X-Men '97's Biggest Wolverine Episode Yet Remakes A Legendary Sci-Fi Horror Movie

This article contains spoilers for "X-Men '97" Season 2, Episode 5 "Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs."

"X-Men '97" hasn't given Wolverine (Cal Dodd) much time in the spotlight, but considering how often Logan has hogged that light in other "X-Men" comics, movies, and cartoons, that's not a flaw. Still, Wolverine is still very much part of the show and the latest episode "Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs" focuses on his corner of the "X-Men" universe.

Back in Season 1 finale "Tolerance is Extinction," Magneto (Matthew Waterson) ripped out the adamantium coating Wolverine's skeleton. Picking up in Season 2, Wolverine only had his bone claws left. However, Episode 4 "Rise of Apocalypse Part II" ended with Wolverine getting some key intel on the Weapon X program, which originally gave him the adamantium skeleton, and inferred he was going after them. (The info came from two of Wolverine's friends on the Avengers.)

Wolverine and his best bud Morph (JP Karliak) have assembled a team of other Weapon X-connected superhumans: Sabretooth (Darin De Paul), Lady Deathstrike (Erika Ishii), Maverick (Crispin Freeman), and Garrison Kane (Ben Pronsky). They plan to storm Weapon X, supposedly because the scientists there have started up something new. Indeed they have; they're experimenting on the Brood, parasitic hive aliens that absorb the powers of their sentient hosts. 

The Brood are analogous to the xenomorphs from the "Alien" franchise; "Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs" functions as an extended homage to James Cameron's "Aliens," with a squad of soldiers trapped inside a small outpost surrounded by lethal extraterrestrials. Maverick even quotes Private Hudson (Bill Paxton) by declaring in panic that it's "Game over!" At the end of the episode, Logan and co. also take off and blow the entire site up, because it's indeed the only way to be sure.

The Brood debuted in 1982's "X-Men" #155 by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum. A heavily-altered, redesigned version of them called "The Colony" appeared in the original series episode "Love in Vain," but they looked more like giant lizards in cyborg armor than xenomorph-esque bugs. Conversely, while the comic Brood are intelligent beings, "X-Men '97" keeps them silent and ravenous like a xenomorph.

"Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs" is also sequel to an episode of the original series: "Weapon X, Lies, and Videotape," where Wolverine, Sabretooth, Maverick and Logan's old flame Silver Fox tore apart an abandoned Weapon X facility to learn the secrets of what was done to them. Their discoveries only raised more questions, because they learned Weapon X programmed them with fake memories, leaving them unable to know which parts of their pasts were real and which were fiction.

The memory modification plotline is picked up here, when Morph, Sabretooth, and Deathstrike discover a DVD recording left by head scientist Abraham Cornelius (Todd Haberkorn). Cornelius sees the Brood's hive mind as a way to perfect Weapon X's mental reconditioning procedures, the final step to wiping someone's soul and leaving only a human-shaped weapon. Of course, it all went wrong and the Brood overran the scientists trying to control them; when Wolverine and co. encounter Cornelius, he's been taken as a Brood host.

So too, eventually, is Wolverine. But having learned from Cornelius' documentation that the Brood can't survive the adamantium bonding process, Morph, Sabretooth, and Deathstrike lure Wolverine into the bonding chamber. He's purged of the Brood and gets his shiny claws back... which, it turns out, is the real reason why Logan staged this adventure.

Morph was famously used in the "X-Men" pilot, "Night of the Sentinels," as a disposable character, intended to be killed off to set the series' high stakes. Except, because of how popular he was, he returned in Season 2 having been revived by mad scientist Mister Sinister (Christopher Britton). Wolverine never gave up on Morph, so Morph refuses to abandon him in this episode even when Sabretooth and Deathstrike want to hightail it.

But the episode also forces Morph to confront Logan's darker side. In fact, for a Wolverine-centered episode, Logan spends much of it offscreen or controlled by a Brood parasite; the POV protagonist is Morph.

Wolverine recruited his team by claiming Weapon X was starting up again, because he knew the team wanted revenge on them. But eventually, Deathstrike and Sabretooth realize the truth; Wolverine just wanted his claws back. (Wolverine's bone claws are a lot weaker than his unbreakable adamantium ones.) The team he assembled would never help him for that reason alone, so he lied. 

There lies the contradiction at Wolverine's beastly heart; he's both a noble hero and a surly, murderous thug. In "Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs," he got two of his own friends (Maverick and Kane) killed. The episode ends with a tense conversation between Wolverine and Morph. When Morph asks if Wolverine is only "an animal with claws," Logan replies "That's what I'm the best at being." 

"Doesn't that make you sad? It makes me sad, Logan," Morph answers, disappointment dripping from their voice. Logan silently stares at his newly reforged claws. Once Weapon X cursed Wolverine with the adamantium, now he did it to himself because he thinks he can't be anything but a weapon.