X-Men '97 Season 2 Episode 8: Every Detail in The Dead Man's Hand

Gambit's body is getting a little crowded, but episode 8 of season 2 of X-Men '97 was all about his hand. The Dead Man's Hand revealed Apocalypse's endgame when it came to the X-Men, although at that point it was still to be determined whether he'd succeed. Here's my scene by scene breakdown of the Easter eggs, details and references you might have missed.

The Dead Man's Hand title works on several levels

The episode has four credited writers, which is bonkers for a half hour show. It was directed by the season's two credited directors. The title has multiple meanings beyond Gambit's classic playing card deck. Beast mentions that the dead man's hand is an actual hand in poker. There's also Gambit, the dead man, asking for Rogue's hand in marriage.

Gambit/Death/Apocalypse also spends part of the episode putting together his metaphorical hand of people from his past, essentially enslaving them so they can serve him. And there's his literal hand, which Rogue can now touch without draining him.

Rogue's recap shows how Apocalypse could prove love is pain

The previously on is spoken by Rogue, who's the key to Apocalypse's whole plan to strike at the X-Men and, I'm guessing, will also hold the key to defeating him. We see her conversation with En Sabah Nur about love from Rise of Apocalypse Part 2. It was seemingly this conversation that gave Apocalypse the idea to bring Gambit back as his Horseman Death. If he pulls it off, he not only hurts the X-Men but proves he was right that love is pain and, as he later told Charles, that the ones you care for will be your undoing. So you can see why this would be very appealing to him.

As Rogue speaks, the campfire turns into the fireplace on Genosha in Remember It, right after she told Gambit about her relationship with Magneto. As he listened, he threw his cards into the fire one by one, including the Queen of Hearts, the card that always represented Rogue and the one Apocalypse found in the wreckage. Then we see Rogue in her pink dress with Gambit taking her hand. She first wore that dress in the original series pilot, but this moment is from the X-Men '97 season premiere at the dance club, where she lamented that if someone accidentally touched her, her powers would leave them with a nasty hangover. Gambit replied that any worthwhile man would gladly suffer her hand in a dance. It's an interesting take on the love is pain idea, and another of the episode's many references to hands.

Rogue tells En Sabah Nur she hopes he gets to experience love someday for all their sakes. We learn in this episode that Apocalypse does experience love, but its outcome only made him more vengeful. Then Apocalypse converts Gambit's body, Cable finds Apocalypse's desiccated corpse, and Jubilee picks up the charred Queen of Hearts.

Storm's black costume returns in an otherwise familiar intro

There isn't much new in the intro, and sadly Colossus doesn't get his own intro like I'd hoped after the previous episode. Storm is back in her black costume after spending the season in the white one. She donned it at the end of Lifedeath Part 2, and it comes from her comics debut in 1975's Giant-Size X-Men number 1 by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum. It's the outfit she wears at the end of this episode.

The only other new image is Gambit kissing Rogue's hand in the hangar, from the original series season 4 episode 3, Sanctuary Part 1, when Gambit was headed to Asteroid M and Rogue wanted to make sure he was coming back.

Rogue's Genosha dream shows what could have been with Gambit

The episode opens on Genosha the night of the massacre, with Rogue dancing in midair like she did with Magneto, only alone. Happy Nation by Ace of Base isn't playing and there are no onlookers or other dancers, so it's clear this is a dream. When it happened for real, Gambit took off shortly after the dance started, so he didn't see Rogue and Magneto kiss, but he also didn't see her reject Magneto's offer to rule Genosha with him and ultimately choose Gambit.

Here she floats down to Gambit, like she'll do later in the episode, and dances with him instead. It's a picture of what could have been if she'd chosen him straight away, and a decision that's probably been haunting her since that night. She loses his hand for a moment and panics, but he grabs her again and kisses her. When he turns into Death, he repeats what he told her that night: "Some things be deeper than skin." The touch of death eats her away from the inside and she wakes up in terror.

The real dead man's hand reportedly included the Queen of Hearts

Then Rogue is playing poker with the X-Men, obviously Gambit's game. It's lighthearted, but she feels the weight of her nightmare and Gambit's absence. No one can use their powers, because if they could, Charles and Jean would dominate. Beast calls Nightcrawler's cards the dead man's hand, a name that comes from the hand Wild Bill Hickok allegedly held when he was killed in 1876. The rumors of what was in it have changed a little over the years, but it's usually considered two aces, one always the ace of spades, plus two eights. The fifth card never really matters much.

