“Two Futures” has a darkest timeline that looks too familiar.
Also: the only character in history ever voiced byWhoopi GoldbergandMargot Kidder.
Wheeler has been a Planeteering for almost a year, and he’s ready to stop saving the world.
A scene from the ‘Captain Planet’ episode ‘Two Futures’.TBS
Gaia shows him what will happen if he gives up.
Extreme weather becomes regular weather.
you’re able to’t walk outside without protective equipment.
Happy Earth Day!.TBS
It is a dark, terrible, unimaginable tomorrow: the 2020s.
I live in California, a sinking fireball on a good day.
Last year we suffered one catastrophic blaze after another, and the sky was dark at noon.
This bleak frontdrop had an even worse backdrop: global pandemic, the Amazon aflame.
It was a fine cultural moment to ponder great works of apocalyptic art.
I did not do that.
I rewatched “Two Futures” this week, because you have to celebrate Earth Day somehow.
The years have not been kind, to the show or to us.
The Planeteers are all very dependable, which is how old people often imagine young people.
though I recommend skipping to part 2.
Wheeler winds up in a wholeIt’s a Wonderful Lifething.
He wants to stop being a Planeteer, to have never even been a Planeteer.
Gaia sends him to a de-Wheelerized 2026 to show him the consequences of inaction.
He arrives in a flooded Manhattan.
“What happened to my home?”
“What happened to the world?!?!”
Wheeler takes a tour of the general ruination.
His fellow Planeteers are all hermits, or worse.
Gi (Janice Kawaye) lives along a hurricane-wracked coastline.
(The location is “Asia”; don’t trustCaptain Planetto get too specific.)
Overfishing and pollution have driven marine life to oblivion and beyond.
“It’s too late for this world,” she says.
“It’s all I can do to help a few dolphins.”
In Africa, Kwame (LeVar Burton!)
hunkers down in “the only oasis in the region.”
Deforestation took away all the rainfall, and now he’s tormented by land grabbers with energy rifles.
Ma-Ti (Scott Menville) lives in a sludge city that used to be his beloved rain forest.
Everything strident and on-message about the rest ofCaptain Planetruns brilliantly off the rails here.
I’ve never forgotten Future Linka’s total horror when she sees Wheeler for the first time.
“Where are your protective clothes and sunglasses?”
The atmosphere is poisonous, the sun blinding.
it’s possible for you to’t walk outside without safety gear.
This was very scary 30 years ago, and sounds disappointingly normal today.
“‘Save the Earth’?
You poor lunatic!”
Linka declares, right before she tries to lock Wheeler in an asylum for pathological hopefulness.
Anyone lucky enough to live there gets to spend their wasteful lives wallowing in luxury.
The rest of the world burns and drowns and starves.
“Two Futures” offers another possibility, a bright utopia where pollution is a distant memory.
Hey, we’re not in 2026 yet.
It’s too late for so much, but we can still help a few dolphins.
