In one of the last delayed reviews on the summer period it’s time to look at X-Men 97’s eagerly anticipated second season, which felt much more like the original series than Season 1 did, but that’s not really a complement as the previous season blew me away by being so much more. Oh well, let’s take a look!
The show’s opener sees Forge head to 3960 AD to pick up Wolverine, Storm, Morph, Cyclops, and Jean Grey, the latter of whom want to stay behind to see their son Nathan grow up and raise him right, despite knowing his harsh upbringing leads to Cable, who has saved the timeline many times. Local guide and important comics character Mother Askani turns out to be the one responsible for both pulling certain X-Men into her present (their future) and into the distant past, all to help Nathan/Cable destroy Apocalypse. Episodes 3 and 4 continue this tale as Magneto, Prof. X, Beast, Rogue, and Nightcrawler all meet a young En Sabah Nur in 3000 BC and try to steer him on a path to become good and change history that way, though Bishop wants to just take everyone back to the 90s as a change to the timeline that big would be too risky. Magneto destroys their way home though, so they all go along with it. They help Sabah Nur take on Rama-Tut (who is still depicted as Kang the Conqueror, despite not being an X-Men character, which is nice) but instead Nur gets caught up in Tut’s future tech, meets a Celestial and gains his omnipotent powers, which he then later uses to kill Magneto in front of Xavier and generally history continues on.
Look at Nightcrawler, absolutely loving making the cool pose. And so he should!
I’ll mention episode 3 here as it focuses on Cable creating the X-Force team comprised of himself, Jubilee and Sunspot to start with, and they take on X-Factor, the government led team of Mutants that did feature towards the end of the original series and includes Cyclops’ brother Havok (though neither still know the other’s true identity, weirdly!) and Polaris. This involved a modified version of the intro and a really fun Jubilee escape sequence, so it was probably the highlight of the season, honestly. Episode 4 has Wolverine and Morph collect a bunch of Weapon X experiments and together they battle the Brood, insectoid aliens, and Wolverine ends up with his adamantium skeleton back. Kind of a rushed plot point that one, but I did enjoy how Morph became somewhat disillusioned with Wolverine as the episode played out, calling him out on his one track mind. Episode 6 adapts the “Danger room becomes sentient and creates a female android body to fight and “train” the X-Men with” storyline that I wasn’t really familiar with until coincidentally Danger being revealed as a playable character in the fighting game Tokkon just a short while before that episode aired. It ends with Polaris switching sides and joining the X-Men then helping them defeat Danger, but the US ban the X-Men as a result, forcing Xavier to rebrand them X-Corp. and base them out of the ruins of Genosha. … This is adapting the 90s comics alright, lots of spin-off teams with X in the title…
Polaris certainly gets a lot of focus this series. I don’t actually remember her appearing in the comics much, but I have always dipped in and out, so…
Lastly in the pre-Spoiler Section Episode 7 features everyone heading back to the Savage Land when anti-Mutant protestor Graydon Creed is kidnapped by a man called Exodus who takes him there to be executed. Colossus is among those who follow Exodus and is on board with the execution idea but helps Exodus agree to a trial, with Nightcrawler as the defendant of the man who wishes his kind dead. He makes a good case but all hell breaks loose anyway and in the fray Creed shoots Exodus dead, leaving Nightcrawler to teleport him to the frozen wastes and leave him there as punishment. Oh and during this Apocalypse gets his hands of Gambit’s corpse and looks to revive it as one of his horsemen, the plot twist everyone knew was coming, but still wanted to see!
The animation was fine, but it definitely felt like what it was: a series that was half someone else’s idea and half a new guy who wanted to take things in his own direction even if it meant altering what had already been put in place…
Overall Thoughts:
The X-Men assemble! … Oh wait, that’s the other guys…
X-Men 97 Season 2 had some fun moments and brought me right back to the 90s comics with all the spin-off teams running around but you couldn’t get away from the storylines feeling very rocky, like they were heading in one direction and then split off into several directions without settling on one. The ending felt quite rushed too… Hopefully Season 3, which will be entirely guided by one guy again, will be more focused and enjoyable, though sadly the complete bastard in charge of Season 1 seems to have had a better handle on the property by the looks of it…
In the two part finale Gambit returns to his home and uses the power of the X-Ternal as well as Apocalypse to brainwash his friends and family, and soon Nightcrawler and Rogue when the X-Men and X-Force both arrive to stop him. Rogue and Prof. X eventually manage to free him from Apocalypse’s control (after he killed the X-Ternal, which is a big deal really, looking back on the original series…) but in the final episode it doesn’t stick, causing Apocalypse to fully control Gambit’s body and begin attacking the assembled mutants. During this Rogue enters Apocalypse’s ship and talks with the Eternal who gave him power all those years ago and gains the same power in exchange for her own life. She arrives and expels Apocalypse from Gambit’s body and saves him, but to her surprise her new power fades without her life ending. It’s soon revealed that Nightcrawler went in after Rogue left and exchanged his life for hers and this time it stuck. Everyone is happy to have Rogue and Gambit back, but obviously mourn the loss of Nightcrawler.
Something about the Apocalypse-ised Gambit still having an unshaven chin just looks off… Otherwise, fun fusion dance result!
Oh and in a mid-credits scene Mystique kills X-Factor head Cooper and assumes her identity as… *sigh*… Creed is elected President, which means next season we’ll probably get lots of Trump comparisons and “clever” references that I really don’t want to see right now…