Looking back at X-Men '97 season 2 episode 5's horror homages and Easter eggs

Wolverine got his adamantium back in episode 5 of season 2 of X-Men '97, but he lost a few old friends to some alien parasites along the way, so it feels like a wash. The episode paid homage to two classic horror movies and had callbacks to no fewer than five episodes from the original series, which makes it dense with Easter eggs, details and references. I'm going through it scene by scene.

Morph is the outsider who sees Wolverine's hidden side

The episode was directed by Chase Conley, and Morph speaks the previously on. Morph is the outsider here, peering in at parts of Wolverine's personality that a lot of the X-Men hadn't seen. Morph starts this episode considering Wolverine a best friend and ends it very upset with what comes out about his motivations. The recap shows Wolverine stabbing Magneto, Magneto ripping the adamantium from his skeleton, and Morph sitting by Wolverine's bedside as he calls out for Jean. That was right before Morph changed into Jean and said "I love you" to him. It was very heavily implied last season that Morph is in love with Wolverine.

We also see Wolverine fighting the cyber hounds in the future with his very breakable bone claws, the future group waiting in the present for the past group, and the post credit scene from last episode where Captain America gives Wolverine a Weapon X file.

The opening has most of the team back together, minus Magneto and Gambit, who are presumably dead. Jubilee and Sunspot are still off with Cable's group. Forge gets his own intro for the first time, standing on the Blackbird and unleashing very futuristic looking guns and missiles, which are probably his own inventions. In Wolverine's intro he still has his bone claws, with that ripping sound when they extend. I assumed this would be the last time the intro showed them, and I expected the next episode to bring back the adamantium snikt.

New intro scenes mash up Wolverine's original series history

There's new material in the intro too. The first scene never happened exactly like this in the original series, but it's a mashup of things we did see. It shows Team X, who in the original series were Wolverine, Silver Fox, Maverick and Sabretooth, seen in season 4 episode 16, on a rescue mission to save Janice Hollenbeck, the blonde doctor. We saw her in Sabretooth's tortured memories in season 1 episode 4, Deadly Reunions. That mission went wrong and Hollenbeck died.

Wolverine and Sabretooth fighting in the snow is from season 1 episode 6, Cold Vengeance, where Wolverine left the X-Men for the Canadian Arctic and Sabretooth tracked him there to kill him. That episode is praised for portraying Wolverine as a lost and wandering soul and a kind of samurai, which the live action movies featured a ton. Then Wolverine kisses Yuriko Oyama and she transforms into Lady Deathstrike, from season 3 episode 1, Out of the Past Part 1.

The helicopter opening plays like an '80s action movie

The episode proper opens like a certain breed of '80s action movie, with mostly military style guys trading blustering bravado on a helicopter right before everything goes wrong. I'm thinking of movies like Predator or movies about the Vietnam War. I wonder if the team even tried to get permission to use Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son over the scene.

It also brings to mind X-Men Origins: Wolverine, when the whole squad is on the jet before their first mission. Lady Deathstrike even sharpens her claws the way Wade Wilson sharpened his sword in that one. The song here is actually an original, Baby Come Home, written and performed by the Newton Brothers, and they do a great job of sort of parodying those '70s anti war songs used in those kinds of movies.

Garrison Kane laughs and shares battle stories. Originally he was just a highly trained man, but when his limbs got blown off, the Weapon X program turned him into a cyborg. We saw him briefly in the original series as a member of Cable's resistance group Clan Chosen in season 2 episode 7, Time Fugitives. Here he's essentially a redshirt designed to be killed off in the first five minutes.

Wolverine's tangled original series timeline feeds this episode

A lot of past events come back here, and the original series never showed them in chronological order. They were purposely muddled because Wolverine's memory had been messed with. In 1944 he worked with Captain America during the war, shown in season 5 episode 7, Old Soldiers, before he had his adamantium. Years later he dated Yuriko Oyama, left to take care of some business, and promised he'd be back. On that trip he was ambushed and experimented on, as shown in Out of the Past parts 1 and 2. He was brainwashed and given psychoactive drugs along with other members of Team X, shown in season 4 episode 16, the precursor to this one.

Then came the Weapon X procedure that fused adamantium to his skeleton, invented and performed by Professor Kenji Oyama, Yuriko's father, and Dr. Cornelius. Trauma and confusion made Wolverine break out and wreck the lab, causing an explosion that presumably killed Professor Oyama. An almost feral Wolverine ran through the Canadian wilderness until he met Heather Hudson and her husband James, the Canadian superhero Vindicator. Heather nursed him back to health, and the two convinced him to join Alpha Flight, which Vindicator led. That team is basically the Canadian version of X-Factor, working for the Canadian government. He eventually left, angering them and the government that had invested in him, all shown in season 2 episode 5, Repo Man.

