I do be watchin shows. (Generally spoilers)

#1: What If…? Season 2 Episode 2 “What If… Peter Quill Attacked Earth’s Mightiest Heroes?”

Two episodes into What If…? Season 2 and I’m still quite enjoying this show. This week’s episode begs the question I’m sure some have wondered; what would happen if Yondu never had his change of heart and gave Peter over to his father? Young Peter Quill appears on Earth and begins his attack, controlled by his father’s cosmic powers.

The episode brings back Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, John Slattery’s Howard Stark, Haley Atwell’s Peggy Carter, Chris Helmsworth’s Thor, Sebastian Stan as Bucky, and Kurt Russel’s Ego. They even got Atandwa Kani who played young King T’Chaka in Black Panther to come back for his role. Oh and Lawrence Fishburne is here too.

I half-expected this episode to end on a bleak note where Peter turns on the team and just destroys the Earth at the last minute, and was pleasantly surprised.

#2: X-Men ’97 Season 1 Episode 1 “To Me, My X-Men”

What a triumphant return. X-Men ’97 episode 1 feels like they plucked the show right out of the early 2000s and it never ended. If you don’t remember how X-Men the original show ended, Charles Xavier was assassinated and is deader than a corpse made of flesh. The Sentinels are gone and their factory has been destroyed. One year after the fact Cyclops (Ray Chase) has knocked up Jean Gray (Jennifer Hale) and is now leading the X-Men. The episode starts off very similar to the original show; The X-Men discover a young mutant and must save him from a group of bad people.

The new mutant is Roberto da Costa who is of course embarrassed by his mutant powers and hasn’t told his parents yet. In addition to Chase and Hale, the show brings back Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm, Cal Dodd as Logan, Lenore Zann as Rogue, George Buza as Beast, and more.

JP Karliak now voices Morph (Ron Rubin now voices President Robert Kelly) with A J LoCascio taking on Gambit (previously Chris Potter who now voices Cable, as well as Tony Daniels who has seemingly retired as he hasn’t voiced anything in over four years). Jubilee is now played by Holly Chou (previously Alyson Court who plays Abcissa now), Isaac Robinson-Smith plays Bishop (previously Philip Akin who has also seemingly retired), Matthew Waterson as Magneto (David Hemblen who retired in 2007 and passed away in 2020), and a ton more people.

The first episode really kicks off strong, showing off a newfound use of Cyclops’ power as he uses his laser beams to jettison himself to and fro. The first episode ends with the reveal that Magneto has been gifted everything in Charles’ possession in his last will and testament and plans to take over the X-Men house and use it for his own purposes. Oof. But the first episode has tons of jabbering, a lot of big fights, explosions, and pretty much everything you’d come to expect from this show.

They’ve managed to do a fantastic job so far keeping the feeling of the original show, down to the visuals and animations. In a world where Disney has built a reputation on burning the past, X-Men ’97 is kicking off feeling like someone just found a copy of an unreleased season from 25 years ago and was too afraid to admit they lost it, so they’re just claiming it’s new. There’s a real good reason this show has a 100% critic score and 94% audience score right now.

#3: X-Men ’97 Season 1 Episode 2 “Mutant Liberation Begins”

What a twist. So Episode 2 of X-Men ’97 kicks off with Magneto going around the world and saving both humans and mutants, now apparently reformed and refusing to kill anti-mutant terrorists. He shows up like a boss and starts actually getting shit done at the X-Men HQ. Naturally the crew doesn’t quite trust the guy who spent decades as a terrorist himself, but at least at the moment Magneto seems to be interested in Xavier’s desire to forward human-mutant relations. I’m sure there’ll be something up his sleeve.

The United Nations shows up to arrest Magneto and he surrenders himself willingly. The Friends of Humanity launches an attack on the trial to hopefully assassinate Magneto. Jean Gray finally has the baby leading to a hilarious scene where Wolverine has to drive her to the hospital. Rogue uses her power to absorb the doctor’s medical knowledge so they can deliver the baby because the doctor is a racist and refuses. The boss of the FoH, X-Cutioner, shows up with his armored trench coat. He takes care of X-Men’s most powerful asset by shooting Storm with a de-powering ray.

I thought Magneto was going to kill X-Cutioner and the judges, but he doesn’t. Magneto gets pardoned and Genosha is accepted into the United Nations. Beast delivers the bad news that the effects may be permanent. Maybe they’ll find a cure, it’s all up to the whims of the writers now. Rogue and Magneto bang in Xavier’s old office and Gambit knows about it. And then another Jean shows up and the show is over!

