After a recap segment focused entirely on the future team, we naturally open with Sarah, aka Marrow, breaking down a door and running. A giant Sentinel is following her. She manages to take out one of its guns, but it keeps coming. She turns a corner and encounters the wrecked Sentinel that Lorna put together last time. You know, the one that carried the team out of the desert. It points its hand cannon at her and says "Destroy."
Cue the title sequence.
Of course, this is Superdickery; the wrecked Sentinel is on their side. It takes out the other Sentinel, but Marrow immediately starts upbraiding "Rover" (yes, that's what she calls it), because they were trying to get its voice box to replace his. See, Rover can only say "Destroy," in different tones of voice and such. Rover, I choose you!
Charles and Bishop show up, and Bishop starts chastising Marrow that bushwhacking Sentinels isn't the way to get parts for him. Marrow completely ignores him and has Rover pull off the chest lens to replace his. Exasperated, Bishop asks if the X-Men are supposed to listen to their leader, and Charles actually laughs at him. There's a bit more interaction between Marrow and Rover, and Charles says that she's attached to Rover because he listens to her. By which Charles means that he does whatever she says without question.
Cut to the past, at the mansion. Logan is in Charles's room when Scott walks in. They hurl insults at one another for a bit, then approach Charles's bed. In the future, Charles goes off to the side to talk with Logan. Scott hesitantly tries to talk about Jean, but Charles decides to skip that and goes straight to the mind-probe. He sees the Phoenix and then informs them of what he saw in Lorna's mind. Basically, he puts 2 and 2 together and figures out that Phoenix is what caused the apocalypse.
Scott immediately flips his shit, yelling about how Jean would never do something like that. So Charles puts Scott on pause while he talks to Logan. He tells Logan that Jean's uberpowers only manifest when she pushes herself hard, and he still thinks that the war is what triggers Jean to go nuclear. Talk about facts not in evidence, Charles. He tells Logan to continue focusing on stopping the war. But if they can't, then he has to stop Jean. By any means necessary. Which is why he had to put Scott on pause; he'd likely have killed Logan and Charles (thus causing a temporal paradox) on the spot for suggesting such a thing.
Scott and Logan leave the room. Apparently, Scott thinks that they were just cut off. Logan says that he and the rest of the team are going to save the world, and Scott needs to decide if he's going to join them. Where the hell is that coming from?
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Cut to the future, where Rover is walking Marrow. I know what I just said. After a bit of light banter, Rover detects some Loginels approaching. Marrow informs the other future X-Men, who run back into their cave. Bishop informs the audience that Xavier is still on the way. So we cut to him being spotted by some Loginels; they quickly surround him. After the commercial break, Charles tries fighting one with some junk and manages to blind one of them. For some reason, this causes him to fall over, and Charles uses that as cover while he runs off.
Fortunately, he runs into Bishop and random teleporting guy, who saves them. But his teleports are bright and flashy, so he's effectively given away their base location. Good job, moron. Bishop tells the others to seal the entrance to the cave, even though Marrow's outside with Rover. But that's only because she refused to come in, so Bishop doesn't care.
Outside, Marrow and Rover are standing behind a tarp. Yeah, that's great concealment for a 40-foot robot. That might give the Loginels a whole +2 to their spot check. Apparently that's enough, because they cannot tell the difference between natural stone and a man-made tarp.
Marrow says that they must have followed Charles, which is funny because it's true. So she says that he should leave, but Bishop isn't going to have any of that. So when she draws a weapon on Charles, he yanks her back and tells her to run and cool down.
Bishop asks about how past-Logan is doing, but Charles says that he only delayed the war so far. Or you know, maybe the war has nothing to do with it. Maybe you should have Logan find Jean and tell her, "Hey, we have it on good authority that you might get angry one day and burn the world. Could you not do that?" Anyway, Charles says that Logan needs to know more about when the end comes, so Bishop comes up with a plan to find out.
Bishop shows Charles a tall, pyramidal building, the place where Master Mold started producing its machine empire. The last time he was there, Bishop saw where old bits of Master Mold were stored. He figures they can download intel from it about the past. They start planning how to get in, and Bishop suggests using Rover as a distraction.
Marrow, who's been listening in from inside her tarp of invisibility, appears and is furious. Marrow says that Rover's part of the team, which makes his life more important than Charles's plan. Bishop blows her off, telling her to get Rover ready for action. Marrow threatens Charles with death if Rover is destroyed.
Cut to the infiltration. Their teleporter, named Vanisher, was able to find line-of-seight, so he can get them in. Bishop calls Marrow and asks if she's ready. She hesitantly answers in the affirmative. Um Bishop, she seems kinda against this; shouldn't someone else be handling Rover, since he's kinda important to the plan? We even see a scene of Marrow caressing Rover's face and hugging him as best she can.
