X-Men '97 Episode 6 Breakdown: Storm Reclaims Her Power, Charles Xavier Schools the Shi'ar, and Mister Sinister Steps Out

X-Men '97 episode 6, Lifedeath Part 2, puts class in session with Charles Xavier, someone I never thought I would hear described as being from the ghetto. It also ends with the reveal of Mister Sinister behind Bolivar Trask and the Master Mold plan, and I think the opening credits hint that Sinister is not acting alone.

When the episode aired in April 2024, these were the references and details that stood out to me, starting with the title sequence and ending with my theory about who is really behind the Genosha attack.

The New Opening Credits Drop Magneto and Gambit and Hint at a Bastion Plot

The opening title sequence changed again, and what hits hardest is who is missing. After the attack on Genosha, Magneto is gone and so is Gambit. Nightcrawler has been added since his return in episode 5, now carrying twin sabers, with smoke trails lingering every time he teleports in and out of the brimstone dimension. Starting with episode 4, Jean Grey's card also shifted from her hair being down to being up in a ponytail; for the first three episodes, we were actually looking at Madelyne Pryor instead of Jean. Sunspot still appears in the Jubilee shot but still does not get his own title card. Maybe his mean mom is editing the sequence.

We again see the shot of Cable and Apocalypse from season 4 episode 18, Beyond Good and Evil Part 1. Even with Sinister revealed at the end, Apocalypse still might be involved in some kind of time travel plot. Otherwise I do not know why they would keep showing him when there are so many other Cable shots they could use. Why the one of him with Apocalypse, involving the time cube from his arm that Cable showed last episode?

There is also a new shot of Nimrod standing in Master Mold's chest. The two appear together in season 4 episode 9, One Man's Worth Part 2, but not posed like this, so this has got to be a Bastion clue, because Bastion is part Nimrod, the advanced Sentinel from the future, and part Master Mold tech. I believe we did see Bastion walking around the upper level when Magneto spotted him at the Genosha gala. I feel like there is a conspiracy that includes Sinister, Bastion, Bolivar Trask and Apocalypse, maybe with Mystique involved if the thinking is correct that she is disguised as Dr. Cooper this season.

Other shots are pulled from the original series: Nimrod getting his arms shot off from One Man's Worth Part 2, where in an alternate timeline Storm and Wolverine are married and Bishop helps them save a young Charles Xavier from assassination, with Storm's mohawk and Wolverine's dark suit and skull belt buckle. There is Forge with Wolverine and X-Factor from season 3 episode 11, Cold Comfort; the X-Men fighting the Shi'ar Imperial Guard on the blue area of the Moon from The Fate of the Phoenix; and Charles and Lilandra touching hands for the first time from The Phoenix Saga Part 2, before transitioning to a garden from The Fate of the Phoenix.

The Shi'ar and the Kree Go to War, With Deathbird Leading the Charge

The episode opens in space with the Shi'ar empire's green ships attacking the Kree fleet, the blue ships with the chunky extensions. In the MCU we have met the imperialistic Kree Empire, where Carol Danvers spent time, headquartered on Hala, which factored into the plot of The Marvels in 2023. Opposed to the Kree are the shapeshifting Skrulls, and there are also the Xandarians from the Guardians of the Galaxy films with the Nova Corps. The Shi'ar so far have been explored only in the animated series and the comics. Fun fact: Jessica Chastain's character in Dark Phoenix was originally going to be Lilandra, but was changed to the D'Bari named Vuk.

Deathbird dive bombs onto the bridge of a Kree warship. She is Lilandra's sister, and the last time we saw her she made a deal with Apocalypse in Beyond Good and Evil Part 2 to bring him Oracle in exchange for help taking the throne, before Apocalypse abandoned her. That was when Apocalypse was kidnapping the most powerful psychics in the world, and I wonder if he might still be doing that, because all the psychics on this show seem to be linked right now. Deathbird initially seems to be back serving Lilandra, but by the end it is clear she is building herself up as a strong, loyal commander so she can replace her sister and paint her as disloyal for marrying a Terran.

