.

Yeah.

It's just, it's

just like comic book cool. Like, there's, there's

no real other reason. It's not. Like, I guess it is deep, but it's also just cool.

It's the stuff nerdy dreams

are made of, for sure. But it just closes with, as Charlie called in the, in our last episode covering [00:53:00] it, they're essentially like What do we do? Do we go on a honeymoon?

Because remember, we're in love, I guess. And Storm turns on the TV, and you get the news broadcast that we see at the end of Remember It, just basically being like, the attack has gone down on Genosha, which means that Storm is going to be probably coming back into the X Men fold, maybe with Forge as well, if we're going to get some X Factor in there.

I mean, I would assume that if Forge comes back with her, him and Wolverine are going to know each other because we see Wolverine in those X Factor opening scenes. Charlie, do you agree with that?

maybe Forge will come back with her. I, I'm here for more X Men. I, and I really like that the roster is changing, so I think it could definitely add something. I think it would be silly of Storm not to bring Forge back with her, given what his gift is. I think that he can definitely fix.

Or come up with a lot of tools to help them maneuver what they're maneuvering through. Also, to go back to what you said, Robin, I think we could still get that storyline of Storm challenging Cyclops's [00:54:00] leadership, because Cyclops was really out of pocket on TV in the last episode, and I could see there being some friction in her challenging his leadership, which you've never seen them butt heads in the cartoon ever, so that would be juicy.

That's a very good point. I didn't think about her, like, watching TV and seeing. She's like, y'all don't have it together. Mama needs to come home, I guess. You guys are falling apart over there.

Laughter.

And we also got an opening credits scene of the animated series when Storm fights Callisto for Callisto for, for leadership of the Morlocks as well. So, and that never really came to fruition other than us seeing Morlocks in the show. So we don't know if that's gonna be maybe something that's foreshadowing for storm fighting for leadership.

she does that when she has, I think when, when she, no, right before she cuts her Mohawk hairstyle, that's her storyline. So I don't know if [00:55:00] they're like trying to show that already happened, that it's a memory, or that they're gonna like weave it in somehow.

well do, actually, Robin, do you have any final, and, and we'll obviously get into overall thoughts of the episode, but do you just want to put any like capping thoughts on this life Death storm saga before we head into the finale of the episode?

I left unsatisfied, but I think it's because of what the three of us have been talking about, which is that it could have used more time. Like, just a lot of it was cut out, and I think, like, between skipping things between her and Forge and making us figure it out, which I think is partially just because this is an all ages kind of show, right?

Like, they're not necessarily going to lean into romantic, physical relationships in the same way that Marvel was at the time that the story came out. But this is probably my favorite representation of Storm in a very long time, so I'm not, I'm not mad. Like, maybe I just wanted more, that's all.

[00:56:00] Yeah, this was amazing. I really liked this moment. Because The Fox movies have pretty much treated our girl like a glorified party fog machine. Like, they're like, Oh, Storm, make it rain. Okay, you know, like, It's just so I'm offended on her behalf. But I love that she just got to leave on her own terms.

She's coming back on her own terms. We're seeing how strong she is. I think I was already a fan of Storm and I'm excited for people who weren't fans of hers to really just see what we love about her. Cause she, she's amazing. I'm glad that they're giving her this much space and I think it can only get better from here.

I think you're right. Whenever people are doing fan casts of her, I'm like, no one, leave her alone because you guys don't know how to respect her

and

don't deserve her.

deserve her.

Stop casting her. But the animated series has done great.

The animated series has done well. Can we also [00:57:00] talk about the fact that I love Holly Berry. I love her so much. She's one of my favorites. Like, I love following her on social media. But the way that they gave this woman an accent in the first movie, then dropped it.

It's like, at least I've chosen a side.

It's so

Logan, fight with us. Join the X Men. It just, it was so bad.

It was so bad. And speaking of like, Black women expressing themselves through their hairstyles, they did her so dirty in those movies. They had the flippy hair thing of the early aughts. I was like, there's no way that Storm is choosing that hairstyle.

Yeah, in X2, it looked like she was trying to find the manager yesterday.

That's what it was given. I was like, damn, not you sending everything back to the kitchen for the sequel. It was, it was, I couldn't, I could not, [00:58:00] I was gagging.

And then I think they had her with like a really short haircut that I think that they were like, we can't give Halle Berry a mohawk. So we're just gonna like give her the pointy thing kind of situation. Yeah,

yeah,

Pixie, they,

too, but

love her.

it wasn't, it wasn't a great, it

It was, it's

I love her, just not in that. But, yeah.

Exactly. Exactly.

before we get out of here, we just have the way that Charles finds out that all of this went down. We're back in the astral plane and Charles is giving this, honestly, like this beautiful education of how their empire is essentially a snake oil racket, how they kneecap other cultures, and then. Tell them that they're making them better by making them assimilate into their culture and making everything homogenous. And it felt really just real and maybe it's going to be the point where people are like, Oh, X Men got too woke in my face, but it's actually something that you need to, like, if you're [00:59:00] reacting like that, you probably should listen to it a couple more times and read the script and stuff like that. And it goes back to the heart of what I think so many of us think that X Men is about or appreciate X Men. To be about, which is tolerance and coexistence, no matter what, especially from where X Men came from originally and how relevant it continues to be now in today's society. This was just a very well written and very poignant monologue that I wish wasn't as relevant in 2024, but continues to be relevant as, as the days go on.

