It's Jubilee's 18th birthday! When Magneto refuses to let her celebrate her way, she and Roberto end up sucked into a video game sent to her by an old foe. Meanwhile, Storm spends time with Forge as she adjusts to life without her powers.
Episode Synopsis
It's Jubilee's eighteenth birthday, and she feels like heading out to the arcade to celebrate. Unfortunately, Magneto — ever the killjoy — balks at the young X-Man spending precious time on frivolities when they could spend time training in the Danger Room. As she vents to Roberto about how stuck-up the X-Men's new leader was, their attention turns to a new video game console sitting in her room: the Motendo. Deciding to spend some time playing, she turns on the Motendo, only for Jubilee and Roberto to get tied up in wires and transmitted into the world of the game...
Virtual Sentinels and Genosha soldiers attack them, only for the game's NPCs to vanish due to a mysterious savior. Jubilee is then confronted by an old nemesis: Mojo, the despotic ruler of Mojoworld who maintains his vice grip over his citizenry through deadly displays of bread and circuses. In this case, Mojo is banking on the popularity of video games to entertain his victims. Jubilee is pleasantly surprised that she is the lead heroine of Mojo's new game and is tempted by the prospect of living out her glory days forever in virtual reality, but the reality of the situation rears its ugly head when Mojo reminds them that dying in this game means dying for real.
As Jubilee finds herself cornered by virtual Savage Land denizens, the mysterious helper tops off her health before she and Roberto to virtual Asteroid M, face-to-face with virtual Magneto. Roberto's health is driven to near-zero before Jubilee figures out the boss's attack pattern and defeats it. It appears that Roberto's about to die, but fortunately an extra life token appears, which Jubilee gives to him.
As virtual Magneto rises again, the mysterious helper pulls Jubilee and Roberto to safety and reveals herself as Abcissa, a virtual recreation of Jubilee from the Motendo game's beta test. Abcissa was the last remaining beta character and knew the game's systems inside and out, sneaking into the finished product. She gives Jubilee some encouraging words about facing the future instead of living in the past. When Mojo uploads himself into the game, both Jubilee and Abcissa join forces to defeat him and help Jubilee and Roberto escape back to the real world, where they share an empassioned kiss.
Meanwhile, out in the Texan desert, Storm becomes better acquainted with Forge. Forge's mutant power allows him to use more of his brain to unlock his creative abilties that allow him to invent anything, from bison chili to his prosthetic limbs, built to replace those lost when he fought as a soldier. Forge hopes to use his powers to provide a means of reversing the effects of the X-Cutioner's ray gun, which left Storm divested of her ability to control the elements.
The device Forge built to restore her powers, however, does not appear to work. That night, Forge confides in Storm his reasons for reaching out to her: after losing his limbs, the US government approached him with help him in exchange for building the mutant power-restraining collars — technology that led to Storm being left powerless. Forge wanted to help Storm not only as a means to atone, but because he had grown to admire Storm. When Storm rejects his confession of love, she storms off, only to be confronted by a demonic figure who aims to sustain itself on her despair...
Tropes:
- Adaptational Backstory Change: In the original comics, Forge actually made the power-stealing gun, while here, he only designed the power-nullifying technology that would ultimately lead to the gun. However, he's still guilty of working with the government on technology to remove mutant powers.
- Adaptational Distillation: While "Motendo" is an original story, "Lifedeath Pt. 1" is an adaptation of Lifedeath that segues into The Fall of the Mutants.
- Adaptational Heroism: In the comics, Abcissa was an actual future version of Jubilee who chose to become Mojo's slave. Here, she is a replica of Jubilee who rebels against Mojo and helps Jubilee and Roberto escape from the Motendo world.
- Anti-Escapism Aesop: The "Motendo" segment delivers this, with Jubilee being tempted to stay in the fake Motendo reality because she could live a life of nothing but familiar adventures and battles and not deal with the unpredictable, ever-changing reality. Seeing her alternate self develop her powers with age and experience but admit that living in the Motendo is not ideal convinces Jubilee to accept the reality of her world.
- Art Shift: When viewed by Mojo, the video game scenes are animated in 16-Bit style to emulate the graphics of 1990s-era games. When the scene appears from Jubilee and Roberto's POV it switches back to the show's usual animation style.
- The Atoner: Part of why Forge wants to help Storm is because the power-suppressing technology that caused her loss was developed from designs he gave the American government.
- Bad Boss: Mojo's 'solution' to his tech team not being able to purge Abcissa? He killed them.Mojo: Patch that bug, Spiral!
Spiral: This is what you get when you kill tech support.
Mojo: FOR FAILING TO KILL THE BUG! - Big Damn Kiss: Once they're freed from the game, the episode ends with Jubilee and Roberto kissing.
- Birthday Episode: This episode takes place on Jubilee's 18th birthday.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Jubilee spends her birthday fighting for her life in Mojo's video game. On a less dire note, Magneto rejects the idea of celebrating her birthday at an arcade in favor of a Danger Room training session.
- Bland-Name Product: Motendo is effectively Mojo's version of Nintendo, with the console itself looking like a Sega Genesis.