Ronan the Accuser, who also appeared in the MCU, carries his cosmi rod with the same angular five sided shape. He says, "this pigeon shall not thwart the will of the Supreme intelligence," and I love that he insults a bird themed culture with the lowest status bird, other than seagulls. Deathbird wants the location of the Kree Supreme Intelligence, their AI hive mind of great thinkers. In The Marvels, Carol destroyed it, earning the name the Annihilator, and around here we now call her a war criminal. In the 90s series, Lilandra conferred with it and the Skrull empress to approve the Imperial Guard's duel with the X-Men, so their relationship seemed respectful then. Somewhere between then and now, the Supreme Intelligence fled.

Deathbird's Imperial Guard includes Earthquake and Vulcan, the brother of Cyclops and Havok born in the Shi'ar Empire, since their father was Corsair. We also meet Gladiator, Manta, Smasher, Titan, Starbolt and Flashfire. It is a bit silly that Deathbird wears stiletto boots, but the animators own it by having her stomp on Ronan's face, the heel drawing blood from his cheek. As I put it, "this better not awaken anything in me."

Lilandra Unveils Charles Xavier to the Shi'ar Empire

Lilandra appears as a hologram, at first seemingly a personal call to her sister but actually an address to the whole empire, which has got to annoy Deathbird. She says it was one year ago that she took in Charles after he was put in a coma, meaning it has been exactly one year since the series finale, season 5 episode 10, Graduation Day. She recalls how Charles helped save the universe from her brother D'Ken and from the Phoenix. They share a psychic bond and met when she was fleeing D'Ken, who had gone mad seeking the M'Kraan Crystal; she reached out to Charles psychically and nearly broke his brain.

In the audience are miners with pickaxes whose faces resemble horses. I first wondered whether they were one alien race but decided the snouts do not match, and I think they come from the Power Pack comics. We also see a D'Bari, the race from Dark Phoenix, and possibly another alien in the background. When Lilandra declares that Charles "has unlocked the secrets to my heart," I love that Araki, the empire's Chancellor, grunts in disapproval. Charles steps forward in a new bionic suit that helps him walk, and only when he removes his helmet to reveal his bald head, unlike the goofy hair most Shi'ar have, does the crowd lose its mind.

Back on Earth, Charles was reported dead early in the season. It remains a mystery why the X-Men, knowing he left with Lilandra, would let that narrative stand, let his last will take legal effect and hand the team to Magneto. Maybe it was a noble lie to unite humanity against Henry Peter Gyrich's bigotry by making Charles a martyr. But Magneto's self segregation of mutantkind in Genosha, where an anti mutant force could attack thousands in one night, was not great either. I know Charles respects Magnus; I just do not know why he would entrust the team to him, and at the time I assumed the next episode would explain it.

Charles and Lilandra's Garden Walk Reveals How the Shi'ar See Education

Charles and Lilandra stroll through the gardens of the Shi'ar throne world, Chandilar, where the same horselike race is working, which shows that between gardening and mining the Shi'ar have subjugated them for physical labor. They are literal workhorses, and that is not cool. Charles hopes their "act of performative jingoism" erased concerns about his heritage, referring to a joint hand salute like the ones presidential candidates and running mates do, shouting for the Imperium. For whatever reason it reminded me of Patrick Stewart playing Gurney Halleck in David Lynch's Dune.

In the season 3 Fate of the Phoenix storyline, their romance was spoiled when Charles tried to get Lilandra's help containing the Phoenix, which she felt was manipulative, and that exchange gets called back here. When Charles suggests an empress could spend some time ruling from his corner of the galaxy, she says her handsome emperor has much to learn about masking his manipulations. Members of the court eye them and whisper, probably saying something bigoted about Charles. When Lilandra compares families to black holes, I thought someone on the show must really hate visiting their hometown, because it is one of the most tenuous analogies I have ever heard.

Lilandra says that after they crush the Kree, Charles can teach them Shi'ar ways, and already she misunderstands education as indoctrination, enforcing the conqueror's values on the conquered, when true education means critical thinking and challenging yourself with different schools of thought. There is irony in her line about teachers showing students how to walk on their own, since the Shi'ar only gave Charles a mechanical suit. He is kind of like Rhodey in the MCU, and technically the Wakandans have better medical technology. Or maybe, evolved from birds with hollow bones, they just do not know how to cure simian bones.

Storm Faces the Adversary in a Coffin

A firefly-like creature soars past their two moons, and we dissolve to rural Texas, where an owl again flies past the moon. In Lifedeath Part 1 we learned that owl was the Adversary observing Storm and Forge, and Forge is poisoned from its attack on his shoulder. The Adversary is again voiced by Alison Sealy-Smith, who also voices Storm, suggesting it is a demonic force that can occupy any character's mind and speak in their own voice.

