The episode begins with the mansion being reconstructed. We see various work crews building and repairing stuff. The answer to the obvious question is quickly provided: Angel is coughing up the money for it through his father, who thinks that it's a regular prep-school. After talking about Rogue for a bit, Logan opens the door to reveal... Emma Frost. In her usual attire.
Angel likes what he sees, but naturally Logan is mistrusting. She says that she wants to join the X-Men. He says no... for some reason. She then offers to find Xavier.
Cue title sequence.
After Warren leaves, the X-Men meet up with Emma to talk. Logan introduces her as the headmistress of the "Massachusetts Academy," retried. Kitty says that she's never heard of that place, in an oddly... snippy tone of voice. Logan says that it was a knock-off of the X-Men, but it only taught its students how to bully people. Emma disagrees, saying that this was the behavior of a few of her students. Logan asks why she closed it, but she doesn't answer, so Logan throws her out.
So she says that her students were taken by anti-mutant people, which kinda made it hard to teach. And now she wants to go back to teaching; she says that they need each other, since only a telepath can operate Cerebro. Logan says that it was destroyed in the explosion, but she pries out of his mind the fact that it's almost fixed, so she tells them to call her when it's ready.
Then we get an odd scene where Bobby holds the door open for Emma as she leaves, and Emma touches him seductively under the chin and walks out. Kitty appears and is angry over this, saying that she's a telepath, so she knows what he's thinking. Because what threatens Kitty is a sexy telepath who may want to entice other young men.
Logan and Hank talk it over, Hank pointing out that they have to take a chance with her, since she's their best bet of finding Charles or Jean. So Logan goes to see Forge, who wasn't even important enough to get added to the roster on-screen. In order to get the required action quotient in for the episode, Logan gets attacked by various things in the danger room because Forge is working on it.
Forge gripes for a bit about being shuffled around from project to project, but when Logan tells them that they'll use it to find Xavier, he jumps to it.
Cut to... sometime later, as Emma and Logan enter Cerebro. Hank attempts to introduce Forge, but Emma makes it clear that pleasantries are not on the agenda. Logan suggests that she back off on "hallowed ground," but Emma just blows him off. Forge attempts to give her instructions, but she's already pulled them from his mind. And thus liberated from exposition, she starts Cerebro.
We see an island, a metal palace, various hallways, and finally Xavier. When Emma turns Cerebro off, she says that he's on Genosha.
Hank and Logan are walking somewhere. Hank suggests talking to Magneto, but Logan won't have any of it, saying that Eric must have been behind the explosion. Hank points out that none of the data he collected supports that hypothesis. Logan doesn't care since he has Xavier.
Cut to Cyclops's apartment. Logan wakes him up, and Scott tells them they have nothing to talk about. Of course, all it takes to pique Scott's interest is to say that Magneto has Xavier, though Scott's first question is if he's got Jean too, which he doesn't. But Scott's on-board anyway.
Cut to the hanger, where we see our five heroes walking boldly towards the camera. This is interrupted when Forge shows up, still working on the Blackbird. Hank suggests letting Forge finish the repairs, but Logan decides that Forge will come with them to finish the aircraft mid-flight. And nobody disagrees with him.
Emma shows up. She takes one look at Scott and concludes that they're desperate. Logan tells Scott that she's temporary, and then the team is off.
Logan, in the pilot's chair, is physically caught between Forge and Beast as they struggle to get the systems online before they reach Genosha. Logan's rather put out by this, since they have to reach around him for stuff. Well maybe you should have waited a day for them to do it right, moron.
Bobby goes to sleep, which causes ice to form near him. Kitty chews him out for freezing in his sleep. And for being able to sleep while the plane's going to collapse and they're facing Magneto. Bobby says that Logan's got his number. Obviously Bobby is either suffering from an acute form of dementia or is thinking about a different Logan, one who doesn't have metal in his bones. Kitty somehow buys this nonsense, but suggests that going up against an army of his mutant followers won't help. That is something that Bobby is worried about.
Well enough of that nonsense; cut to Scott and Emma on the other side of the plane. Emma, reading Scott's mind, says that he wants to ask about Jean. When asked, she says that if Jean were on Genosha, she would have detected it. Then she says that she can still locate her, but that requires her remaining on the team. She then sets Scott against Logan by saying that Logan wants her gone once they get Xavier back.
