X-Men '97 Season 2 Episode 4: Magneto's Death, Rama-Tut and the Details You Missed

Mutants are dropping like flies and Apocalypse is loose in history. Episode 4 of season 2 of X-Men '97, Rise of Apocalypse Part 2, pulled off another major character death, with Apocalypse killing Magneto in the most brutal way possible.

As usual, it was packed with Easter eggs, details and references to the original animated series. I'm going through it scene by scene and looking at which horsemen might be on their way. The episode was written by Beau DeMayo, who also co-wrote part 1, along with a co-writer. Like part 1, it was directed by Chase Conley.

The Recap Reminds Us How Long Charles and Magneto Have Been Friends

Charles speaks the previously on, which is appropriate since he's the most emotionally devastated by this episode. Because this is the second half of a two part story, the recap covers part 1. I didn't point this out in my part 1 breakdown, but Gambit is in the Blackbird along with Wolverine, Jubilee, Morph, Beast, Bishop, Jean and Scott. Bishop gets his own intro right after Nightcrawler. He charges up and releases a blast, since he can absorb and store energy and then release it.

There's a new scene after Apocalypse marches through with his cyber hounds. In my part 1 breakdown I accidentally said those were designed after T-1000s when I meant T-800s. It cuts to En Sabah Nur when the X-Men first encounter him, and then Charles enters Magneto's mind. That moment from last season is why so many people online think the show will introduce Onslaught this season. He's an insanely powerful villain created when Charles and Magneto's subconscious minds combined.

Another new clip shows Gambit and Rogue heading to fight the giant bug sentinel from Remember It. The embers from the burning wreckage float around them like the campfire embers will later, when Rogue talks to En Sabah Nur after everyone else is asleep. Then Charles and Magneto take out an army together. That clip is from the original series season 1 episode Enter Magneto, when Charles and Erik revealed their powers to one another for the first time. It reminds the audience how much these two have been through, so the death at the end hits even harder. It's also notable that it's a memory of them working together, when fighting each other was far more common in the original series.

Finally, Ship crashes into the water after expelling Apocalypse, from the original season 3 episode 9, Obsession. Beast crying comes moments later in that same episode, because he had befriended Ship.

The Episode Opens With Baal's Death and Closes With Magneto's

The episode picks up right after the last one, with En Sabah Nur's yell heard as the dust settles after Rama-Tut's energy beam hits its mark. He's cradling a dead Baal, the man who rescued him from slavery and took him in, so this death hits him hard.

The episode starts with the death of En Sabah Nur's closest friend and ends with the death of Charles's, and both men are full of rage at what happened. Here, En Sabah Nur snarls while the camera focuses on his clenched teeth and heavy breathing.

Magneto's Regret Drives Every Choice He Makes

Magneto saves the team with his magnetic field bubble. A running thing for Magneto lately has been his depression at not being able to save more people, and how that regret fuels his decisions. Given Erik's Jewish heritage, there's a parallel with Oskar Schindler and the scene in Schindler's List where he wonders if he could have saved more.

Losing so many mutants on Genosha, including the Morlocks he resettled there with the promise that they'd be safe, made Magneto fool himself into believing he could help En Sabah Nur avoid becoming Apocalypse. It's also what motivates Erik to finally shove the X-Men into the timestream so no more of them die because of his mistakes. Magneto has always lived with regret: over not saving his family and loved ones from the camps, and over not saving his wife. It's what motivates him to save the city later in this episode, even though the energy it takes could kill him. And just when he finally starts using his regrets to make the right choices, he's snuffed out.

Bishop Never Lowers His Gun on En Sabah Nur

Bishop wants to get out of there, but Magneto tells him to wait. Charles probes En Sabah Nur's mind but finds too much rage, similar to the times he tried probing Apocalypse's mind in the original series, which usually caused him telepathic pain. So instead Charles tries talking, another skill he's known for.

I love how Bishop keeps his gun trained on En Sabah Nur throughout this conversation. Bishop hasn't spent the past several months with him like the others, so he only has memories of the awful things Apocalypse has done, and to him it's obvious they shouldn't trust this guy. En Sabah Nur agrees to hear Charles out only because surviving the attack proved their strength. Survival of the fittest is his whole deal in any time period. He also warns Charles that if he lies again, he won't hesitate to kill him, foreshadowing the end of the episode.

The Ethics Debate Shows Each X-Man's Belief System

Rogue, Magneto, Nightcrawler, Beast and Bishop debate Magneto's plan to rewrite history in mutants' favor, with a non-Apocalypse En Sabah Nur as an ambassador between mutants and humans. This is great writing, because each of them reaches a different conclusion for their own reasons. Magneto is driven by guilt over Genosha and mourning what he thought was a safe space for mutantkind. Rogue is deep in grief over Gambit, thinking with her heart about undoing Genosha. They were arguably the most personally affected, so it makes sense they want to stay and alter things.

