X-Men '97 Just Dealt Every Hero a Dead Man's Hand

Partway through X-Men '97 season 2 episode 8, The Dead Man's Hand, Rogue reaches out and touches Gambit with a bare hand, nothing between them, and nothing happens. Thirty years these two have circled that moment, in the original show and in the comics, and the episode finally hands it to her. To me, that's the most horrifying moment in the episode, because the reason nothing happens is that there is nothing left in there to take. "I wouldn't call it a love scene. It's more like a test result."

Most shows would play that beat as the tragic near miss, the thing these two can never have, and that version works fine. This show instead gives them the thing they can never have and uses it to confirm he is gone. Rogue's power stops being a curse for about four seconds and turns into an instrument, and the reading comes back empty. I think it's the best idea in the episode, the kind of idea that only comes from someone who understands what these two characters have been to each other for thirty years.

Six Scenes, One Idea: Everyone Gets What They Wanted, Too Late to Use It

Watching the episode in real time, I took notes, and reading them back, I realized I had written the same note six times without noticing. Rogue gets to touch Remy, and it means he's gone. Remy gets pulled out, and Apocalypse stays in. Candra's relic can supposedly make someone immortal, and it turns out to be her literal heart. Belladonna and the Thieves' Guild come home to New Orleans because Remy invites them, and he turns them into undead things that walk. The Professor gets a brand new Cerebro, and he still cannot win a fight inside somebody's head. Six different scenes, six different people, all doing the same thing.

The show announces this before the title card even hits. In the opening minute, the X-Men are playing cards and someone lays down the dead man's hand, aces and eights, and then the door opens and X-Force walks in carrying Apocalypse's body. That hand is what Wild Bill Hickok was reportedly holding in a Deadwood saloon in 1876 when he was shot in the back of the head. A lot of the surrounding detail is saloon legend, and I'm not pretending otherwise, but the part nobody disputes is the part that matters: it was a good hand, and he never got to play it because he was already dead while holding it. That is everybody in this episode.

Candra's Heart Is a Gemstone, and Remy Has to Kill Her to Get It

Candra, described as the engine of the entire episode, is genuinely immortal because her heart is not in her chest but inside a gemstone relic. That means the object that could make Rogue live forever is a woman's heart, and Remy has to murder her to hold it, all while wearing a body that isn't his own. Remy is trying to solve the one problem that kept him and Rogue apart using a stolen heart while wearing a man who isn't him. I can't cite an issue number for Candra's history with Remy predating the X-Men, so I'll call that shape rather than citation.

I want to credit a commenter, Karaoke King's Kingdom, who called this before the episode aired. That commenter named Candra directly as the external who ran both the Thieves' Guild and the Assassins' Guild in New Orleans, and worked out what she might want with Remy. Checking back, I confirmed the reference traces to season 2 episode 6 of the original 1993 series, X-Ternally Yours, aired December 4th, 1993, where Candra runs both guilds and Belladonna takes Remy's brother Bobby to force a marriage. The commenter found the exact half hour this episode was built on eleven days before it aired, and I'm naming Karaoke King's Kingdom the king of the know-it-alls for this season.

New Orleans Pulls Three 1993 Characters Back and Makes Them Load-Bearing

Standing in New Orleans this week are Belladonna, Robert LeBeau (Bobby, Remy's brother), and Candra, all pulled from that same 1993 episode rather than the comics version of Gambit's family. The show did not just callback to them, it made all three load-bearing to the plot, which I consider a different thing entirely from a nostalgic nod.

I want to be candid about reversing an earlier complaint here. The week before, I had criticized the show for reusing a title as "signage," a word flip on a 1994 two-parter that shared only a setting. This week, the show reached into the same era and came back with a working structure, three characters, and a relationship map, built on top of rather than just borrowed from. Same instinct, but this time I have no complaint.

Remy Turns His Own Family Into Puppets After Inviting Them Home

Belladonna and the Guild, including Remy's own brother Bobby, are in New Orleans because Remy invited them. He then turns them into undead things that move when he wants them to move. I call this the beat I cannot stop turning over, and I'll flag it explicitly as my own reading rather than something the episode spells out, since the episode never directly connects these two facts.

I'll offer two readings without picking one: either Apocalypse is fully driving, which I'd call horrible in a fairly clean way, or Remy the thief and gambler is working an angle, telling himself he is still holding the reins. I genuinely do not know which is true, and I don't think the episode wants me to know yet, two episodes before the finale.

Apocalypse Was Driving All Along, and Several Commenters Called It Early

The episode answers the question everyone has been arguing since Gambit returned on July 22nd: who was actually driving. Apocalypse was inside him the whole time. Several commenters got there before I did. One commenter read the episode title six days earlier as a dead man getting a new hand on life and said he wouldn't be surprised if Gambit turned out to be a vessel for Apocalypse. The White Phoenix 1 landed on the same word, and another commenter pointed out that the original 1990s series had already done this exact thing when Apocalypse took Fabian Cortez as a vessel after failing to get Jubilee.