Of course, the fact that getting Xavier back means that he can find Jean is not something Scott realizes. Or maybe he just read ahead the script.
Logan and Hank inform us that they really need that cloaking device online so that they're not easy to spot visually. Forge eventually fixes it after some faux-tension.
The Blackbird lands and they deplane, with Kitty doing some scouting. Apparently, all the buildings are made of metal; not exactly the preferred construction material for skyscrapers. But it gives Magneto an edge. Logan has the group split up, since the theme of this episode is Logan making boneheaded decisions.
We see the various X-Men looking through rooms, though Scott seems to have forgotten subtlety when he became a Badass Longcoat as he just starts blasting doors at random. Then we see Logan get sucked through a wall. Good call on Logan being able to take Magneto, Bobby; Mags didn't even need to be in the same room to kick Logan's ass.
Magneto's powers in this series seem to include the ability to liquefy metal and really reshape it. Sure why not. He toys with Logan by almost pushing him into a wall of spikes. Then he finally appears, speaking the page quote. Logan accuses him of destroying the mansion, but Magneto says he didn't. Then Scott and Bobby blast through a wall.
Scott shoots Magneto with his eye beams, which he blocks with a plank of metal. So Scott uses the clever tactic of shooting again, which is blocked by the same metal in the same place. Then, in a desperate act, Scott fires a third time, hitting the same metal in the same place as before. Eric then puts Scott out of his misery by pinning him to a wall.
Bobby is able to land some hits on Eric, even splitting his helmet in two. Seeing that he's serious, Eric just owns him by breaking his ice and pinning him to the wall next to Scott.
The rest of the group appears from nowhere. Emma takes advantage of Eric's helmet being removed to start invading his mind. Yet he still retains sufficient will to throw Logan through Beast and into Emma, taking them out of the fight.
So now it's Kitty vs. Eric. She boasts that his throwing stuff won't work on her. So he doesn't throw metal. He just hands her a floating piece of metal to hold on to as he tears away the floor. That's why you never taunt the villain, Kitty.
Logan then says "We're not looking for trouble." Of course you weren't. You just flew a cloaked ship into his house, broke in uninvited, and started wrecking his shit. Yes, this is clearly an overreaction from Magneto.
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Magneto decides to toy with them a bit more, moving Logan's fists under Hank and Emma's heads, threatening to have him kill them. Logan says that it was his fault, which Eric (and the audience) agrees with. Eric taunts him by saying that Charles wouldn't have approved of this raid, then he decides to take them to see Xavier.
Charles is apparently in a coma. Magneto says that they found him on the shore a week ago. Emma says that he has no brain activity. When Eric says that he's been caring for him, Logan says that it's an excuse to keep an eye on him. Before Eric can teach Logan who wears the pants around there, Beast interrupts, asking if they can take him with them. Maggie thinks it over for a second, but allows it. He also invites them to live on Genosha, but Logan refuses (and nobody else gets a vote). Then, just to show that all of this conflict was completely pointless, Eric tells them to use the front door next time they visit.
Cut to the basement of the mansion. They have Charles in a glass bubble... for some reason. Logan says that they'll get him back somehow, then they hear Charles's voice. After a bit of searching for where it's coming from, the head of Charles Xavier appears before them.
The Big, Giant Head says that he has a message from the future. He just awoke from his coma, twenty years from now, and we get a flash-forward to a ruined world with roving bands of Sentinel robots scanning the area. The Big, Giant Head says that this future comes to pass because the X-Men split up. He says that they have to be together to win, and that Logan must lead them. And such a bang-up job he's done thus far too.
Naturally, Scott walks out. Being told that you're supposed to give up your leadership position to a guy who just sent you on a mission that nearly got everyone killed will do that to you. Even Logan recognizes that this is stupid, but Charles gives no reason why Logan has to be in charge. The Big, Giant Head simply implores Scott not to abandon them, saying that he is needed.
Cut to the future, where Xavier is in the rapidly collapsing Cerebro room. He takes off his helmet and reveals that he can walk now, thanks to a mechanical exoskeleton on his legs.
