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July 8, 2026

X-Men ’97 – “Rise of Apocalypse: Part 1”

By Joe
Original premiere date July 1, 2026.

The premiere episode for season two of X-Men ’97 took us to the far off future where Apocalypse reigns supreme. The second followed that one up with a story set in the present time of the series: 1997 (Duh!). Now, for the third episode of this three-part premiere we head to ancient Egypt to meet up with the rest of the X-Men, only they’re not alone for in this time is the mutant En Sabah Nur who the X-Men know will one day become Apocalypse. They have been unknowingly sent here against their will by Mother Askani to prevent the rise of Apocalypse, but just how they’re supposed to go about such is a matter of debate. Beyond that is the debate of if it should happen at all?

The episode opens with the X-Men who were sent to the future now back in the ruins of the X-Mansion. They returned expecting to find the team Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith) was sent to retrieve there as well, but when no one appears they become concerned. This is time travel, after all, so the idea that they have to wait for their return doesn’t make sense if they were all set to return to a specific moment in time. All they can do is wait though, because Forge (Gil Birmingham) is unable to get a reading on their time bracelets. In 3,000 BCE, En Sabah Nur (Adetokumboh M’Cormack) is preparing to lead his forces against those of Rama-Tut (John de Lancie) who is a vicious ruler and slaver that once possessed Nur. Alongside Nur is Baal (Michael Dorn), the man he looks up to as a surrogate father for he is the one credited with rescuing Nur from a life of slavery. Nur is, as far as we know, the world’s first mutant with the tell-tale sign being his pale skin and blue lips. He also possesses incredible strength and durability and is something of a super man which is what makes him a natural leader of other former slaves.

The X-Men have been sent to the past to stop En Sabah Nur from becoming Apocalypse.

The X-Men trapped in this past are under no delusions who En Sabah Nur is, or rather, who he will become. Charles (Ross Marquand) feels their presence in the past is an affront to nature and they should do everything in their power to not interfere and instead focus on getting back home. Magneto (Matthew Waterson), on the other hand, sees this as an opportunity to set Nur on a different path. If he can instill in him the values of Charles Xavier then perhaps Xavier’s dream of human and mutant coexistence can come true before he’s even born to dream it himself. He views this as penance for his hand in what happened on Genosha, but Charles is not so certain this is the correct path. What no one seems to suggest is simply destroying En Sabah Nur before he can become Apocalypse. Such is the quagmire of the time traveler – if you can prevent an atrocity by taking out the orchestrator of such before it happens should you? En Sabah Nur as he exists in this moment in time is not the same man who committed countless atrocities as Apocalypse. Can he be sentenced for a crime he has not committed? This question doesn’t come up in this episode, but perhaps it will soon enough.

This isn’t the Egypt you read about in your textbooks.

As for the X-Men stranded here which includes Beast (George Buza), Rogue (Lenore Zann), and Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough) in addition to Magneto and Charles, their journey home is perhaps an impossibility. Beast is no Forge, but he has spent time working with Bishop’s time traveling device and has some knowledge of how it works. The problem is acquiring the power and resources needed to create a time machine and to do that they look to the forces of Rama-Tut. We may be in ancient Egypt, but the tech of Tut is certainly not of this era. He attacks with robotic minions lead by a human general named Logos (Chris Britton) and once the forces of Nur lay waste to them, the X-Men scavenge the battlefield for parts, but they’re not making much headway which is taking its toll on everyone, especially Beast. The plot takes a turn when Magneto is able to convince Nur to abandon his survival of the fittest mantra and take Logos hostage rather than kill him. With him in their clutches, Magneto hopes to convince Xavier to probe his mind and perhaps find a solution to their problems, but instead Xavier just finds more riddles. A disembodied voice that espouses a famous quote from Apocalypse appears before Charles alongside a massive, fiery, eye that looks like a galaxy being born. The presence of a shattered moon in the shape of Magneto’s helm leads me to believe this could be a foreshadowing for Onslaught, though I’ve seen some speculate that this could be a reference to Stryfe. I would have thought it was merely a vision of Apocalypse himself, but Xavier is the one who classifies this individual as a mystery and that would be a pretty lame mystery since we know that Apocalypse is the villain already in focus.