Nightcrawler is guided by his religion: messing with time on this scale is playing God, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Bishop is a realist shaped by countless dystopian futures, so he believes they need to go home before they make things worse. Beast is logical and democratic, so he proposes a vote. Put simply, Rogue thinks this might save the man she loves, Magneto thinks it might save mutants, Nightcrawler thinks they're messing with fate, Bishop thinks time travel always has consequences, and Beast thinks everyone should be heard. Even when Rogue is the only one to agree with Magneto, he knows she's doing it out of love for another man.

Magneto points out Bishop's hypocrisy, since Bishop has time traveled many times to avoid specific futures, and he's not wrong. I think, though, the difference will end up being that En Sabah Nur becoming Apocalypse is a fixed point in time, much like Beast suggested Genosha was last season. The X-Men being here is what causes that future, so they're in a causality loop. Magneto empowered En Sabah Nur to become Apocalypse, which in turn led to Magneto's death. Magneto then gambles by breaking Bishop's time band, saying the tech in the lost temple can probably repair it.

Charles's Half Truth Seals Their Fate

Charles tells En Sabah Nur that they're from the future, but not that in the future they frequently fight the all powerful mutant he'll become. That exclusion of the truth seals their fate. Last episode, Magneto told Charles that Genosha was both their faults, and here it's clear they'll share the blame for the rise of Apocalypse too. En Sabah Nur is depressed over the death of his people and believes there's no better world to look forward to. In the original series, one of Apocalypse's goals had always been to forge a new world.

En Sabah Nur's Memories Explain His Survival of the Fittest Beliefs

Charles probes his mind about the temple and sees him as a baby abandoned in the desert, reaching for his mother as he cries. She wears a golden scarab cloak pin, and Scarab was the name of Apocalypse's sword in the comics. Then an adolescent En Sabah Nur stands on a slave block as the auctioneer tells horrified onlookers not to mind what color he is. He breaks bricks as a slave, the crack of his hammer cutting to a crack of lightning, and while the other slaves sleep together in the rain for warmth, he huddles alone, unable to sleep. He'll later tell Rogue he can never sleep.

Then he single handedly raises a statue, and the crowd cheers his strength. He goes from horrified onlookers to cheering ones, realizing his strength can be his salvation, so it makes sense he'd adopt the survival of the fittest belief system. The statue is of Khonshu, the moon god, marked by a half moon symbol on its headpiece, whom we saw in Moon Knight. Afterward he still lies awake, cold, alone and angry, and that's when the Celestial Eson calls to him. We saw Eson in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie wielding the Power Stone to destroy an entire planet, and we saw Celestials in Eternals.

The stars form the six eyes of the Celestial, reflected in his eyes. The artists this season focus on eyes to link people to their destiny. We saw the Phoenix Force in Mother Askani's eye, the man on the slave block told the crowd to look at his eyes, the temple is later reflected in his eyes, and Magneto's death is shown in Charles's eyes. One's true identity and fate is shown in the eyes.

The Gardener's Gaze Leads the Group to the Temple

Charles says he saw the same constellation in a general's mind, and En Sabah Nur identifies it as the Gardener's Gaze. Celestials were known as gardeners since they seeded life across planets. They were mentioned only once in the original series, when Beast saw on Ship's info pad that she was of Celestial origin.

Everyone rides horses except En Sabah Nur and Beast, who ride camels. Camels can carry about double what a horse can, and Beast supposedly weighs between 400 and 500 pounds. I assume En Sabah Nur, in all his muscly glory, weighs a lot as well.

Rogue's Talk About Love With En Sabah Nur Echoes The Cure

At camp, Rogue and En Sabah Nur talk about love, which he believes is a weakness and she believes is the only thing that makes life worth living. She says she hopes he gets to experience it for all their sakes. In the Age of Apocalypse comic storyline, he did fall in love, but was ultimately rejected.

I'm so glad the writers included this duo. In the original series episode The Cure, Rogue was supposed to be the first horseman. She sought a cure for being a mutant, and Apocalypse called her a fool and ordered Mystique to turn her into one of his slaves. Rogue changed her mind, and Warren Worthington was transformed instead. Because Rogue drained Worthington and snapped him out of Apocalypse's control, she has memories of the hate and anger that come with it, and no doubt she's thinking of that now. That episode is also where Apocalypse said, "I know more of this world than you have even dreamed. That is why I must destroy you." It's awesome that we're finally getting the backstory on why he is the way he is.

Rama-Tut Reveals He Is One of Many Kang Variants

Candra puts a headpiece similar to Cerebro on Rama-Tut's head, in green and gold, Loki colors. He uses it to contact Charles and offers him the temple's secrets. Over hourglass and water imagery we hear three versions of one voice: Rama-Tut, one the subtitles call mischievous voice, and one called assertive voice. I'd thought the assertive one was Kang the Conqueror, but imagery later makes me think it's Immortus. Charles falls through a setting like an M.C. Escher drawing to a giant Rama-Tut, who says, "I have so many names, Nathaniel, Victor, Kang. Finding oneself can get addicting. Where do I end and me begin?" On the last part he breaks the fourth wall and looks at the audience, which He Who Remains also did in Loki.

