Written By: Jim Carlson and Terrence McDonnell
As Beast sits in his prison cell following his arrest in "Night of the Sentinels", he soon finds himself being broken out by the Master of Magnetism himself, Magneto. However, Beast wants to prove to humanity that, despite being a mutant, he would abide by their laws and have his day in court to testify to his actions and prove his innocence. Magneto relents and leaves after using his powers against the prison guards and their armored vehicles.
At the X-Mansion, reviewing the footage, Professor X explains his backstory with Magneto to Jubilee: they used to be friends, but when they had conflicting views regarding mutants and humanity being able to co-exist peacefully, Professor X was forced to turn against Magneto and stop him.
At Beast's trial, despite his testimony regarding the disappearance of mutants registered by the Mutant Control Agency, many of the people in the crowd are strongly anti-mutant, and Beast is denied bail. Sabretooth, also there to watch, attacks the guards in retaliation, causing them to injure him. Wolverine does nothing to help his rival, so Cyclops brings Sabretooth back to the X-Mansion to recover.
Soon after, Cyclops, Wolverine, and Storm are sent to a nuclear missile facility as Magneto is attacking it, intending to use the nukes to instigate a human-mutant war. Though he escapes after launching the warheads, Storm is able to short-out and disarm the nukes, leaving them to fall harmlessly into the sea, but exhausting herself in the process.
While they return home so Storm can recover, Magneto questions why Xavier would turn on his own kind.
"Enter Magneto" provides examples of:
- The Cameo: Cameron Hodge appears as Beast's lawyer.
- Instant Expert: Storm learns the weak points of the nuclear missiles through Xavier's telepathy linking her mind to Cerebro's databanks.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Wolverine questions why the X-Men should fight Magneto (Xavier's enemy) but help Sabretooth (Wolverine's enemy).
- Knight Templar: Magneto is willing to hurt humans and even other mutants to ensure mutant supremacy.
- Let Them Die: Logan seeing Sabretooth get viciously wailed on by court guards, is in his mind just desserts:Scott: They're gonna kill him!
Logan: Good.
Scott: What!? - "Not So Different" Remark: When Wolverine argues that Sabretooth is a threat, Storm counters that some of the X-Men also thought the same of Wolverine when he came to the X-Mansion.
- Shout-Out:
- Beast reads Animal Farm in jail and mentions planning to catch up on his Dostoevsky.
- Beast paraphrases Shylock's speech of The Merchant of Venice, switching "Jew" to "Mutant".
- Magneto quotes Miranda's line from The Tempest but misquotes the opening words:Magneto: "Oh what a brave new world that has such people in it!"
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Magneto dismissed Xavier's dream of peaceful mutant-human coexistence as childishly impossible, believing all humans are only capable of doing evil to mutants like him.