Just as like a side note, as someone who used to be a school teacher, forcing them to raise their hands really spoke to me.

Yeah.

Right. If you could just use your, your psychic powers to sit their asses

back down and actually make them, if you could like put an apple in their mouths to get, if they speak out of

turn, if that was allowed.

certain students, absolutely. And

especially one that called my galaxy ghetto. Like, alright kid, we'll see about that. We'll see how ghetto I

got [01:00:00] her apple. Cool. She did get her apple, for

But

also, she was listening.

She was listening, though.

It was working. Something was happening.

Right, and so, it, something was happening, which makes the timing of this really unfortunate. Charles in the astral plane gets All of a sudden, he just sees rows of desks of skeletons. this must have been him feeling Genosha happening in the moment. Because, my theory is that both of these things are happening in Line with Genosha, so like, Storm happens to turn on the TV in the aftermath. Charles is feeling it, I think, all happening at the moment, very much so, like, I'm gonna make a Star Wars reference here, very much how when Order 66 goes down, Yoda's the one who, like, feels all of it, because he has that deep of a connection with the Force. I think Charles has that deep of a connection through his psychic abilities with his, his children. That he feels the death of the millions of them. We get a giant gambit rise above all of them and then turn into a skeleton in front of us. That one hurt. I am going to say no [01:01:00] Magneto to be found in this. And I think that means something I theorized in the last episode that Magneto wasn't dead for one reason or another, whether or not it's a good theory. And I'm going to completely stand on it until I'm proven wrong in the next

episodes.

do you know who Cable is?

Do you know, like, his powers and, like, a little bit about him and everything?

I know probably enough, but you should fill me in about what you're gonna reference here.

I, I just, I don't believe anything in comic books. I don't believe anybody's dead. Ever.

you're, you're, just talking about the time travel

Yeah, like, you know, they showed him really quickly and then he's gone, so I am very of the Infinity War mindset. That I'm like, that story isn't over. Everybody

Anything can be

undone.

can still be undone. But it is interesting that Charles didn't think about his frenemy in that moment at all.

No, no. His, his ex partner. So many layers there, but I digress. I think that him seeing Gambit [01:02:00] as a skeleton might have been foreshadowing the fact that Apocalypse uses Gambit as the horseman of death. And some storylines, and I thought that was maybe a Oh, is that why we're seeing Apocalypse?

I don't know.

Lots of, I, I do appreciate that there are still lots of webs to unweave through all of this. And now we still have four more episodes to do it. So we, we get into sort of, Oh, well we come out of, of this psychic vision and Charles was like, I gotta go.

Like, this is something happens. Like the worst has happened. Something that I never thought what imaginable has happened. Like I gotta go. I can't stay here. I got to go. And the laundry is like, you understand that means we're done. And he's like, yeah, we were done. We're out. We're done. I don't care. Like, I got to go take care of my kids. And so he's out of there. We got Charles coming back to earth. We have storm coming back to the X Men. That's going to be an interesting little power dynamic coming in there, especially with Scott actively, you know, tail spinning out in front of us and before we go we get the the true villain the the architect [01:03:00] of the massacre on genosha we get bolivar trask that absolute piece of garbage running away he gets shot from behind he's like i gave you my dna to access master mold what else do you want from me just kill me like i saw what happened on genosha i don't i like i don't want to be a part of this world if that's going to be what you're doing We find out that it was Mr.

Sinister, all along, that got access to Master Mold, that created the Wild Sentinel, who unleashed absolute hell on Genosha, and he's like, You trust me, I'm not gonna kill you yet, because I need you, cause I got stuff to do. So, we now know that Sinister is the architect of everything on Genosha. And that he will most likely be the main villain as we head into the finale of season one. Robin, what did you think of, of this ending and how we're gonna be heading into the rest of the series?

you all see that there was some sort of interview with the writer talking about pre and post 9 11? That that was an influence?

[01:04:00] Interesting.

so pre attack on Genosha was pre 9 11 when they're like, everyone's very hopeful for the future and like, what can we do? And yada yada. And that afterwards, the realizing how unsafe you are feeling was a theme that they thought about. And, I mean, we were talking about earlier about being kids from New York who went to school

And 9 11 was the second day of the 8th grade for me on West 14th

Street, which for those of you who don't know, geography is not far

from the World Trade Center site in terms of something really big happening.

Right? So something that I also thought was interesting, which is sort of an aside is that. The expressions and the way that all of the X Men have taken in the information while watching it on TV, I think you can really see the influence of all of us who have had experiences of watching something catastrophic happening to people that you know or [01:05:00] that is very close to home for you. So, I thought that the way that they ended it was fine. Like, I was like, okay, yeah, all, it was just one of those things where it's like, all of this makes sense to me moments, and that I think that the buildup was appropriate.

