Cartoon Review: Wolverine and the X-Men 5

"Thieves Gambit"

Review
Coming into this new X-Men series I a bit skeptical about, especially with Wolverine taking priority over the title of the series. Now with five episodes in to this new series I can see that my skepticism wasn't completely warranted. Sure Wolverine is the star of the show but it is clear that this is a show created by fans of the X-Men. Both Chris Yost and Craig Kyle are no strangers to the X-Men universe since they were writers on X-Men: Evolution and have written New X-Men and currently writing X-Force. And even though the Wolverine we get in this series is a much more toned down version from the one we get in the comics or in the Hulk vs movie (which is in the same continuity of this series) Yost, Kyle, and the other writers have been able to go around this and still provide a lot of energetic fight scenes.

This episode deviated from the previous four episodes since we didn't see any "new" member being brought back to the X-Men. In truth this episode felt much more like the old Marvel Team-Up comic were we see two heroes starting of fighting one another only to team up for a mission to take down the bad guy. Though we didn't see the X-Men as a team, other than few second shots of Kitty, Emma, and Beast in their individual rooms, this was a good introduction to fan favorite Gambit.

I never been a big fan of Gambit, since he like Wolverine became way to overexposed due to being a fan favorite, so it was a good move to make him part of the Thieves Guild and with no previous affiliation to the X-Men. This works much better for a character like Gambit and will probably build towards an episode were we see Gambit and some of the X-Men take on the Thieves Guild in future episodes.

Though I find it weird that the Sentinel robot Wolverine keeps fighting looks more like a Spider-Slayer than an actual Sentinel it is good to see that we get to see Wolverine let loose on these Sentinels since we wont be seeing him going all berserk on actual soldiers or villains.

It will be interesting to see how Senator Kelly and Bolivar Trask plans to to destroy the mutants will play out in future episodes as the average citizens continue to feel threaten by mutants. And from the looks of it we will be seeing Master Mold make his introduction.

Overall this was a good episode that introduced a fan favorite character that deviates from the normal team building episodes we have gotten in the past. Though I hope that we don't get to many episodes of Wolverine acting by himself and we get to see more of the rest of the X-Men play major roles in future episodes.

Episode Rating - 9.1/10