After the team teleports in, we get backstory and exposition from Bishop. He was apparently born into captivity, in this very facility. Logan himself was captured by Master Mold, as part of a plan to get at him. For some reason, the Sentinels were "afraid" of him. Despite the fact that holding Logan only requires a strong magnet. Apparently, Logan was the reason Master Mold needed a new body. Logan kept getting himself captured so that he could teach Bishop. For ten years. Eventually, he broke Bishop free.
After that, they find the room. But it locks them in and alarms go off, so Bishop calls in Marrow. Surprisingly, she's taken off with Rover and discards her com-unit. After the commercial break, a Sentinel comes in and shoots Bishop, thus allowing him to shoot back. Their plan is to teleport the machine to safety, but that requires LOS, so they need to get it outside.
Cut to Marrow and Rover. Rover is apparently having second thoughts as he hears battle behind them, but Marrow isn't having any of it. Back at the fight, the team is quickly taken down. But this is only so that Rover can appear and save the day. It takes out one Sentinel due to surprise and is able to fight another. When Rover takes a shot to the back, Bishop shows up to save him and one-shots a Sentinel.
Marrow comes to Rover's aid after he takes another shot, firing a couple of daggers into its chest. Meanwhile, Charles manages to get Vanisher up, and he teleports the device elsewhere. More Sentinels arrive, and Bishop is being overwhelmed, so Rover intercedes despite more protests from Marrow.
The Sentinels start focusing on Rover now, pelting him with blast after blast until he drops. Marrow tries to help, but eats a shot for her trouble. Rover sees this and, after creating a weapon from the stump of its arm, takes out two other Sentinels.
But a pack of Loginels appear and start taking Rover down. Marrow refuses to leave him like this, until Rover says, "Run." Then Vanisher teleports her away.
Back in the present, Charles reports the intel they discovered, though he does give Rover his due by saying that it was obtained at great cost. Apparently, the end of all things is eight days away. In the future, Bishop also gives props to Rover, calling him one of the team.
Cut to Marrow crying over Rover's body. Wait, isn't that body in the Sentinel base? Yep, so a couple of Sentinels walk up to her. And she tells them, "Tell Master Mold I can lead him to Charles Xavier."
Apparently, Sarah Connor was an optimist...
Remarks
This episode is both character and plot-relevant. On the plot side, we learn that Jean is likely responsible for the apocalypse. What's odd is what I said earlier: the fact that the focus for the X-Men doesn't immediately shift to "find Jean." Yes, the war is bad and needs to be stopped. But finding Jean makes the apocalypse far less likely to actually happen*. In fact, Charles doesn't even know that there will be a war. At the very least, he should have them divide their time between finding Jean and stopping the war.
The character stuff here is obviously focused on Marrow. Rover is kind of a character, but it's hard to know what he's really thinking. Marrow is more of a distinct character here. She thinks of Rover as a person, not just a useful tool. That's why she's so adamant about keeping him in working order.
I'd say that the biggest failing of this episode is that the reason for Marrow's attachment to Rover is never given. Charles says that it's because he listens to her, but that doesn't really justify what she's done. It's not particularly obvious how anyone else feels about Marrow. If she's been isolated, if the others barely tolerated her, if she's not really part of the group, then the writers are obligated to show us this. They haven't, and they kinda need to in order to make her betrayal actually make sense.
Imagine if there were scenes before Rover showed up where she was alone. Scenes that showed that others treated her like crap. Maybe Bishop thinks she's a liability because of her fairly weak powers. Maybe she tried to have a relationship with that telekinetic guy, but he was a dick and couldn't get past the bones sticking out of her face. The irony of this would be absolutely delicious; the downfall of the future X-Men would come because of their intolerance of their own kind.
Things like this would have isolated her, so that when Rover comes along, it would seem natural that she'd get attached to him. The one member of the group that didn't ignore her or dump on her. And when he dies to save them, it would really hurt. The idea that her best friend died to save these assholes who treated Rover like a thing and herself like crap; that would be intolerable. It was the future X-Men who took Rover from her, and they deserve to die just like Rover.
Here? It's just weak. An attachment that forms out of nothing and leads to betrayal for no apparent reason. To be fair, Bishop is kinda hard on her, but that's not nearly enough to justify what she does.
This is one of the problems with the future X-Men stuff; we see almost no character from anyone. We get a bit of Bishop, and even some of Logan, who didn't even appear in the episode. Most of these episodes spend time on action, as well as the obligatory present-day Logan shenanigans (because we can't have an episode without him in it, though this one comes as close as any to that). Between those two things, there just isn't much time for actual character.
Overall, I'd say that the episode is decent, but as with so much in this series, it could have been a lot better.
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