Rama-Tut debuted in Fantastic Four number 19 in 1963 and was later retconned to be Kang, who time traveled to ancient Egypt. Later it was retconned again into Kang variants, which is what we saw in Loki. I think the show is going with him being both a Kang variant and a time traveler, but it's complicated and I don't want to get bogged down before it's clear what the show is doing.

A golden web appears behind him as he describes an axis around which past, present and future dance, so I assume it represents the axis of time. Rama-Tut enslaved En Sabah Nur's people both to stop him becoming Apocalypse and to seize the temple's power himself. Charles is stuck, because neither of these men should have that power. Many of Rama-Tut's throne poses come straight from the comics. When Charles refuses, Tut says, "You cannot stop him. You never stop him."

The Temple Is a Ship, and Its Walls Show Apocalypse's Destiny

Like Jean's vision last season, Charles's vision from last episode comes true: water crashing against the temple and, later, Magneto's cracked helmet in the sand. Inside, Beast detects trace gamma particles, because Celestials bleed cosmic energy, and they pass a window that looks exactly like the one in Loki. At the head of Eson they split up, and seen from above their paths form an X. Beast realizes the temple is a ship that will become Apocalypse's sentient weapon, with the same layout and controls as in Obsession.

The other group finds walls spelling out what has happened and will happen. They show Apocalypse's horseman machine from The Cure and Come the Apocalypse, with Archangel, Abraham Kieros as War, Plague as Pestilence and Autumn Rolfson as Famine. En Sabah Nur rises as Apocalypse flanked by Bishop, Beast, Charles, Magneto, Rogue and Nightcrawler. He fights beside Baal and sits on a throne flanked by skulls, with what appears to be a baby beneath the throne. A figure stands before Eson, which I assume is En Sabah Nur or maybe an Eternal, and Rama-Tut appears with Immortus and another figure over a shackled slave.

En Sabah Nur Becomes Apocalypse Despite the X-Men's Fight

Realizing they tried to keep him from his destiny, he throws Bishop over the edge, chokes Charles and enters a chamber shaped like Apocalypse's head. Even before he's Apocalypse, the others stand no chance; at one point it looks like he breaks Nightcrawler's arm. He transforms, becoming the rocks of the eternal shore that all things must crash against, words from the original series in season 3.

As the group debates staying or fleeing, Bishop is me, because I'd be just as baffled. Magneto chooses for them again, deciding it's his mess to clean up alone, but Apocalypse blasts him and Charles away. In the flash there's an image of someone with a skull head, and I'd wager it's Gambit as Death, given the face coverings on the skull's cheeks. A full view of this room might show all of Apocalypse's horsemen through history. Apocalypse sizes himself up, as he often did originally, and turns Magneto's words on him: "Now, who is the god and who is the insect?"

Candra's Destiny as an External Begins

Apocalypse orders Ship to attack Rama-Tut's kingdom, and Tut flees to another time in his Kang the Conqueror garb, telling Candra her destiny begins in that moment because Apocalypse's power can only be challenged by an External. At some point before the X-Men's time, Candra will become the External known to the Guilds of Thieves and Assassins. Externals are immortal mutants who can only be killed by another External, and in Earth-295 Candra served as one of Apocalypse's horsemen.

Apocalypse tells Charles he won't make him a horseman because he lacks a spine. In X-Men: Evolution, both Charles and Magneto became horsemen, and Magneto was one in the live action movie.

Apocalypse Obliterates Magneto in Front of Charles

Magneto encases Apocalypse in metal, shoots him into the desert and binds the debris around the black hole to save the city. He survives, crashing near Charles, and for a minute we think it might be okay. Then Apocalypse appears, a shadow against the sun. Each man apologizes, and Apocalypse puts his gun to Magneto's back and obliterates him, the death reflected in Charles's eyes. Only the helmet remains, and it's heartbreaking. Ross Marquand voices both Apocalypse and Charles and is killing it on both fronts.

Charles no longer cares if he lives or dies: "If only Baal had left you to bake." Apocalypse denies him death, repeating Magneto's lesson: "Alas, only a coward feels mighty when stepping on ants." Charles cries into the sand until Bishop returns, and he admits, "We'll never stop him."

The Scene After the Credits Reunites Wolverine and Captain America

On a Paris roof, Wolverine wears his outfit from the original episode Old Soldiers, where he fought Nazis alongside Captain America. Cap says it's been a long time, and Wolverine says about 50 years. Josh Keaton voices Cap, as in Bright Eyes, Tolerance Is Extinction Part 3 and What If, and Lake Bell voices Black Widow, as in What If. Wolverine teases Cap about staying inconspicuous, echoing his Old Soldiers jab about the star spangled suit.

Cap hands him a Weapon X folder and warns him not to go alone, and Wolverine says he's getting the old band back together. The next episode was titled Weapon X, Lies and DVDs, and I said at the time it would most definitely follow up the original season 4 episode 16, whose title ends in Videotape rather than DVDs, where Wolverine meets Sabretooth, Silver Fox and Maverick. I assumed that was the band.

How crushed do you think Rogue is going to be when she finds out about Magneto's death?