Episode four of X-Men ’97 has come and gone, and with it a pair of endings that couldn’t be more different from one another.
A special double-feature episode, “Motendo / Lifedeath – Part 1” first saw Jubilee and Roberto spontaneously battle against the X-Men’s old enemy Mojo, after which they confess their feelings for one another in the form of a long kiss.
The love in the air continued into the second half of the episode, in which Storm and Forge attempt to bring the former’s powers back (with a spot of a romantic dinner to boot), but revelations about Forge’s past cause Storm to rather furiously (and righteously) distrust him, and, as is always the case with the X-Men, things only escalate from there.
The real question, though: Did they succeed in getting Storm’s powers back?
Did Storm get her powers back?
While Forge’s machine failed to repower Storm the first time around, we still have “Lifedeath – Part 2” ahead of us as the sixth episode, which will continue this particular arc, meaning there’s plenty of time for Storm to regain her command over the weather, and we’d be wise to bet on that outcome for a multitude of reasons.
The first and most obvious is that we have at least three seasons of this show on the docket, and despite a depowered Storm being prime material for a fantastic character arc, it simply wouldn’t make sense to have an X-Man as supremely prominent as her stay relatively sidelined in this way for even one season, much less two or three.
The second is that X-Men ’97‘s “Lifedeath” adaptation is already diverging from the comics storyline in a very particular and telling way. Whereas in the comics Storm ends up leaving Forge’s residence before he has a chance to win back her trust, the fourth episode of the series ended with an attack from the supervillain known as the Adversary, who the X-Men faced in the comics’ “Fall of the Mutants” storyline; the same storyline that saw Storm regain her powers that she was still deprived of in “Lifedeath.”
In short, no, Storm hasn’t gotten her powers back, but it’s pretty much an inevitability that it will happen, with episode six realistically being the next window of opportunity for it.
(featured image: Marvel Animation)