In this era, Rama-Tut rules, but I definitely wasn’t expecting to see the X-Ternal (credited as Candra) from the episode “X-Ternally Yours” to make an appearance.

The episode does end on a cliffhanger, though it’s a bit of a toothless one since these characters have quite a bit of plot armor at this point. Bishop will also make an appearance and, if anything, this cliffhanger may just explain why the X-Men were unable to rendezvous with their comrades in 1997. Perhaps we will find out the events of this episode caused the time bracelets to be damaged and the X-Men will have to seek out another way to return home. Of course, with me catching up and this going live the day part two drops that means these questions have likely already been answered (and maybe the identity of the mystery voice has as well), but I had to make sure I got my thoughts down before that episode dropped. I am guessing the technology of Rama-Tut hides a way for the team to get home and it would be a great example of circular story-telling since it was a future version of Rama-Tut that helped Bishop and the X-Men take down Apocalypse in the “Beyond Good and Evil” arc. There, he took the form of a cosmic janitor named Bender who only revealed himself to the viewer as Immortus at the end, but he’s basically a future version of Rama-Tut who is also an aspect of Kang the Conqueror. Yeah, it’s complicated.

A lot of capes in this picture.

“Rise of Apocalypse: Part 1” is a bit slower paced than the other two episodes in this three episode premiere. Being that it’s co-written by Beau DeMayo (along with JB Ballard), that’s not a surprise as he seems to like these more talky episodes and when you get Magneto and Xavier sharing scenes that tends to happen. It’s a necessary episode, though I do wonder if this is really how I want to see Apocalypse portrayed. I like origin stories and villain ones can be a lot of fun, but Apocalypse as a Spartacus figure is hard to square. Are we supposed to have sympathy for this character? Apocalypse is a genocidal monster, I’m not sure that I want or need to know that he wasn’t always bad. This is an adaptation of Rise of Apocalypse by Terry Kavanagh and Adam Pollina so it’s not a new story, but I never read that one to know if the portrayal of En Sabah Nur was quite the same. At any rate, I’m willing to see how things progress from here and since this is only part one it does feel a little incomplete. We’ve set the table, but the meal has yet to arrive.

Previously…on X-Men ’97:

X-Men ’97 – “A Force to be Reckoned With”

The title of this post says X-Men ’97, but in some respects it should read X-Force ’97 because that’s what the opening title presents. Yes, boys and girls, we have ourselves an X-Force on television. Cable made numerous appearances in the original series, but never as the leader of X-Force. This surprised me as a…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Days of Past Future”

At last, X-Men ’97 has made its return to airwaves with not one, not two, but three episodes for the premiere which means there’s a lot to talk about. Truthfully, too much for one post which is why we need to keep things to one episode per entry as is the style of the time.…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 3”

Today, X-Men ’97 dropped the curtain on its first season and what a way to bring it to an end. Last week’s episode was a roller coaster of emotions for me. I couldn’t go into much detail of my review of “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 2” without wading into spoiler territory, so allow me…

Keep reading
by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Comics, Television

July 7, 2026

X-Men ’97 – “A Force to be Reckoned With”

By Joe
Original premiere date July 1, 2026.

The title of this post says X-Men ’97, but in some respects it should read X-Force ’97 because that’s what the opening title presents. Yes, boys and girls, we have ourselves an X-Force on television. Cable made numerous appearances in the original series, but never as the leader of X-Force. This surprised me as a kid since if you went to a toy store during that era you would find action figures featuring an X-Men cardback as well as those with an X-Force one. Cable was basically the Wolverine of that line as he received quite a few figures, though never as many as the more famous Canadian. The line lasted for a few years, but it always was less popular than the X-Men one. In my home town we had a big warehouse store that was literally located in an old warehouse that was family owned. Even though the place looked like a dump and was most associated with cheap products, the toy section was often pretty current and sometimes they would get stuff before even Toys ‘R Us. However, they would also get some of the more unwanted figures and when it came to X-Men there was a long drought because they couldn’t get rid of their X-Force figures. G.W. Bridge, Gideon, Shatterstar, and Kaine seemed to linger forever. It’s why I had a Shatterstar because he felt like the coolest of the ones available. Cable was rarely there, same for Deadpool and Fourarm. Maybe the stink of that store is what kept me out of X-Force because I think the only other X-Force figure I would own from that Toy Biz line was a later Cable who had Terminator-like tare-away flesh for some reason. And that one was given to me by my friend.