- Body Horror: Mojo isn't the most handsome X-villain to begin with, but his ratings slump has led to a loss of power that has made him sickly and emaciated. His sagging skin sinking into his mechanized support is an even more grotesque sight than his normal self. He releases the clamps to make himself "normal" again as the episode continues.
- Breather Episode: The breezy and comedic "Motendo" segment gives a breather after the crushing dramas in the previous two episodes. Then "Lifedeath" returns to the heavy drama.
- Call-Back:
- The levels of the Motendo game are references to major arcs from the original series including: "Slave Island", "Days of Future Past", and the "Sanctuary" two-parter. Roberto mentions watching news coverage of the "Sanctuary" events with his family. Mojo's recap of his past involvement with the X-Men shows scenes from "Mojovision", namely Wolverine fighting robot duplicates of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard.
- Storm's claustrophobia is touched on again as she breaths heavily and noticeably sweats while inside Forge's machine.
- The Cameo:
- In the Genosha level based on "Slave Island", the enslaved mutants shown are Thunderbird or Warpath (John/James Proudstar), Sunfire (Shiro Yoshida), the Blob (Frederick Dukes) and Domino (Neena Thurman), who appeared in the original "Slave Island" episode.
- In the Savage Land level, the boss is Sauron, who appeared in the Savage Land arc and was one of the main villains alongside Garokk in the "Savage Land, Savage Heart" two-parter.
- The A Different World promo pic has Northstar and post-series addition Darwin.
- Category Traitor: Just like in the comics, Forge had helped the United States government develop mutant power-suppressing technology, which would lead to the power-dampening collars and, eventually, the X-Cutioner's depowering shotgun.
- Cliffhanger: "Lifedeath - Part 1" ends with Storm in the Adversary's grip as the demon promises not to waste this "meal" of her negative thoughts.
- Combination Attack: Jubilee and Abcissa finish off Mojo together with a combined plasma blast.
- Continuity Nod:
- In Forge's basement, a photo of his X-Factor team can be glimpsed in the background.
- When Ororo asks Forge if he created the Genoshan slave collars, he explains he didn't, but they were based on early designs of his that were co-opted by "some scientist in Scotland", namely Dr. Adler, as established way back in the original series episode "The Cure".
- Dude, Not Funny!: When Magneto rejects Jubilee's idea of celebrating her birthday in favor of training, Morph utters that someone's parents didn't gift him a pony for his sweet sixteen. Magneto countering that his parents died when he was that old promptly shuts them up.
- Evolving Credits: Magneto attacking the X-Men is replaced by Jubilee defending Longshot from Mojo, and Emma Frost blocking Charles' telepathy, accompanied by Sebastian Shaw, Harry Leland and Donald Pierce. Bishop has been removed from the cast list after returning to the future in the previous episode (the shot of him falling through time still appears later in the credits), while Jean Grey appears sporting a ponytail like in the original series' credits, as opposed to her clone, Madelyne Pryor, who let her hair loose in the intro sequence.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: During Jean's board in the opening credits, her hair is back in a ponytail after being loose for the first three episodes. This change represents that this is now the real Jean back with the team.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: As the camera pans across Jubilee's room as Mojo is taking control, we see a plush toy of Longshot, Mojo's main adversary.
- Foreshadowing: Spiral's cameo (courtesy of Morph) in the previous episode retroactively becomes foreshadowing of Mojo's return.
- Formerly Fat: Mojo is initially shown to have lost a lot of weight, leaving his skin sagging. He gains his weight back in an instant when Motendo proves popular among the masses of Mojoworld.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- An owl face can be seen in background details throughout "Lifedeath", from a constellation in the sky to the side of a mountain, before the Adversary appears in the form of an owl demon.
- Among the pictures on Forge's wall is one where he's with someone who's clearly supposed to be Bastion
.
- Future Badass: Abcissa is this to Jubilee, despite not actually being from the future. To test out his Motendo, Mojo made digital replicas of Jubilee and Roberto. Abcissa is a Jubilee who spent a long time in the game realm and found a glitch that allowed her to hack the game. As a result of her constant battles, she's developed her powers further, including using them to skate around.
- The Game Come to Life: Jubilee and Roberto are trapped in a video game created by Mojo that is based on the X-Men's adventures.
- Genre Savvy: Gamer Chick Jubilee is very familiar with the mechanics of video games which gives her an edge in fighting through Motendo.
- Genre Shift: In-universe. When Mojo's ratings slip, causing actual loss of power for him, he tries his hand at video games to win back the crowd in his realm.
- Growing Up Sucks: Jubilee struggles to deal with the new change in her life, like Magneto becoming leader, Scott and Jean's family troubles, and Storm losing her powers and running away. She is tempted to stay in the Motendo because it's the same familiar, unchanging reality, but Abcissa, a Jubilee who went through that life, convinces her that growing up isn't scary and it's better to live in the real world than a fake one.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The episode goes from Jubilee and Roberto being trapped in a video game by Mojo, to Forge trying to help Storm get her powers back. To highlight the shift even further, both segments in the episode have their own title.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Mojo is defeated in the game and ends up getting fried like he warned Jubilee and Roberto they would be.