He went back for Yuriko, but she was gone. She blamed him for her father's death and was furious he hadn't returned, so she became a cyborg and joined the Reavers. Animated series Yuriko isn't a mutant like the live action version played by Kelly Hu; her abilities come from cybernetics, like Garrison Kane. Alpha Flight later lured Wolverine back, and when he refused to rejoin, the government, which was unsuccessfully trying to replicate Weapon X, threatened to basically dissect him for the adamantium. Heather and most of Alpha Flight helped him escape. Lady Deathstrike then lured him to the sewers to open an alien ship, unleashing a soul drinking alien monster.

Wolverine and Sabretooth have a rivalry spanning years. At one point Team X was lured back to their old lab and discovered many memories were falsely implanted, including Wolverine's memory of Sabretooth leaving Silver Fox, his love interest, to die. Their rivalry was kind of based on events that never happened, and afterward they had a very tenuous ceasefire. To sum up, Wolverine is always being lured places by scientists, rivals and old lovers, always leaving and coming back, and tortured for one reason or another.

Wolverine lied to Team X to get his adamantium back

Sabretooth tells Lady Deathstrike he's got the real guns right here, lady, and I love that lady has a dual meaning: he's trying to be derogatory, but it's also her villain name. Lady Deathstrike is voiced by my friend Erika Ishii. Sabretooth's original voice was Don Francks, who passed away in 2016.

Wolverine has duped the others into coming to a different Weapon X facility, telling them they can find Dr. Cornelius and the scientists who experimented on them. That's true, but he leaves out his main reason: he wants his adamantium back. He's willing to put all of them in danger for his own selfish reasons. Maverick says the old band is back together, using the same language Wolverine did last episode. Maverick is the mutant Christoph Nord, who can absorb kinetic energy and has a high tech armor suit that can do infrared scans. Morph is asked for the first time why they came on this mission, a question Morph will be asked several times and never answer.

The crash turns things into an homage to The Thing

When the helicopter goes down, this becomes a full blown horror movie. Garrison Kane is dead, although since he's a cyborg, I guess that could theoretically leave the door open for a return in a later season. He looks pretty dead to me, though. Everyone is separated briefly, which leads to the paranoia later about who might be infected. When the polar bear jumps out, Morph changes into Sasquatch, the Alpha Flight member who was a scientist transformed by his gamma radiation experiments.

The team notices Wolverine's bone claws, and Lady Deathstrike is shocked, since it was always assumed her father's process couldn't be reversed. This dysfunctional team grows more suspicious of Wolverine for leaving that out, and Sabretooth was always jealous that he wasn't the one who got the adamantium. Morph calls the two of them alphas, which, like lady, has several meanings: stereotypical alpha males, the alphas of a pack, and a nod to Wolverine's Canadian team.

The setting and a lot of events are an homage to John Carpenter's The Thing, and this snowy lab recalls that film's Antarctic research station. Wreckage, debris and blood make it clear something terrible happened, there are dead bodies with claw marks everywhere, and the same green blood the birds and polar bear were bleeding. Sabretooth stabs a scientist to check his blood color and smell it, prompting Morph to say, "When Logan told me Graydon Creed was your kid, I couldn't see it. But now Ugh, can't unsee it." In the original series, Graydon Creed Jr. headed the Friends of Humanity hate group and helped engineer a plague he blamed on mutants. Wolverine infiltrated the group and outed him as Sabretooth's son, and season 4 episode 14, Bloodlines, revealed his mother is Mystique, making him Nightcrawler's half brother. His followers delivered him to Sabretooth as punishment.

Dr. Cornelius bursts open and Aliens takes over

In the original series, Dr. Cornelius was often a shadowy figure behind reflective glass, and here his eyes are obscured by his glasses before we fully see him. He's voiced by Todd Haberkorn, who also voiced Henry Gyrich last season. An alien bursts out of him, kicking off another alien movie parody, Aliens. Morph changes into Puck, another Alpha Flight member. In the comics, Puck originally had no powers and was just a small guy good at acrobatics and fighting, but he was later retconned to have been cursed into this form after trapping an ancient sorcerer. Then, to hammer home The Thing homage, Morph smashes down as The Thing.

Wolverine again reveals he wasn't entirely honest when he says reports had said something fishy was going on, and Lady Deathstrike, Sabretooth and even Morph clock these moments. He says he caught a whiff of something similar once, meaning the Colony, the hive mind parasitic aliens from season 3 episode 19, Love in Vain, where his healing factor helped him fight off becoming one of them. Reportedly, the Brood were supposed to be featured in that episode instead but were deemed a little too horrific for children. I'm guessing he could fight off the change then but not now because he still had his adamantium then. He also tells Lady Deathstrike this is their second alien invasion, referring to Out of the Past.

Everyone accuses one another of being infected, another plot point from The Thing, and like in any good horror movie or D&D campaign, they split the party. Lady Deathstrike becomes the second person to ask why Morph came, and Morph deflects by asking why she keeps saying Tomo. She explains Tomo was a magical shapeshifting fox who was companion to a heroic samurai, and the story didn't end well. In Japanese mythology, kitsune are shapeshifting fox spirits, and Tamamo-no-Mae was one of the most famous; after destabilizing whole governments, she was hunted down and killed. Wolverine is often compared to a wandering samurai, so Lady Deathstrike is calling Morph the Tomo in this relationship. Then Sabretooth gets the lights back up, and I love that he's a tech bro. Very on brand.