It traps Storm in a wooden coffin, particularly triggering for her claustrophobia. She says she does not fear death, but the Adversary drags her into her most feared living scenario and mocks her episode 2 remark to Jean about wondering what it would be like to be human, asking if that is why she sought refuge with this "monotone family." Storm was one of the only people of color on the team, so without her they really are mostly monotone; Jubilee is there, but this episode does not even put Roberto in the credits. The Adversary's face pushes through the lid as Jean or Madelyne, since the hair is down, then Beast, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit and Cyclops, always with red eyes and wrinkled mouths.

Forge comes to the rescue as a wizard. His magic looks like the eldritch magic Doctor Strange and the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj use in the MCU. I am not sure if that is intentional, but I wonder if Forge's mother trained from the same source. The symbols in the golden rings are different, though, so she may have adapted her education to the Cheyenne Nation. I love that each chunk of magic drops like a physical spark, reminding me of how Strange's sparks bounce off surfaces.

Deathbird Tests Charles With a Memory Wiping Loyalty Rite

Forge tells Storm about a healing cactus that grows in caves, and they ride off before we transition to actual lovebirds on Chandilar, where Charles is introduced as the Royal Consort. After the line about Charles being able to bark later, I said: "this show is so kinky." Araki delicately notes the marriage is not popular, but Deathbird bluntly says Charles was born on the wrong side of the stars, obviously playing on the wrong side of the tracks. Charles respects her speaking the quiet part out loud, a meme about public figures openly showing racist agendas, beyond dog whistling. I looked into it, and the term might have originated from The Simpsons.

Deathbird calls Earth a Milky Way ghetto and invokes a rite requiring a test of loyalty to wed a royal. Charles read that volume on his second day there, but Deathbird can choose any test, and she demands Charles erase all his memories of Earth, with Lilandra doing it. That is essentially the memory spell Peter Parker asks Doctor Strange to cast in No Way Home.

Gladiator says the statues of Sharra and K'ythri, their highest gods who married for harmony, are not art but political symbols meant to be read only one way: merging all into one brings peace. That imperialism is really forced assimilation, and he is misinterpreting what the gods were probably doing, not realizing it robs the universe of diversity of thought and culture. Charles quips, "how Rudyard Kipling of you." Kipling lived in British India, wrote The Jungle Book and the poem The White Man's Burden, which I describe as critiquing the arrogance of the British Empire. Gladiator replies that idealism is also insanity. Basically any free thought is insanity to the Shi'ar. Birds of a feather flock together, and that includes racism.

Charles says Magnus would agree with Gladiator, though Magneto would impose mutant values, a mutant dominated society we see in House of M. When Lilandra asks why he would remember a society so cruel to him, I think it parallels the debate over therapy: why retrigger yourself? Charles ultimately decides that pain leaves a mark whether you address it or not, and you will never fully heal by redacting your past.

Forge Explains the White Lie as Storm Enters the Mine

Forge and Storm reach a cave containing ball cartridges from 1863. Forge explains Union forces stored weapons there during the Civil War, but it was built during the Plains War decades earlier by colonists who said they were there to help. The Plains Wars were conflicts between US federal forces and Plains Indians that heated up during the 1850s, so in an episode criticizing imperialism, we get another example of how imperialism and Manifest Destiny shaped the United States.

Storm believes she may be better off without powers, since the more people she saved, the more anti mutant bias she incited. Forge says he always heard that the worst weapon the Europeans used was not bullets or blankets but a white lie they could make his people believe. The term white lie dates back to the 1400s, but in recent cultural criticism it has taken on the added context of lies white settlers told Indigenous tribes to steal their land. Storm faces a cramped mine shaft, and a dolly zoom sells her claustrophobia.

Deathbird's Bigotry Erupts and Charles Takes the Shi'ar to Class

During the rite, Charles is prepared to renounce Earth but hesitates at the X-Men, and Deathbird probably considers hesitation a form of insanity. She pushes past the guards and lets the quiet part be very loud, calling Charles a descendant of simians whose blood should not mix with theirs. How is evolving from apes any worse than evolving from birds if you still become sentient humanoids? Notice her eyes widen on the word mix. A council member says mutants are a lower caste, which is wild: genetically mutants are still human, and an evolutionary scientist would see them as more evolved.