- Indignant Slap: When Forge admits his feelings for Storm and says he loves her, right after she learns of his past involvement in the government's anti-mutant protocols, she slaps him in the face.
- Innocently Insensitive: When Magneto opts to not let Jubilee celebrate her birthday at the arcade, Morph snarks, "Somebody's daddy didn't get them a pony for their sweet sixteen." Magneto reminds Morph that his parents died when he was a child.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Magneto opts to schedule a Danger Room training session instead of letting Jubilee celebrate her birthday how she chooses, believing that controlling her powers will help guarantee that Jubilee sees several more birthdays. Seeing Abcissa's greater mastery of their powers, Jubilee admits that Magneto was right that she does need to grow up and take her training more seriously. Abcissa agrees, but jokingly clarifies that Magneto was still wrong about video games being a waste of time.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When defeated, Mojo says he'll be back in the reboot.
- Love Confession: Forge tells Storm that he loves her, but because she's just learned he contributed to the technology that robbed her of her powers, she slaps him in the face.
- Multi-Part Episode: The second half of the episode is the first part of a two-part episode, though the second half won't air for another two weeks.
- Mythology Gag:
- The Motendo is a treasure trove of references to previous X-Men video games, namely the Arcade game and the Sega Genesis game. The console itself, looks just like a Sega Genesis with the 1993 X-Men game plugged in.
- The first level of the game based on Jubilee's memories starts in New York, with the classic Days of Future Past wanted poster in the background.
- The arcade cabinet Mojo uses to transport into the Motendo is a near replica of the coveted six player version of the X-Men (1992) beat 'em up by Konami. The only difference is it has Jean Grey as a playable character instead of Dazzler.
- One Sentinel appears in the game in an orange and blue color palette based on its alternate colors from Marvel vs. Capcom 2. This also doubles as a Meme Acknowledgement due to that palette (dubbed the "Mango" or "New York Knicks" Sentinel) featuring prominently in the Fighting Game Community video "mahvel baybee!".
- One photo in Forge's possession shows him not only with Dr. Adler, but also someone with the distinctive black-with-pink outfit of Bastion.
- New Media Are Evil: Parodied: Under the show's pretense of it still being produced in the 90's, Mojo comments that his pivot to video games is him adopting the latest in brain-rotting technology.
- Out of Focus: Spiral, despite being Mojo's main henchwoman and a formidable villain in her own right who always got at least one fight scene in previous appearances, contributes little to the plot here and is relegated to background support, likely in the interest of time since "Motendo" is just one half of a double feature.
- Predecessor Casting Gag: Abcissa is Jubilee's Alternate Self and is voiced by Alyson Court, who was the voice of Jubilee in the original series.note
- Sexy Discretion Shot: Depending on how you read Jubilee's Big Damn Kiss with Roberto at the end of "Motendo," it's possible she opted for a more old-fashioned celebration of reaching adulthood, given that they were sitting on a bed and went farther down onto it as the scene blacked out.
- Ship Tease: Magneto not only beats Gambit to fetching Rogue some coffee, but seems to know how she takes it better than he does.
- Shout-Out:
- The Motendo console provides several.
- The name is obviously one to Nintendo.
- The console itself is based on the original model of the Sega Genesis, with the controllers being identical.
- The Motendo logo is based on the North American Sega Genesis logo, with the red coloring of the iconic Nintendo logo.
- A phone booth as a portal to and from a virtual world appears to be a nod to The Matrix. Mojo informs Jubilee and Roberto that if they die in the game, they die in real life, just like how the Matrix operated.
- A number of popular TV shows are given nods, including Who's the Boss?, A Different World and Divorce Court.
- Abcissa shapes her plasmoids into a disc and throws it to cut off Mojo's legs, similar to Krillin's Destructo Disc/Kienzan
- The first time Jubilee spots Abcissa, she calls her "Hot Topic stalker", in reference to the pop-culture (including video games) fashion-boutique chain of stores.
- The Motendo console provides several.
- Skewed Priorities: After being rescued from a Sentinel's grip, Roberto takes a moment to check his hair in a car mirror and refuses to use his powers because of the risk that he might get caught on camera and expose his mutant status to his parents.
- The Starscream: Spiral relishes it after Mojo gets fried and defeated.
- Tough Spikes and Studs: Abcissa is a replica of Jubilee aged to adulthood and with greater mastery of their powers. She also wears spiky pauldrons as part of her outfit.
- Two Shorts: The first episode in the series to do this, with “Motendo” taking up the first half of the episode and the second half being the first part of “Lifedeath”.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Storm is furious when she discovers Forge created the original version of the power-suppressing technology.
- Written-In Absence: Jubilee mentions that Scott and Jean are in Washington D.C. to deal with Genosha being inducted into the UN, explaining why neither of them appear in this episode.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Dying in the Motendo game causes players to die in real life. Roberto nearly dies after running out of health until Jubilee discovers an extra life planted by Abcissa.