Great start.

#4: Halo Season 2 Episode 8 “Halo”

It’s finally over. In the same sense that I was happy to see Halo Season 1 end, I’m kinda sad to see Halo Season 2 end. Not just because we’re just getting to the Halo and I have no clue what’s coming next in the series but because this season was really good. Really, really good. So much better than season 1. The finale for Halo gave us everything we wanted. The Halo, a big space battle, the redemption for Perez, redemption for Kai, and more importantly the Flood.

They’re going to need a hell of a budget for Season 3 if the Flood is coming in finally. Assuming there is a Season 3. No confirmation of a Season 3 which will presumably follow the first game to some extent. We met 343 Spark although The Arbiter is now dead. Can the Covenant create another Arbiter? I’m sure they can, it’s just a title like Pope or King Dingdong. Kai is no doubt on ice until the showrunners know if Kate Kennedy is coming back for Season 3 in which case they’ll either have her die or miraculously survive her suicide bombing of the Covenant ship.

I hope Parangosky is dead, but it does raise the question on what the hell Kwan is and why the Flood is calling itself her ancestors. Well that’ll be for Season 3. Halsey of course is protected by plot armor and gets deep frozen like a Hungry Man meal to avoid straight up dying. See you in Season 3. And Soren, Kessler, Kwan, and Ackerson are on their own adventure going into the next season.

All in all, I really liked Halo Season 2 and really hope Season 3 doesn’t take another two years to come out like the rumors are circulating it will.

#5: Silent Hill Ascension Chapter 14 “Revelation”

It’s been a few weeks and I’m about three episodes behind on Silent Hill Ascension, so let’s dive into this trash.

Faith almost convinces Krista to gouge her own eyeball out, and of course she’s happy to oblige because everyone in this universe is either a psycho or a moron. Eric makes the ingenious observation that his child holding a knife and advocating self-harm is pretty messed up. Rachel finally confesses that Xavier is dead, to which the Foundation is initially pissed that she’d dare to kill him just because he tried to murder her. But within about 30 seconds they’re like “well he was a violent asshole so maybe he did have it coming.”

Rachel learns that Faith’s repeated sentence is a prayer by a faction of The Foundation that disappeared a long time ago. This faction endorses the Withering and abducts children for their rituals called The Herald. Kinda like The Foundation. Rachel has an “oh shit” moment and realizes they probably took Faith and scrambled her brains. My favorite part of Rachel’s story is when she gets pissed that Krista offered to punish Faith. Lady, your daughter is running around with ritual knives trying to get people to mutilate themselves, Krista would have been justified knocking her head off.

Krista finally acknowledges the rust world only 14 episodes in, and decides Xavier was right and everyone needs to kill themselves ASAP. Because the rituals in this show have gone so well up until now. Rachel goes to Nora who doesn’t beat her ass despite several episodes of Rachel accusing Nora of being the one who abducted Faith. Rachel kindly asks if she can kidnap Nora again and take her back to the Foundation, and of course she obliges.

Nora lasts about 30 seconds in the Foundation building before deciding she’s tired of this bullshit and leaves. Rachel accuses What’s-Her-Face of being a Herald member and promptly gets kicked out herself. A spoopy demon follows her.

Britt is in the hospital now and tells Astrid to keep her psychopath son away from her, on account of him trying to kill her. Britt may just be the most level-headed person in this show. Britt wakes up in the hospital to discover she’s actually in the spooky demon world, only not. The nurse is a hilariously awful player character with headphones and sunglasses in a dark hospital. Evil Britt shows up again demanding that Britt bring her pills. Delicious, delicious pills.

Orson meanwhile wakes up from his nap proclaiming that the lady was present. Astrid meets with the detective over their shared grief and belief they will face the darkness together, by which I mean when Astrid drowns Orson in a bathtub and then throws a toaster in for good measure because her son is a single braincell future serial killer. Astrid wants to hypnotize Orson so she can extract his memories and figure out where he went for those, uh…days. Weeks. Months? I still have no clue how much time has transpired in this show.

Astrid decides it’s worth the risk, because the TV only shows static and her only source of entertainment is gone now that Orson isn’t eating paint chips anymore. Orson pulls Astrid into the fire world where she finds Rachel and the two are chased by a spoopy demon monster. I guess this is to set up a finale where Astrid and Rachel gather their families and friends to fight off the demons. Britt convinces What’s-His-Face to hide his pills from her, which I assume is a player voted outcome.

And that’s another week in the wraps. Konami really deserves this show for how badly they treat their IPs.