"You're all fools. Heroic fools. The brave are always the first to die."
And with that, the first season of X-Men: The Animated Series comes to a triumphant, confident conclusion. In different circumstances, these 13 episodes might have instead served as the entirety of the series. The full production staff who worked their magic in crafting the show from the ground up, taking such care in maintaining fidelity to the source material while also telling original stories for a different medium, had fulfilled their contracts and largely parted company. They held no expectations of working on the series beyond the initial 13-episode commitment from Fox -- or, indeed, of the series even continuing beyond that. With the benefit of hindsight, such a premature demise sounds utterly ridiculous given the show's enormous success since its haphazard Halloween premiere. Against scheduling snafus, panic-inducing deadlines, animation errors, and tepid support from network executives, it became clear that X-Men would NOT be denied. By the airdate of this finale, the shoe was on the other foot with Fox scrambling to re-assemble their dream team ahead of an inevitable second season. As for the episode itself, it wisely dispenses with complex plot elements in favor of a straightforward rescue mission. Senator Kelly has been abducted, so the X-Men have a job to do. The interconnected, highly serialized series structure allows the story to lean on previous episodes to establish the stakes. Kelly's assassination is destined to start a chain of events that sees the world plunged into a brutal dystopia under Sentinel rule. It must be prevented at all costs. With the quick pivot away from Magneto's menace teased last episode in favor of the Sentinels' return, all of the pieces are in place for that dark future to almost certainly be realized. In some ways, denying viewers a highly anticipated rematch between the X-Men and Magneto feels like a bit of a cheat, especially on the strength of such a dramatically effective cliffhanger. Nevertheless, this proves to be a shrewd act of discipline consistent with what we will more commonly see in Magneto's presentation over the course of the series: conflicted antagonist at worst, and unlikely ally at best. It surprisingly proves to be a far more nuanced characterization as compared to the contemporaneous comics, which practically took him back to his stark-raving Silver Age roots. Controversial twist aside, "The Final Decision" is all the better for getting Magneto back into play. With the Sentinels almost immediately turning on their creator, the episode also manages to work in more commentary on the illogical nature of humanity's prejudice against mutants. From there, the plot smartly lays out to let the X-Men simply fulfill their remit: protecting a world that fears and hates them. This allows for a slower pace, lingering on a number of quick but effective character spotlights, before ratcheting the action back up for an appropriately kinetic climax. Each team member's individual decision in grappling with the question of whether or not to join what looks to be a hopeless mission, set to a dramatic, swelling score, is one of the finest, shining moments for the ensemble cast in the show's entire run. It's scenes like these that allow us to overlook some of the smaller, Saturday Morning Cartoon segments of unintentional goofiness (such as the Blackbird being packed with a comically enormous amount of explosives as Professor X flies it into Master Mold, or the goofiness of Master Mold's evil master plan). All told, capping off this first season with a satisfying, energetic, decisive victory over the Sentinels offers perfect symmetry in calling back to the series premiere, resolving our heroes' unfinished business and bringing a number of character arcs full circle.
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