When the first season of X-Men ’97 ended with the majority of the team flung through time, but Cable remaining in 1997, it seemed like the time was now for X-Force to make its animated debut. The first episode ended with a tease as Cable (Chris Potter) is seen in the present telling two familiar faces in Archangel (Christopher Barger) and Psylocke (Naoko Mori) that they need to focus on recruitment. When the second episode, “A Force to be Reckoned With” opens, it comes as a cold open which is unusual for the show. It depicts a group of young mutants on the run being lead by some kind of energy bird to the remains of the X-Mansion. It’s in ruins, and one of the kids has an “I told you so,” attitude about the discovery because everyone knows the X-Men are gone. These kids are just the start of the cameos as this is going to be a big one for those who like to scan the background. There are more cameos in this one than there were during the segments in Genosha from the original series (and from last year’s episode, for that matter) so I’m not going to bother to list them all. These ones are rather prominent as among them are Kid Omega (Thomas Dekker) (sporting a Phoenix shirt) and Penance (Miatta Ade Lebile).

X-Factor has entered the chat.

Who are these kids running from? That would be X-Factor, the government backed version of the team that briefly showed up in the original series episode “Cold Comfort.” There, they were lead by Forge, but now they’re being directed by Val Cooper (Catherine Disher) to round up mutants in a bid to turn down the current temperature where human-mutant relations are concerned. The actual makeup of the team is still pretty much the same as we have Havok (Teddy Sears), Polaris (Carolina Ravassa), Strong Guy (Adrian Hough), Wolfsbane, and Multiple Man, the latter having no lines and thus no credited voice actor at this time. Following that scene, we catch up with Jubilee (Holly Chou) and Sunspot (Gui Agustini) at an arcade, but they’re soon visited by an old friend: Cable. Here we get the recruitment pitch, and when Jubilee asks if this team he’s putting together has a name, we smash-cut to the opening title only it’s X-Force! Each member of the team gets their own segment which is headlined by Cable and there are a lot of similar shots to the standard intro. There are throwbacks to the first season of the show as well as the original series including the scene of Cable encountering Apocalypse in his temple and one of the creation of Archangel. The ending sequence has X-Force colliding with the forces of Apocalypse with the mutant kids caught in the middle. It’s an awesome sequence that is almost sure to put a smile on the face of every viewer, even those not necessarily familiar with X-Force.

This is pretty awesome.

With the fun intro over, the rest of the episode can focus on X-Force chasing leads, the first of which concerns the horseman War (Lawrence Bayne) from the first season of the original show. He was the green guy with the bowl cut who I don’t think has ever been seen again since that episode, but Cable lets everyone know that this guy has been pretty busy spreading death and genocide wherever he goes. Our team is indeed Cable, Psylocke, Archangel, Jubilee, and Sunspot with the latter two getting a costume change. Jubilee now has her longer hair and red Generation X costume while Sunspot is sporting his X-Force blue and orange. Curiously, Archangel is back in the blue and pink which we knew from the trailers and Hasbro figure, but why he ditched his Angel look is not addressed. Psylocke is in her ninja look from the 90s and now sports a British accent despite not having one in the original series. Since this is more accurate, I can let that inconsistency slide. This is a hodgepodge assortment for X-Force, but in the confines of the animated series, I think it makes sense. The cast is already bloated and introducing the likes of Warpath, Shatterstar, and Kaine would just be like adding to the pile.

This group may not scream “X-Force,” to 90s comic readers, but for this show I think this squad makes sense.