Wild Bill was shot from behind by Jack McCall. Afterward, his cards were picked up from the floor by a man who passed the hand down to his son, who reportedly told the historian Carl Breihan what they included. Interestingly, he said the fifth card was actually the Queen of Hearts.

I love that the poker chips all have X's on them, just like Rogue's nightshirt. The chip colors also mirror comics costumes: blue and yellow from the Jim Lee designed suits of Uncanny X-Men number 275, red and blue that could be the 1993 Generation X suits from Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo, and the yellow and black they currently wear from Frank Quitely's 2001 New X-Men designs, although black and yellow go back to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's original 1963 uniforms. Beast attributes a quote about playing a poor hand well to Jack London, though it has been similarly attributed to several authors of the time, including Robert Louis Stevenson. I trust Beast is working with info other people don't have access to.

X-Force arrives hiding its real plan for Gambit

X-Force's plane is equipped with a psionic jammer, since Cable and Psylocke are telepathic and know defending against other telepaths is a must to keep their plan secret. We later learn Cable, Psylocke and Archangel were conning all the X-Men, including Sunspot and Jubilee, who they'd worked with for months. The island has defenses too: Beast activates an EMP field. Contrary to popular belief, that wouldn't immediately take down a plane. It would cause massive system malfunctions, but military aircraft have systems in place to deal with an EMP.

Jean and Scott seem shocked to see Cable. In the original series they interacted with him a lot without realizing he was their son Nathan, all grown up. Last season, once they knew, they said goodbye before going to sacrifice themselves to stop Asteroid M, then got blasted through time and spent time with young Nathan. So this is the first time in months they've seen adult Cable in person, and the first since they bonded with him as a kid. But he's all business. Charles stares at Apocalypse's corpse with pure hatred, seeing him outside a simulation for the first time since he killed his best friend.

Everyone around Gambit is playing their own game

Cable, Psylocke and Archangel want to take Gambit out, but pretend they just want to get close so Rogue can do what she did to Warren Worthington when he was Death: touch him and take away Apocalypse's control and the evil inside him. Later, it seems X-Force kind of knows that won't work this time. Jubilee and Sunspot were clearly lied to and genuinely want to help. Sunspot wonders if Gambit still has a soul, and in Remember It, Nightcrawler said Gambit and Rogue's souls touch with every gaze.

Rogue just wants Gambit back because she loves him. Scott and Jean feel guilt over leaving Nathan, even though he sent them back, and are treading lightly so they don't alienate him further. Charles is wary of both Apocalypse/Gambit and X-Force, and still focused on Apocalypse as a threat that always comes back. Nightcrawler is going on faith that Gambit is still in there.

Rogue confides in Nightcrawler about her father, a really terrible man who disowned her when her powers manifested, seen in A Rogue's Tale. I love the detail of his outfit in that clip: the American flag hat, the shirt a little too small, the cigarettes rolled in his sleeve. Nightcrawler promises everything will be fine, and I'm always worried when characters promise things like this. Magneto promised Leech and the Morlocks they'd never have to be afraid again, and promised the X-Men he'd get them home. Even when promises come true, they usually come at a grave cost to the promiser.

Cerebra tracks Gambit to Halloween in New Orleans

We see the updated Cerebro, now named Cerebra. In the comics, the X-Men eventually transfer Cerebra into a Sentinel body so she can join missions, and Charles's sister Cassandra Nova once uses Cerebra to swap bodies with him. It's totally bonkers. The new helmet looks more like a motorcycle helmet.

Charles locates Gambit in the French Quarter, and it's Halloween. Honestly, this more than anything made me miss when shows ran on the same schedule every year and we'd get holiday episodes around the holidays. I just really love a holiday episode. We see a jazz club, the Voodoo Bar, Mango Slush and a pizza bar, with ghosts, spiders and jack o'lanterns on the railings, confetti and costumes giving it a surreal vibe. A mime seems to look directly at the camera, something the animators did in weirder original series episodes; I specifically remember it in the Mojo episodes.

Death sneaks up while Charles is distracted by someone who looks like Gambit and slaps a hand over his face. There's a blink and you'll miss it image of Apocalypse right before Charles is pushed out, a hint about what's really going on.

Gambit going home is a clue Apocalypse is driving

Charles says Gambit has gone home, but in X-Ternally Yours, Gambit said, "This is not my home. I am not thief or assassin. I am an X-Man and I'm never coming back." So if he's going back, something's up. In that episode, Pierre of the Guild of Thieves called Gambit home because his older brother Bobby was in trouble. That guild has fought the Guild of Assassins for centuries, and every 10 years each gives a tithe to the External, Candra, who kills or banishes members of a guild that fails and increases the powers of those that deliver.

