Netflix has X-Men Evolution Season One now streaming. After watching all 13 episodes, the show still holds up. Kitty gets two spotlight episodes, her origin in “The X-Impulse” and an adventure with Nightcrawler and Wolverine in “Grim Reminder.” She does get a moment in every other episode for the most part, but I forgot how centric the season was on Rogue/Nightcrawler/Mystique, which I really dug. It always amazes me that Mystique and Kurt were not always related and that Marvel had to come to that conclusion, sort of like the whole Magneto/Wanda/Quicksilver family. Which I should do a post about how much I love the Magneto/Pym family as its a shame Marvel doesn’t do more with how connected they are.
Mutant Crush is a little hard to watch with all the implications between Blob and Jean, it gets a little dark for a Saturday morning show.
I sort of wish that the show did more with the Rogue/Scott/Jean love triangle, and had even more courage to pair Scott with Rogue, that would be awesome. After Scott/Emma, I’m pretty much willing to see him with anybody who isn’t Jean. Not sure if I like the idea of Scott/Illyana but it would be different and good for her to get a guy like Scott. Though Illyana has never truly had a love interest in the comics, probably due to her own personal demons but a guy should be able to look beyond that. Though Limbo doesn’t seem like an idea spot to stick around in, even just for a portal jump.
Season Three’s Dark Horizon Part 1 always gets a lot of attention for having Kitty sleep with a plush purple dragon, and I wonder how much production wish they had thought about that during Season One’s Shadowed Past where Kitty is sleeping with a plush green dragon. Still, a wonderful touch to the comics.
I really liked how they didn’t keep harping on the fact that Kitty was uncomfortable with Kurt on the show, she has some issues with him during her first episode and then half of Rogue’s first episode and then they start bonding, sort of like in the comics. When she doesn’t care for him later in the series, its due to him being immature as oppose to her not liking him due to him being blue and fuzzy.
I also liked the bromance between Scott and Kurt, which is only really shown on this show, Kurt’s more of a Wolverine friend than Cyclops in the comics. I do like how they try to loosen Scott up on the show.
It makes sense now all of those Kurt/Kitty videos you will see on YouTube, there is a lot of chemistry but on the show itself, they keep pairing her up with Lance Alvers, Avalanche. Who really is more of a cartoon/movie villain, his powers don’t lend well to comics as much as in action.
I liked how Magneto was played up, always kept in shadows until the big reveal in the final two parter.
Animation holds up, characters are pretty spot on, you get different pairings and its just great to see the X-Men again in motion.
Still wish they would release Season Four on DVD, so crazy how that isn’t happening and no rumors of it either. And now that so much time as passed, who knows if they ever will now.
This sparked my interest to see if they released a comic version of this show and they did, it was nine issues, Kitty is on the cover to issue one and then stars in it from issue four to issue nine, so I’ve added those issues to my Wishlist.
Hopefully Netflix keeps adding episodes, I own them all up to Season Three but its nice to just be able to click play and let the show just ride through instead of having to replace DVDs in the player.
Shadow and Flame with Magik 