THEO JAMES' SURPRISE “X-MEN '97” CHARACTER REVEALED

Season 1 showrunner Beau DeMayo previously described this role as "a fan favorite."

Warning: This article contains spoilers from X-Men '97 season 1, episode 7, "Bright Eyes."

The latest installment of X-Men '97, the sequel to X-Men: The Animated Series that is only becoming more compelling with each weekly release, gave fans the tragic aftermath of the genocidal attack on Genosha.

Gambit (AJ LoCascio) is indeed dead. His teammates laid him to rest, while a bereft Rogue (Lenore Zann) went on the warpath — and even ran into Captain America himself (Josh Keaton) — to find who she thought was responsible, Sentinel creator Bolivar Trask (Gavin Hammon). But the twists kept coming, thanks to The Gentlemen and The White Lotus star Theo James' arrival on the show.

Entertainment Weekly previously reported that James had a role to play on X-Men '97, having already worked with season 1 showrunner Beau DeMayo on animated film The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. "It is a fan-favorite character, I think, and it will surprise people," DeMayo, who has since parted ways with the show, told EW in an interview. "Bright Eyes," the seventh episode of season 1, finally sees his arrival as Bastion, the true supervillain pulling everyone's strings and the real perpetrator of the Genosha massacre.

In Marvel Comics, Bastion is a human-Sentinel hybrid, a combination of Master Mold and Nimrod. This would explain why Jean Grey and Madelyne Pryor (both voiced by Jennifer Hale) kept seeing flashes of these mutant-killing machines when attempting to probe the minds of Trask and Henry Gyrich (Todd Haberkorn) on X-Men '97.

In "Bright Eyes," Rogue and Captain America uncover something called "OZT" in an abandoned underground lair. Well, there's an explanation for that, too. Growing to hate mutants, the Bastion of the comics, dubbed humanity's last "bastion" of hope against the mutant threat, assembles the international anti-mutant strike force called Operation: Zero Tolerance (OZT). Like Master Mold, Bastion is able to create new Sentinels, which would also explain the colossal Sentinels that devastated Genosha. And the Trask of X-Men '97 is later revealed as a sleeper human-Sentinel hybrid after Rogue lets him fall to his death. The pieces are all falling into place.

When Bastion arrives on X-Men '97, he first kills Gyrich after Rogue tried to absorb his memories. He then tells Mister Sinister (Chris Britton) that Trask was "a rough draft" but that the tussle with the X-Men gave him the tactical data he needed for his "real masterpiece." Bastion also knows Charles Xavier (Ross Marquand ) is alive, and in the final moments of episode 7, it's revealed that he also has Magneto (Matthew Waterson), who secretly survived Genosha, as his prisoner.

"You and the villains of ol' have been failing since '92 to squash these pests," Bastion tells Sinister. "What you would do is my roadmap for what not to do.... Unlike the rest of you, I evolved."

X-Men '97 leaves us with one other big clue as to Bastion's origins on the show. In episode 4, "Motendo/Lifedeath - Part 1," Forge (Gil Birmingham) takes Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith) to the basement workspace of his cabin. Viewers can see photos on the walls showing Forge's early life, including one group photograph that's cut off. The tech-savvy mutant and war veteran is seen in his green army uniform, with someone on his right, putting an arm around his shoulder. That individual is wearing a familiar version of Bastion's costume from the comics, suggesting there's a connection between the Bastion of the show and Forge.

With three more episodes to go, we'll have to wait to see what Bastion's "real masterpiece" to wipe out mutantkind will be. New installments drop on Disney+ every Wednesday.

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Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.

2024-04-24T16:37:38Z dg43tfdfdgfd