The Mutant Ages

Todd reunites with Maddy and Ryan for the season finale of the X-Men anime, during which there's not very much plot, but we still manage to mess things up by describing it all out of order. You won't be confused, though, because again, there isn't much plot. The ghosts of Takeo and Jean Grey bestow their blessings upon all of the X-Men, and Dr. Sasaki doesn't die ... or does she??? We have some th...

The X-Men anime is closing in on its series finale, and in this penultimate episode, Takeo goes full kaiju and takes revenge on Mastermind (but not on his mother, to our disappointment). Before Mastermind gets his comeuppance, he puts on the Dark Phoenix cosplay one more time and tricks Scott into believing he's the cause of mutantkind's destruction. The brainwashing of Scott works weirdly well, u...

Who's the worse villain: Mastermind, or Dr. Yui Sasaki? Maddy and Ryan have to keep re-evaluating that question every week, because the revelations about the extent of their evil have us shocked (and the X-Men, too). Apparently, Dr. Sasaki worked with the U-Men (!!!) in order to develop her mutant "cure," and she was doing it all for her poor son Takeo, who's been living in a glass tube in the bas...

We aren't sure how Mastermind would describe himself (bisexual? gay? queer?) but after this week's episode, we're certain he's somewhere on the rainbow spectrum. That's not much of a "revelation" (or even a surprise), but this queer-coded super-villain does have plenty to reveal to Emma Frost in this episode, and it's not just fun facts about how much he loves her diamond stilettos. Meanwhile, Bea...

Despite the repeated pleas from the X-Men, and the fact that it's very obvious something horrible is going on at the Sasaki Institute, Dr. Yui Sasaki adamantly refuses to tell anybody what's going on. It's also becoming very obvious that she's involved with whatever it is, because in this episode of the X-Men anime, two of her lab assistants turn into terrifying monsters. The X-Men manage to take...

Todd rejoins Maddy and Ryan this week as the X-Men anime kicks its plot into high gear. Tons of new characters show up, and we finally learn the identity of the strange little boy that Professor Xavier has been seeing in his mind palace/nightmare realm. It's Takeo, the son of the mysterious and suspicious Yui Sasaki ... and his dad is Xavier! In other words, Dr. Sasaki is basically a rewrite of Mo...

The X-Men anime finally gives us a big splashy fight scene for Sublime in which he shows off all of the data he's collected on the X-Men across multiple episodes... just in time for the X-Men to kill him. But is he really dead? And what's up with Yui Sasaki, the mysterious redhead who shows up at the very end of this week's episode? Maddy and Ryan are having a lot of fun with this show, because it...

The X-Men anime has some truly stellar writing for Scott Summers, which is to say, he is a massive dick in this episode and it's totally in-character. Instead of engaging with his anger towards Emma Frost (as well as his attraction towards her), Scott decides to take it out on poor little Hisako in the Danger Room. Meanwhile, Hisako comes to terms with her mutant identity after a pep talk from Oro...

Emma Frost discovers her diamond powers as a secondary mutation at the outset of the fourth episode of the X-Men anime, and it causes quite a stir. Beast convinces Emma that she must return with him to the Xavier Institute so that he can run tests on her, and Hisako comes along, after getting permission from her parents. Wolverine then fights a mutant on top of the Blackbird, and we have no idea w...

Maddy and Ryan invite Todd Harper back onto the show for the introduction of Emma Frost on the X-Men anime. We talk about her outfit, her boobs, the boob window on her outfit, and so much more (as it relates to Emma's boobs). Scott and Logan continue their sexual tension, and Scott tries to convince everybody else that Emma can't be trusted. This works fairly well until Hisako wakes up and makes i...

After the first episode of the X-Men anime, Maddy and Ryan didn't think they'd be doing much political analysis of what mutants represent in this world, but the second episode introduces anti-mutant bigotry once again. The show's main villains are the U-Men, a group of mutant-hating cyborgs who have been kidnapping mutant kids from a small town in Northern Japan. The X-Men head overseas to investi...

Ryan and Maddy start their tour through the Marvel Anime series, beginning with X-Men. The pilot episode starts right in the middle of the action, with Jean Grey having just transformed into the Dark Phoenix (no thanks to the Hellfire Club's influence). She explodes into fire and seems to be lost forever, after which Scott spends the next year of his life living in a junkyard refusing to bathe. Th...