I made the vessel call myself the previous Wednesday but admitted the same day that I didn't have it fully worked out. Some commenters were ahead of me, some arrived independently, and that's how it's supposed to work.

A Producer's Comment About Magneto's Death Explains Why This Climax Belongs to Rogue

Rogue knows Apocalypse is inside Gambit and goes in after him anyway. Looking at the craft side, I want to point to a supervising producer on the show, who told Nerdist about how the show staged Magneto's death, saying it is as much about the main character's death as it is about Xavier watching Magneto die. Applying that to this episode, I'd argue the climax isn't really about Gambit, who is unconscious cargo for the back half of it. It's about Rogue watching and then reaching, which is why the touch and the pull both land, because the story stays parked on the person it's happening to rather than the person it's happening inside.

Remy Is the First of Four Men to Cheat Death Who Never Got a Choice

I had previously laid out four men in the comics who have come back from death: Archangel buys his wings back in X-Factor issue 24 (1987), Caliban in Uncanny X-Men issue 294 (1992), Logan gets his adamantium back in Wolverine issue 145 (1999) and pays for it with his name, and Remy walks back on his own two feet in Blood of Apocalypse, X-Men volume two issues 182 through 187 (2006), written by Peter Milligan with art by Salvador Larroca. Four men across 19 years, and every one of them had a hand on the wheel making the choice.

I'd argue this show did something none of those comics did: it didn't offer Remy a contract, it dug him up. Remy is the first one who never got the question. I had said earlier that if the show had real interest in the story it was telling, someone would have to give Remy the choice back before the season ended, and this episode does that, in the cruelest way available, since he's awake, himself, and the thing that was taken from him is still sitting inside his chest.

Nightcrawler's Two-Episode Payoff and the Professor's Repeated Failure in the Mindscape

The same producer conversation included another point I keep returning to: the show isn't afraid to let things breathe, isn't afraid of silence, because slowing down is what buys the fast stuff later. I'd apply that directly to how a penultimate episode should function, arguing its job is to turn setup into dread rather than simply run plot to reach the finale. This episode converts the whole way through, which is rarer than it sounds. The episode is directed by Chase Conley and Emi Yonemura, and written by Brian Ford Sullivan, JB Ballard, Beau DeMayo, and Anthony Sellitti.

Nightcrawler creates what I'd call a genuinely terrifying problem this episode while fighting on the X-Men's side, going through the Assassins' Guild like weather. I connect it to the previous episode, where Nightcrawler spent twelve minutes arguing over a man's soul in a courtroom, arguing the two episodes read as one idea, that Kurt is a scary man when he isn't being merciful, and the show earned that by showing the mercy first.

The Professor gets a brand new Cerebro this episode, with a helmet design that echoes more recent comics, though I haven't checked a specific date for it. Despite the bigger rig, Charles goes into Gambit's head and gets shoved straight back out, with purple smoke rolling out of the machine. I expected that to be the moment something got into Xavier, and it wasn't, not this week. But I'll point out this is the second time in three episodes the show has put Charles inside someone's head and had him come out worse, following last week's scene where Charles concedes the machine in his basement was right about the world with Apocalypse's face floating over his shoulder. I believe something is happening to the Professor across the season, and the show keeps revealing it in the middle of scenes about other people.

Small Notes: Flying Motorcycles, a Cut-Short Family Scene, and No Post-Credit Stinger

A few smaller details are worth noting. The X-Men get jumped in the air on the way to New Orleans by Guild members on flying motorcycles. I looked for a comics reference and couldn't find one in X-Force or the Guild material, so it looks original to the show and like something out of a different comic entirely. I laughed, but I want to know who pitched it.

Scott and Jean finally sit down with their son Nathan now that they know the truth, and it plays as a kind of betrayal in a good scene stuck in an already full episode; my only complaint is wanting another ninety seconds of it. There is also no post-credit scene this week, after I expected one.

A 9.5 Out of 10, and an Open Question About Rogue's Rescue

I land on this as the first episode this season where what the show is about and what it is doing are the same thing throughout, contrasting it with the previous episode, which I'd say was exceptional for twelve minutes but paid "franchise tax" on both ends. I score The Dead Man's Hand a 9 1/2 out of 10, citing the touch as the best single idea the show has had, Nightcrawler's two-episode setup landing on schedule, and Candra used as an engine rather than an Easter egg, with my only real complaint being wanting more time with Scott, Jean, and Nathan.

One question I'll leave open: when Rogue pulls Remy out and leaves Apocalypse inside him, is that a rescue, or is it a hostage situation with better lighting?