- Title: X-Men ’97 – Bright Eyes
- wiki: link
“Bright Eyes” is an odd episode. On one hand seeing an out-of-control Rogue (Lenore Zann) our for revenge provides some great action (certainly the biggest strength of the series) and we also get the other X-Men attending Gabmit‘s (A.J. LoCascio) funeral allowing them some closure. The episode is designed to highlight Rogue, and it does that extremely well both in how powerful she is as a character and how her grief and anger will lead her down a dark path which could cost the X-Men everything.
However, no time at all is spent on the death of Magneto (Matthew Waterson), other than one throwaway line by one of the X-Men, which seems callous at best (reminding me of Avengers: Endgame largely ignoring the death of Vision in the same way). There’s also a very bizarre jump between Rogue confronting Henry Gyrich (Todd Haberkorn) and waking up in an entirely different location surrounded by her friends which I could only assume was a Sinister illusion given the complete lack of sense or context but apparently that’s what really happened.
The episode is also most notable for the inclusion of Captain America (Josh Keaton). This too feels a bit weird and shoehorned in. His appearance changes nothing about the episode, other than to paint him broadly as the ambivalent cop Rogue accuses him of being. Is the scene between them fun? Sure, does it serve any other purpose than fan service or to gauge reaction on widening the Marvel Universe in this cartoon without any real plan on how they might want to use the characters in the future? No. The episode ends with a bit of a lesson about not letting grief control your actions as Rogue’s murder of Bolivar Trask (Gavin Hammon) proves to be a catalyst to the birth of new Sentinels and the dark future of Cable (Chris Potter).