Remarks
This episode is a non-stop deluge of stupid. It's one foolish decision after another, culminating in a battle that the team only survives because the villain doesn't actually want to kill them.
Logan doesn't want to talk to Magneto. And since the audience has no idea who Magneto is (in this universe), it comes off as rather stupid. Sure, it's Magneto, the bad guy. But there are varying shades of "bad guy", and Eric usually has a soft spot for Charles in most versions of the character. Even so, I'd be willing to buy this; as previously stated, there are varying shades of "bad guy," and maybe this was Ultimate Magneto.
Logan decides that the mission is so important that they have to leave immediately. So immediately in fact that they take off in a half-broken plane. They haven't had Charles around for a year; would one day have really made that much difference? As far as they know, Charles has likely been in Magneto's care for months; why the suicidal urgency?
And the pièce de résistance, Logan decides to fight Magneto. Let me repeat: Wolverine, a man who's bones are made of metal, decides to fight Magneto, a man who's basic power is the ability to move metal. And they even play this up by using Bobby as a mouthpiece to tell the audience that Logan actually stands a chance here. The only times Logan has ever even scratched Maggy in other continuity was either when Eric was distracted/surprised or was in a fighting game (or a really bad comic). Otherwise, he gets wtfpwned.
Since a big part of the audience already knows this, the fact that Logan goes down faster than a two-dollar whore is no surprise to most of the viewers. And to the rest, the fact that he does only makes Bobby look silly for saying that and Logan look idiotic for even showing up to the fight.
The biggest failing of the episode is this: this entire incident could have been a learning experience for Logan. The whole idea of this show is that Logan has to step into a role he never wanted: leadership of the X-Men. And this episode shows why he's so unsuited to this role: because everything he does makes sense for his character. His decisions are impatient and irresponsible. But that's par for the course for Wolverine. Everything he does is in character but is absolutely wrong for the team.
The problem is that this is never followed up on at all. This ought to be the start of a character arc for Logan, where he learns how to be a leader rather than a loner. But it isn't; he learns nothing. He will continue to pull these kinds of stunts for the rest of the show. We don't see any lack of recklessness, any growth towards being a responsible leader, nothing.
And worse, nobody calls him on it. Logan is only in charge because everyone else follows his orders more or less without question. They defer to him... because the script says so. Not because it makes any kind of sense. Not because he actually acts like a leader. Just because that's what they're supposed to do. This will be consistent throughout the series: he's the leader because the script says so. This is made most evident by the Big, Giant Head at the end simply proclaiming Logan to be the leader, immediately after his raging clusterfuck of a plan.
The second biggest failing of this episode is the treatment of Emma's backstory. We are told that she had a school. We're told that some of her students started doing unpleasant things. We're told that others of her students were captured and taken away. Given all of this, you would reasonably expect that some of those students would be part of future episodes.
They're not. In fact, she gets an entirely new backstory later (though it's non-contradictory with this one). The fact that she was a teacher of a school is never mentioned again.
Imagine if Avalanche was one of Emma's wayward students. This would allow him to have some actual character interaction, rather than just being a generic thug. It would allow Emma to interact with people who aren't named "Scott Summers," thus broadening her character. We could see how she approached teaching, and she would have to confront whatever flaw in her teaching methods that produced such a person. Could she break him away from the Brotherhood?
Instead, nada. Of course, since that plot wouldn't be about Wolverine, or people directly associated with Wolverine, it would be nixed a priori.
On a different subject, this is the first episode that demonstrates the problem with the "previously-on" segments in this show: they show too much. In Avatar: The Last Airbender, most episodes have some form of this segment (on the DVD, the least useful place for them). But they only show information that is pertinent to that episode. This episode's "previously-on" talks about the Rogue plot from the last episode, but that's effectively irrelevant. What matters to this episode is that there was an explosion that may have killed people, the team's reforming, Bobby and Kitty are back, and that Xavier is missing. Yet they spend a good minute and a half recapping stuff that is irrelevant to this episode.
Another wasted opportunity: time that could have gone into something that matters. If there's one theme for this show, it would be this: waste of potential. They had opportunities, but never really seized on them.