Bobby had been kidnapped with the tithe by Belladonna, Gambit's ex-fiancée, an assassin he left because they'd both have been killed by their people if they'd married. She offered to free Bobby if Gambit wore her wedding ring. Bobby got Gambit into the guild, and Gambit isn't super happy his brother made him a thief, but he agreed. The ring let her control him, and she'd given Bobby a fake tithe. Jean telepathically showed Candra the assassins' treachery, and Gambit asked her to let Belladonna live but take away her powers.

The thieves and assassins become Death's minions

Death lures guild members to the church that worships the External. Bobby, the blond guy in the red coat, is voiced by A.J. LoCascio, who also voices Gambit. The man with long gray hair and a red headband is Pierre, and the three masked assassins were with Belladonna in that episode. Belladonna's voice actor also voiced Shipp and Danger and is married to Magneto voice actor Matthew Waterson. The stained glass shows Candra, a figure I'm guessing is a generic thief, and someone in assassin garb, with Latin words for thieves and assassin.

The death tarot cards carry a 13, since it's the 13th major arcana card. The comics explain the trick: after House of M, Gambit became Apocalypse's horseman to basically spy from inside, failed, and became his slave, with his powers altered to charge things with death and decay that change organic tissue.

Cable's reason for hiding his identity is believable

When Cable first appeared in Slave Island, the comics hadn't revealed him as Scott's son. Later the series laid clues, like the DNA strand Jean saw in the Time Fugitives arc. Now Cable says he never told them because he'd been burned so many times and was convinced time would rip them apart again. Honestly, it's pretty believable, since he's clearly been hardened by everything.

Rogue may not be able to drain Death

Rogue touches Gambit's face and nothing happens. She drained plain Gambit in Till Death Do Us Part Part 1, drained Archangel as Death, and in the comics drained Apocalypse. She can't absorb beings like Vision, made of something other than living tissue, or someone inhabited by the Phoenix Force. So maybe here there are two beings in one body, or the flesh is technically dead.

Back at the mansion, Storm leaves Colossus in charge, which didn't turn out so well in X2. Since the school isn't on Genosha like X-Corp, this could get legally messy, as President Kelly outlawed X-Men activity.

Apocalypse's Candra story is unreliable narration

Gambit tells Rogue they've been dealt a whole new hand. They touched a few times in the original series, like in the Savage Land in Reunion, but it's got to be super weird to casually touch. Death recounts Apocalypse's relationship with Candra, but Apocalypse is driving, so this is unreliable narrator business. We've all had a friend who made themselves look like the good one in a breakup. Rogue's wish only made him more determined that love is a weakness, and it literally made him weaker since he gave up a piece of his power. Rogue seemingly knows it's too good to be true, but she so desperately wants it that she ignores her instinct.

Candra's original design came from Larry Houston

The minions' eyes are fully red, like Gambit's as Death in the comics. I don't know where Rogue's dress and veil came from; maybe Nightcrawler bamfed to a bridal shop. Rereading X-Men: The Art and Making of the Animated Series, I learned Candra was the only completely original model Larry Houston designed for the show. Marvel had no design, so he made her a Creole woman. Houston was the first ever black storyboard artist hired for Saturday morning television. Candra is voiced by Debra Wilson, of Mad TV. In the comics, En Sabah Nur stabbed Candra in a ritual so her power went into a stone, and if it's destroyed she's powerless.

Charles echoes his Dark Phoenix battle

The X-Men arrive in costumes from different eras, including Morph in a Jim Lee training suit even though Morph was created for the animated series. Charles repeats, "In the battlefield of the mind, my will shall prevail," from The Dark Phoenix Part 3, invoking the Phoenix again. It didn't work then and doesn't now, though his appeal to Remy kind of works both times. Cable reveals X-Force planned to kill Gambit all along. I do love Jean's mom tone telling Nathan not to make her take over his mind. Ross Marquand voices both Charles and Apocalypse, which is awesome. Rogue pulls Gambit forward, I assume through proximity and their special connection, and Lenore Zann is really crushing this season.

Gambit's monitor nods to Uncanny X-Men 266

Gambit's monitor reads XM266, the issue where he first fully appeared in August 1990, which also featured Val Cooper. I'm not saying it's an intentional clue to the theory that Cooper is Mystique, but I'm sure the internet will go wild with it. Cooper pairs X-Force with X-Factor against Charles and X-Corp, and I expected the last episode to be a banger.

Which moment from The Dead Man's Hand stood out most to you?