The Weapon Plus discs are a who's who of experiments

Weapon Plus is the huge program running since the 1940s that's responsible for pretty much every hero who got the super soldier serum, like Steve Rogers, using mutants and regular humans to create living weapons. Weapon X, or Weapon 10 as a Roman numeral, was its 10th installment, responsible for Wolverine, Deadpool, Sabretooth and others. It's confusing because Weapon X is also the name of a facility and of some test subjects.

From left to right: X-23, Laura Kinney, created from Wolverine's DNA and played in a version by Dafne Keen in Logan and Deadpool and Wolverine. Ajax, Francis Freeman, with enhanced strength, reflexes and high pain tolerance, played by Ed Skrein in Deadpool. Aurora, Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, Northstar's twin sister from Alpha Flight. Fantomex, Weapon 13, a techno organic organism who escaped and joined pretty much every hero group, including the X-Men. Then Wolverine, Silver Fox, and a disc marked with the Roman numeral 18, likely the 18th in a series about the brainwashing used on Team X.

Then Cyborg, Aldo Ferro, a Weapon X scientist and cybernetic mutant; Mastodon, another enhanced Team X member; Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes; and Weapon Six, the serum that gave Luke Cage his powers, though Cage was never officially in Weapon X. I'm honestly not sure who Ant-Man is in this context; the only thing I can think of is that it's somehow related to Ant-Man or his experiments. Agent Zero, David North, played by Daniel Henney in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, absorbs kinetic energy and is sometimes a name Maverick goes by. Kimura was X-23's evil, abusive handler with indestructible skin. Worm might refer to the Cunningham character from Deadpool rather than Magneto's Savage Land Mutate. Sluggo appeared in Deadpool 2's icebox, and Kestrel, John Wraith, was played by will.i.am. The last looks like m a r something, and I think it's Marrow, who was killed on Genosha.

The disc and Omega Red reveal the lab's secrets

Morph takes the 18 disc, where Cornelius discusses the brainwashing techniques and the excavation of the spaceship the Brood were found in. We saw a similar excavation in The Thing, and nothing good came from that. The scientists used Brood cranial fluid to make a serum that made test subjects more pliable. After Morph almost gets impregnated by an alien, they realize the Brood kill most hosts and breed only with the best of the best.

Then they stumble upon Omega Red, and I'm so happy to see him back. He's from season 2 episode 4, Red Dawn, and season 4 episode 2, A Deal with the Devil, a super strong, unkillable Soviet super soldier version of Captain America, fanatical about Soviet supremacy. He always goes rogue. Storm froze him, Americans later thawed him to retrieve an unstable nuclear Russian sub, and Wolverine and Storm sank it, trapping him. I guess they retrieved him, because here he is with the same intro music. We've seen Morph change into him before, so they've crossed paths.

Morph's Cyclops impression was my favorite moment

Sabretooth points out this obviously isn't the vehicle bay Wolverine claimed to be heading for, and they see the adamantium chamber, another lie. Maverick says, "Game over. That's it. It's game over," a play on Bill Paxton's line from Aliens, and then dies. X-Men '97 is running through mutants like it's nothing. Wolverine turns into a Brood alien, Morph becomes Vindicator, whose comic powers came from a battle suit he later merged with, and Sabretooth calls Wolverine runt, one of his favorite nicknames because of their size difference. Omega Red, who holds a grudge, gets loose. Morph becomes Deadpool, then the Silver Samurai from season 4 episode 15, Lotus and the Steel, which was inspired by The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. Morph is mostly changing into Wolverine related characters here, and the flesh sword melts because created weapons aren't as strong as originals.

Sabretooth and Lady Deathstrike try to disabuse Morph of romantic notions about Wolverine, though in the original series Wolverine never gave up on Morph and even fought Cyclops for leaving Morph behind in the pilot. To purge the Brood DNA, they must give him his adamantium back, which brings Morph pretending to be Cyclops: "I'm going to tell Jean. He's going to be so upset with you that I'm just going to have to give her extra smooches tonight, Logan." It's awesome, it reminds me of Loki mocking Captain America, and Ray Chase is really having fun. Only Morph as Jean breaks through, and Lady Deathstrike, who dominates this episode, throws Wolverine into the chamber.

Morph becomes Spider-Man, and Wolverine's "I'm back, baby" recreates the 1982 Wolverine number one cover. The lab explodes with Omega Red crushed under a pillar; this team loves wrecking labs. My guess at the time was that he'd be back someday, since rubble and fire can't keep him down. Back on the plane, two members down, Wolverine may have lost Morph's love and respect for good, and Lady Deathstrike gives Morph a look that I think asks once more why Morph came. Once again, Morph doesn't answer.

Which reference from this episode stood out most to you?