Yeah, I saw the pre post 9 11 thing that Bodomayo said, I thought that was great. Also, he mentioned that the Pulse nightclub shooting was a huge influence for Genosha, and drawing from how that happened. Had an impact on how he as a gay man of color saw the world. I thought Yeah, when I was watching The massacre and last at last week's episode not this week's episode I definitely felt that I was so scared for them and for me to be scared for superheroes That is an accomplishment that is something that marvel has never made me feel before They've definitely never made me feel that in the mcu films.

I felt [01:06:00] worried about their characters before, but I've never been in a situation where I just thought all of them were gonna get like, assassinated in like, a very real world like setting. You know, I don't think the MCU has ever evoked that for me the way that it did here.

And what do you think about the reveal as sinister as like our main villain moving forward?

I Underwhelmed I just mr. Sinister so annoying. I just find him so fucking annoying.

I don't know.

you think if it was Apocalypse, like, do you Cause I know that the villain roster Like, the big villain roster for the X Men is not necessarily a deep one. So

it to be a human I've really wanted it to be a human because it being a human Hits the metaphor and such a more and a way more sadist. I wanted it to be a human and Backed by an apocalypse like figure.

Yeah, backed by the government. You know, like, if they're backed by the [01:07:00] government, but like, they're being influenced by apocalypse.

So, but, I will say, one thing that I found very interesting is that Bolivar Trask seemed a little guilty. He was like, oh my god, I don't remember particularly what he said, but he seemed a little disgusted with himself, which I found to be fascinating. That was my favorite part of it. But Mr. Sinister can sit down somewhere with his pointy ass teeth.

I'm just so tired of him and his obsession with the Summers family. Leave those white people alone. I just, I'm so, I'm so tired of him.

that might be why the adversary storyline didn't really, like, I didn't like it that much because it felt so similar to Sinister. Like, it's the same type of thing that they're doing to people, right? And I was just like, okay, this is fine.

This is, this will do. Well, let's take it into our, into our final Sentinel writing set, and we can sort of [01:08:00] attach our final feelings about the episode with it. So Robin, as our guest of honor, please out of five Sentinels, what, what in halvesies are allowed? Honestly, I think someone did like 0. 4 once. I didn't even bother trying to put that into the graphic. But out of five Sentinels, what would you rank the episode Life Death Part Two?

I would give it a 3. 5 out of 5. I think it would have been higher. If the Storm storyline was fleshed out a little bit more, and if we weren't splitting her story with other characters, because I agree with what was said earlier, the Xavier storyline could have been a whole episode or most of an episode and flashing back to Earth here and there kind of thing, right? So I think that that's the biggest reason. I liked watching it. I enjoyed it. But I think it's also because the previous episode made me feel so much that having this come right after it might have hit differently if some of the changes we spoke about happened and maybe if it wasn't right after [01:09:00] crying because of Rogue's line.

Yeah.

Just, just sadness.

Yeah.

Charlie, what you got for us?

I am gonna agree. I'm gonna say three and a half sentinels as well The half point is because of Allison's voice performance in this like that Definitely raised the bar for me because just the no not a daydream was just so look she ate like our girl ate I thought that was amazing, but I don't think this was a great episode.

I think it it was good I don't think that it was, it wasn't okay. It was a good episode, but what kept it from being great was just the back and forth. Like, we literally, in one episode, this is how disjointed it felt. We got Doctor Strange magic. A space opera and a demon in the same episode. Then we cut back to the reveal of what happened in episode [01:10:00] five with a villain from episode one and two.

So it was just very busy and I think that there was a way for it to be a little bit more linear, but when you got 10 episodes, you gotta move so

I guess you can only do so much. Well, it's funny I think it's the same for all the episodes. I'm also at a three and a half which means that I think charlie and I continue our streak of rating the episodes the exact same and now robin You're joining us on that train as that We've rated every single one of these episodes the same all the way

That's really funny. I did

that good old groupthink You Yeah, that's awesome.

I love that. and that's going to do it for this episode of Charlie and Steve watch stuff. We did the thing we reviewed life death part two. We're going to be back next time with X Men 97, but before we go, I want to extend one more sincere.

Thank you to Robin for joining us today on the podcast. Robin, one more time. Where, where do you want the people to go to, to find you and your stuff?

Everyone can find me at GeekGirlStrong everywhere. [01:11:00] GeekGirlStrong. com. The branding, we've done a lot of work on it. Literally, if you search that name, you are going to find me somewhere, including our Patreon if you're not in the New York and Philadelphia area. You can check us out there too.

Beautiful that you're got that strong SEO. I

appreciate that. That's good stuff Awesome. Well, thank you again. Honestly, it was it was so much fun talking about all this stuff with you Please come back soon. And for myself steve selnick and my good friend charlie peppers We will see you all on the next one

Bye