Maddy, Ryan, and Todd manage to finish their review of X-Men Apocalypse (2016), and they're all the worse for wear. What even happens in the second half of this movie? An extensive Weapon X section in which Wolverine runs around murdering people and running into the child version of Jean Grey, who might fall in love with him, except she's busy taking secret phone calls from Xavier, who's trying to...

Finally, we've reached the final X-Men movie directed by Bryan Singer, although the fact that we have Dark Phoenix (2019) does not comfort us very much. Maddy, Ryan, and Todd collectively lose their minds over the sheer volume of characters in this movie, and the number of scenes that don't matter at all to the plot but still didn't get cut out of the movie. This is only the first half of our jour...

Maddy and Ryan dig through the listener mailbag and answer questions about which X-Men have the best butts, which of them have a podcast (and what's it about?), how Wolverine and the X-Men sounded in Scottish Gaelic, one listener's experiences with something similar to Warren's in "Guardian Angel," and so much more. Next week's episode: X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Part 1 of 2 Visit our STORE: teespr...

Maddy, Ryan, Todd, Katie, and Ry T sit down together for a night of Christmas-themed X-Men comics, in which it's revealed that Santa Claus is a mutant. We put on our voice actor hats and do our best to emulate accents from around the world. Our apologies to listeners from the UK, Italy, Russia, and all the other European countries' accents that we butchered in our holiday merriment. We also do our...

Maddy and Ryan unpack everything they thought about Wolverine and the X-Men, from their favorite episodes to least favorite, as well as the extensive rewrites they have in mind for the show. (Maddy also offers a skip list, which includes almost every episode... sorry.) Despite it all, we still want to see this show get a second season. It would be a lot better without all the 20th Century Fox bagg...

Remember how frustrated we felt about the "Wolverine vs. Hulk" episode of Wolverine and the X-Men? We didn't know how much worse it could get. This 2009 straight-to-video precursor to the series we just completed is a slog, told out of order and packed with Weapon X flashbacks. Thank goodness Deadpool is in it, or else there would be nothing redeemable about this special at all. Next week's episod...

We finally made it to the series finale of Wolverine and the X-Men, which features 23 jam-packed minutes of Wolverine trying to cross the front lawn of the Hellfire Club mansion. It takes him the entire time to get there, and meanwhile, Sentinels destroy a major American city and the Phoenix inhabits all five Cuckoos and destroys the Sentinels and also tries to re-enter Jean's body. Emma shows up...

We made it to the second part of Wolverine and the X-Men's three-part finale, and this episode is even rougher than the first. Magneto leans in to his baffling decision to slaughter his own people with Sentinels, assuring his kids that this makes sense even though it doesn't. Meanwhile, over at the Hellfire Club mansion, Sebastian Shaw betrays Emma Frost (who could have seen that coming?), and in...

Jean Grey has been kidnapped by the Hellfire Club, which means we get a surprisingly sapphic scene between Emma and Jean in which Emma restores Jean's memories and teaches her about feminism. And by feminism, we mean the Phoenix. Meanwhile, Logan and the rest of the X-Men have to deal with a ridiculous B-plot that takes over the episode involving Pietro kidnapping Senator Kelly for Magneto, then M...

Scott and Jean finally reunite in "Shades of Grey," but this is the X-Men, so one of them has amnesia. Emma Frost helps out with the reunion, but not the amnesia (at least, not until next week's episode). Even though Jean Grey hasn't been on an entire season's worth of episodes of Wolverine and the X-Men, it turns out that she's the most important person in this universe, because the X-Men want he...

Maddy, Ryan, and Todd get together for a review of the first season of She-Hulk starring Tatiana Maslany, but before we can get into that, we need to discuss Cheetos, fried pickles, Hocus Pocus (the first one and the sequel), Hugh Jackman reprising the role of Wolverine for Deadpool 2, and so much more. This episode original appeared as a bonus on our Patreon feed, so if you like what you hear, co...

Gambit is back, mes chers, and even though the circumstances of his return don't make a ton of sense, we can't help but fall in love with him all over again. That's all according to plan for Gambit, who's seducing his way into Magneto's castle on Genosha, despite that the borders are closed (even for mutants). The weakest link on the island is Lorna, who's so naive and sheltered that she doesn't s...

Destroy!! Destroy? Destroy ... destroy. Don't mind us, we're just quoting our favorite new character from Wolverine and the X-Men. He's a Sentinel, but he's not a bad guy, thanks to Polaris and Marrow. Bishop and Xavier don't see Rover as a true member of the post-apocalyptic X-Men, but he proves himself in a heart-wrenching act of sacrifice that allows Xavier to collect more data on what caused t...