Ricky Church on Marvel Studios’ X-Men ’97…
When X-Men ’97 was first announced in 2021, the news was met with much excitement yet also some amount of trepidation. Fans of the iconic and beloved X-Men: The Animated Series had many questions about this revival: what would it look like? Would it keep its predecessor’s serious themes? Which modern stories could they cover? And most importantly, how could they keep the X-Men relevant in today’s world? Could it say anything of significance or would it just be a nostalgic romp?
I began reviewing X-Men ’97 when it premiered, but unfortunately a busy schedule kept me from reviewing the episodes in a consistent and timely manner. Nevertheless, I kept watching and found the great start X-Men ’97 began with only kept getting better, sticking the landing with a powerfully emotional, character driven, deeply thematic and action-packed finale. X-Men ’97 not only answered all the questions above but far exceeded expectations by pushing the boundaries of what a superhero animation could do and where the X-Men could go from here. To put it bluntly, X-Men ’97 is the best thing Marvel Studios has produced in years.
Despite the fact the series picks up a year after the original X-Men ended and heavily relies on that continuity, it is not a time capsule or a trip laden with member-berries that repeat favourite stories or utilize moments that have become memes in the 25 years since it concluded. Nor does it stay stagnant like the X-Men live-action films, which, though they are popular even with the vast differences in quality from film to film, barely scratched the surface of what the X-Men mean to its fanbase and what could be accomplished in telling their stories.
Instead, what fans received was something much more stellar and, as many of the best X-Men stories do, reflect our own society. X-Men ’97 opens with mutants being increasingly more accepted around the world than they were when the original series ended due to the apparent assassination of Professor Charles Xavier, garnering public sympathy to the mutants’ plight and making steps toward Xavier’s dream of co-existence. That doesn’t stop vocal elements of society to keep fighting against mutantkind, believing them to be freaks and that, as the three-part finale is named, tolerance is extinction. What unfolds throughout the season is a massive crack in this facade as the X-Men and mutants tragically discover for all the in-roads they’ve made there are even bigger instigators and powers behind them than just a bigoted vocal minority. It calls to mind many of the problems we’ve seen in the past decade and our own shattering of reality.
Flashback to the early 2010s: Women are treated with much more respect in the workforce and at home than at any time in our history. Just a few years later comes the #MeToo movement, highlighting that for all the accomplishments women have achieved, they are still subjected to a vast amount of harassment, abuse and sexism. Racism seemed to be lessening, what with America having their first Black President and people of colour getting better opportunities in work and society. Then came Black Lives Matter, a harsh reminder of the inequality Black people face around the world. And finally the gay rights movement, how despite gay marriage becoming legalized in many countries LGBT people are still facing intense condemnation and acts of violence with the arguments shifting over to trans people and drag queens.
It was this aspect that influenced showrunner Beau DeMayo, a queer Black writer, to craft X-Men ’97 out of the many tragedies we’ve witnessed lately, especially from a queer perspective. The season’s fifth episode, ‘Remember It’, saw the island mutant nation of Genosha being formally recognized by and admitted into the UN with the entire populace celebrating only for the island to come under attack a few hours later by a Sentinel monstrosity, destroying nearly all of the island and murdering millions of people, including beloved X-Men member Gambit. This terrible sequence may recall 9/11 for some viewers, but DeMayo drew from the tragic Pulse shooting in 2016, a famous gay nightclub in Orlando celebrated by the LGBT. With just this one episode, X-Men ’97 showed it was not afraid to tackle incredibly dark themes and take both the characters and audience to new, exciting and tragic places.
That feeling of darkness and overwhelm only continued as it was revealed some elements in worldwide governments (as well as the greater Marvel supervillain community) had a hand in backing the plan for Genosha’s genocide, a plan perpetrated by the mutant-Sentinel hybrid Bastion who flat-out states Genosha “wasn’t genocide. It was time management” to prevent mutants outnumbering humanity. By the time of the finale, Bastion can’t be jotted down as just another power-hungry supervillain, but can be read as someone who tried to hide his mutant powers as a child and came to hate and fear that side of himself due to his family, pushing all the negative feelings about himself onto the mutant community itself. Even Xavier says that had Bastion’s mother not been so fearful of mutants, he would have been among the first children Xavier took into his school and trained with the original five X-Men.
However, the strength of the series does not come in how dark the story was or what real-world events may have inspired them, but on the focus of the characters. If someone has only watched the X-Men films they can be forgiven in thinking Wolverine, Xavier and Magneto were the main characters of the franchise as the films often revolved around them even in an ensemble. If nothing else, the show brought it back to the core idea of the X-Men as both a team and a found family, working together and treating each other as siblings or cousins due not only because of their beliefs, but for the simple reason that they choose to do so. Cyclops and Jean Grey go through a transformation themselves as they become parents to a baby boy, Storm remarks on how she sees Jean as a sister, Gambit highlights his love for Rogue despite her inability to touch him due to her powers, that his feelings “go deeper than skin.”
Even Magneto, the X-Men’s archnemesis, undergoes quite an arc as he leaves behind his villainous ways to lead the X-Men per Xavier’s wishes, trying to commit to his friend’s dream of co-existence rather than superiority. It is only when Magneto witnesses the lengths humanity will go to destroy mutants, including having him literally in chains watching the 24-hour news cycle of Genosha’s destruction, that Magneto reverts back to violence after having lost his faith in Xavier’s dream.
Perhaps none get more of a ‘redemption’ than Cyclops who, after being punted to the side in the films and has made some controversial decisions in the last decade of X-Men comics, finally gets the respect he deserves through his ability to lead, his compassion and, most importantly, his mistakes and owning up to them, allowing him to grow into a better person and leader. The same goes for Storm, who loses her godlike powers in an anti-mutant attack, but regains them as she confronts her personal demons and comes out the other side more committed to her family than ever before. And Gambit just shows how much of a cool person he is as, in the face of his heartbreak, he’s willing to let Rogue go so she can be happy and ultimately sacrifices himself in a very tragic but epic way to save the rest of Genosha.
There’s also the fact that many of the original X-Men voice actors came back to reprise their roles, diving back in as if no time had passed while the newcomers made the roles their own while still honouring the originals. Even the original voice actors who couldn’t reprise their roles due to how much their voices have changed were given significant cameos or roles as other characters. Don’t even get me started on the gorgeous animation that remained in style to the 90s series, but improved on it with how emotive the characters were or how cinematic the action scenes played out. One sequence involving Nightcrawler tops his excellent opening sequence from X2. It just shows how much love and respect the team behind X-Men ’97 have not just for the original show, but for X-Men as a whole.
X-Men ’97 is nothing but a magical, exciting and emotional piece of television. In an age where revivals of old TV series are a dime a dozen that seem more like a meaningless cash grab (looking at you Dexter: Original Sin), X-Men ’97 is the example to be set on how to continue a beloved and iconic series, pushing it forward for a modern audience. It’s a show that wears its heart on its sleeve and challenges its viewers with its hefty drama, an impressive feat considering it could have been just another superhero beat-em-up adventure that Marvel has been prone to crank out lately. Instead, X-Men ’97 takes the already terrific formula of X-Men: The Animated Series and builds upon it, reminding us of the power of the mutant heroes and the strength we can have if we just worked together.
SEE ALSO: Ranking The Best Episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series
The first season of X-Men ’97 is available to stream now on Disney+.
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
