I feel like 95% of the stuff that felt 'ooc' in the newest X-Men 97' episode is fundamentally rooted in the fact that they dropped us in the middle of a character arc after showing exactly zero of the set up for it.
Before now, we've seen...almost nothing from Wolverine or Morph this season. We briefly saw that while in the Future, Wolverine grew out his hair and was struggling with the bone claws physically (they seemed to hurt more to use?) and generally seeming like he was Having A Time Of Things, but we got no details at all and very few scenes where he had meaningful dialogue. Morph had very few lines in general, and didn't interact with Wolverine almost at all aside from...being in the same frame as him a few times and looking generally concerned?
I remember seeing that stuff before this episode and thinking 'well, clearly SOMETHING is going on there, we'll probably get around to exploring it eventually'. And as the episode that was clearly meant to do that, what it seemed to THINK happened in those brief scenes was:
Wolverine actively struggling with feeling like he lost a piece of himself when he lost the adamantium.
Wolverine coping poorly and getting more hung up on feeling like he's useless if he can't be a weapon and becoming more convinced that that was the only thing he was ever good for in the first place.
Morph and Wolverine likely having scenes showing that Morph has tried to reach out to him, but Wolverine was becoming more and more closed off and started pushing people away, even them, his best friend.
Morph struggling to accept that Wolverine was entering dark enough of a headspace for long enough of a time that he was starting to become a poor friend to them.
That is like. AT LEAST a whole episode's worth of Wolverine-centric content that just...doesn't exist. But this episode reads as if it was supposed to, because without it Morph having to come to terms with Wolverine not being able to be emotionally available or considerate to them anymore even in a best friend capacity makes...no sense! At all! It's not an answer to any question that was actually raised. This episode is the first in the season to even discuss Wolverine feeling like a weapon rather than a person at ALL, that's a big character arc to be suffering through.
In S1, there wasn't a ton of these two interacting either, but the little bits they had showed Wolverine being a lot more friendly and caring. We kind of needed to SEE Wolverine devolving into a space where that wouldn't be true anymore for it to feel authentic. Because otherwise, you just go from EVERY scene focused on those two being about emphasizing their close bond (yeah the new series made Morph's feelings romantic, but I didn't think it was supposed to be retconning how deeply devoted Wolverine was to them platonically - and they aren't because Morph referenced all that in THIS EPISODE, Morph had a reason to believe in Wolverine!) to...Wolverine not even showing concern or remorse for physically hurting and trying to kill Morph???? And just generally not having any particularly warm interactions with them aside from the beginning with the fact that he wanted them to come even if they had no obvious reason to like the others. Which almost seemed random with how he otherwise acted in the episode, it was...weird.
(Okay, I will grant when they were first gonna split up, Wolverine did first want to go with them, and maybe he was gonna tell them the truth about things in that scenario since logistically it would have to come up once Morph realized what direction they were heading, but since that didn't happen we can only theorize on his intent.)
No and the 'turning into Jean to stop the stabbing' thing felt so weird to me because. WHY DID THE JEAN THING WORK LFDKJLDF, Morph's first attempt at getting through not immediately working felt normal for the pacing of a vs possession type fight, but then Jean INSTANTLY working felt nonsensical no matter how in love with her he is. Normally the fight would have had Morph have to try harder/dig deeper/etc. to be able to pull it off, like even if they took for granted that he'd respond better to Jean, Morph!Jean should have had to put in more effort than just saying Logan's name lskdjfsl. I've seen the theory that Wolverine might have reacted to Morph's old appearance more if Morph had thought to try it because Wolverine was in a regressed state, and I like the theory, but it does depend on the show...doing something with at some point/discussing it. (Also if Jean was gonna be needed to bring him around, then I can only assume Wolveirne-Jean scenes also would have been in the non-existent build up episodes to make that feel actually relevant again.)
In general, the CONCEPT of the arc I don't think was so bad. But there was no build up to it, which made it land a lot worse. Especially since, for being the first episode we get to discuss Wolverine's apparent bad coping mechanisms and grief/trauma associated with losing the adamantium...we didn't really get much of anything from his pov! He and Morph still didn't have that many conversations! It's such an odd way to go about it.
That all said, this did feel like the MIDDLE of an arc with no build up, not the end of one. So some of my feelings on the particulars are gonna depend on how they end the arc they dropped us in the middle of. It wouldn't feel true to Wolverine's character in any respect to just have it end with him and Morph barely friends, Wolverine has ALWAYS cared a lot about his teammates and friends. He's having a whole crisis about himself and his worth and his relationships right now, but if we don't see evidence that that hasn't REMOVED the care, just made him A Lot worse at expressing it, that'd really feel impossibly ooc, while this episode I can at least kinda imagine how he might have reached this kind of low point even if we...very much deserved to actually see it.
(FOR EXAMPLE, we don't officially know technically if Wolverine remembers being mutated by the alien thing. If he doesn't and Morph didn't mention how they got injured, it would justify the lack of a remorse a lot more. But it's impossible to say right now if that's true and difficult to guess even how plausible it is.)
If they manage to stick the landing for this new arc, then I would say this episode is salvageable. If the build up had been there, I'd probably think it was a pretty decent episode, since then the whole alien stuff could have more room to be explored too. There was a lot of potential there and the horror vibes and actions scenes were appealing to me.
But man if they DON"T stick the landing then um...yikes?
SO HOPEFULLY WE DON'T GET STUCK WITH FULL YIKES.
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