A fight breaks out, and Gladiator, to his credit, serves Lilandra over Deathbird. Charles remembers his greatest gift, declares class in session, and takes them into the astral plane. I love that he commits so hard to the classroom that there are more desks than attendees, as if leaving spots open for anyone else.

Storm Returns as the Lightning in Her Classic Look

Storm climbs toward the cactus in a narrowing shaft until she drops her flashlight and the only light is the Adversary's eyes, spiraling closer as the walls close in, probably an illusion. The screen goes black and Storm realizes it was not just the gun that depowered her; it was her belief in the white lie, which this Omega level mutant allowed to define her reality. The Newton Brothers music from episode 1 kicks in with "let them thunder for I am lightning," and her bolts explode the Adversary into feathers.

She clears the clouds, which form an upward spiral into the stratosphere, inverting her downward spiral into the earth. The black feathers become a new black suit, her Pride of the X-Men look from her 1975 debut in Giant-Size X-Men #1. I wonder if the Adversary helped her clear her mental blocks. Do our demons make us stronger? Is this inner bird connected to the Phoenix, which I believe is helping Jean and Madelyne? The satellite view of Earth and the globe on Charles's astral desk made me feel a path formed for two cosmic birds to help the X-Men reunite, though as I said, "maybe I'm just reading into it maybe that's just me."

Her victory flight feels great; she startles some horses and checks her reflection in a canyon, which feels like Spielberg's victory flight in Hook, when Peter clears his mental block. She even turns river water into three cyclones to see herself in a vertical wall of water. Healing Forge, she says demons are reflections of our fears and shame, the same structure as what is grief if not love persevering, or, as I put it, what is hunger but an absence of Chipotle. Forge invites her to a tropical island, but they see Trish's broadcast on the Genosha massacre, which she calls possibly the first salvo in the evolutionary war.

Charles's Lecture and His Vision of Skeletal Gambit

Charles lectures that Shi'ar power comes from a harvest of skulls, cutting down societies that could match them, but assuming a zero sum game deprives them of friends who could help solve their problems. His chalkboard animation reminds me of a similar sequence in FX's Legion, whose title character was Charles's son. Competition and possession are artificial inventions, he argues, and while coexistence is messy, the solution is education and critical thinking, not conflict.

He calls them all children of the atom, interesting since everything descends from the Big Bang. The phrase comes from Wilmar H. Shiras's 1953 novel about gifted children whose parents were exposed to radiation, and one idea when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby conceived the X-Men might have been powers from radiation. Sebastian Shaw uses the phrase in X-Men: First Class.

Then the desks fill with skeletons, far more than there were Shi'ar students, and Charles is in a nightmare Xavier's Institute with Gambit towering over it and turning skeletal. Why Gambit and not Magnus, someone Charles was closer to? Does that mean Magneto survived? Could Leech have negated the blast from the Wild Sentinel? Who knows. Charles cries out about his children dancing, drinking wine and making love, and I joked that he seems to have been spying on Rogue and Magneto. Gambit's skeleton releases a green blast like the Wild Sentinel, Charles's flesh melts like Sarah Connor's in Terminator 2, and he tells Lilandra, in stronger terms, that the marriage is off because he has to go back to Earth. I think the same psychic force that gave Jean and Madelyne visions in episode 5 is behind this, and I think it is the Phoenix Force helping preserve them and mutantkind.

Mister Sinister Is Revealed, but I Do Not Think He Acted Alone

The episode ends with Bolivar Trask fleeing Mister Sinister, saying he did what was asked and gave his DNA to activate Master Mold. War of the Worlds is on the cinema marquee, Sinister calls this the beginning of a prologue, and he ends the episode laughing, so it seems they are saying he was behind the Wild Sentinel attack on Genosha.

I think he is clearly part of it, but I do not think he is operating alone, because massacring a million mutants would not serve his agenda of mutant experimentation and advancement. Based on the Apocalypse and Bastion clues in the opening, I think Sinister is in league with Apocalypse to bring about a future mutant utopia by first wiping out the present day mutant masses, and then maybe, through Cable, breeding a new pure strain of mutantkind.

Do you think Sinister was working with Apocalypse and Bastion, or was he the lone mastermind behind Genosha?