The mission to capture and interrogate War reveals to Jubilee just how Cable envisions this squad working which stands in direct opposition of what Charles Xavier would do. Cable rationalizes them as soldiers, not students or teachers, and Xavier’s pacifist methods are not going to cut it. He’s more ruthless, and yes we do get our answer as to why the Marvel Legends Archangel comes with Cable’s gun, though I still think it was a mostly worthless inclusion. From there, the focus pivots based on what Psylocke is able to extract from War’s mind by force and telepathy to an old foe in Emma Frost (Zehra Fazal). This puts our squad on a collision course with X-Factor that also leads to Jubilee getting separated which is where the episode really kicks it into high gear.

It’s time for Jubilee to truly graduate.

During the original series, Jubilee was featured a fair amount, but often as the kid who got in over her head and needed the other X-Men to bail her out. Her most independent episode might have been “Jubilee’s Fairy Tale Theater” in which she keeps a group of students calm with a story we see acted out in animation while they wait for rescue. It’s not exactly the sort of spotlight someone like Wolverine would get. In this episode, Jubilee gets her moment as she’s captured and tasked with not just breaking out, but also freeing all of the captive mutants being held by X-Factor on what looks like a SHIELD helicarrier. It’s set to a very era appropriate song which has Beau DeMayo written all over it, but I don’t know for sure who is responsible. The sequence shows Jubilee really cut loose with her powers and skills and the nice thing was that during the new opening title we were treated to a sequence of Psylocke training Jubilee. It’s just a nice, tidy, way of saying this is something that’s been going on for a little awhile and we’re seeing the fruits of that labor on display. What I really appreciate though is that before Jubilee can bust out, we get to see Sunspot and Cable argue over what to do about her capture. Sunspot, being the heroic boyfriend, wants to set everything aside to rescue her, but Cable tells him to trust her. He knows she can take care of herself, or at least he wants to see if she can. When Jubilee does eventually cause a commotion, there’s a moment where we see Cable smile, but it’s not some cocky, “I told you so,” smile. It’s the kind of smile a teacher might feature when a student demonstrates that they’ve absorbed the material they’ve been taught. And he said they weren’t students.

I didn’t necessarily need to know where this thing came from, but it was pretty cool.

The episode does end back in the future to wrap-up the events of the first episode. In doing so, the origin of Cable’s computer cube (Rachel Kimsey) is revealed in a rather clever way. I have no idea if this is something born from the comics or if it was created for the show (this episode was written by Anthony Sellitti and Mariah Wilson), but I do like it. It also sets up the events for the third part of this season premiere where we will check in on the squad sent to the distant past. Even though this is deliberately woven into other threads, this episode of X-Men ’97 X-Force ’97works really well as a stand-alone adventure. It ties into the core mission of the X-Men through a different lens and putting this X-Force team up against X-Factor is another great way to put the focus on just what the X-Men (and X-Force) are out to do. Jubilee’s escape is a ton of fun and should be a highlight of season two when all is said and done, assuming it’s not overshadowed in the 8 episodes to follow. There is some foreshadowing contained in this one via Psylocke’s observations in the mind of War that are certainly intriguing. I think anyone who watched how the first season ended can guess what’s coming, but it’s still fun to see the show tease it. I just wonder when it will pay off?

Previously…on X-Men ’97:

X-Men ’97 – “Days of Past Future”

At last, X-Men ’97 has made its return to airwaves with not one, not two, but three episodes for the premiere which means there’s a lot to talk about. Truthfully, too much for one post which is why we need to keep things to one episode per entry as is the style of the time.…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 3”

Today, X-Men ’97 dropped the curtain on its first season and what a way to bring it to an end. Last week’s episode was a roller coaster of emotions for me. I couldn’t go into much detail of my review of “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 2” without wading into spoiler territory, so allow me…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 2”

Magneto was right. That was the realization many characters seemed to share at the end of last week’s episode of X-Men ’97. As we roll into the penultimate episode of the show’s first season, a lot is on the line and the show is drawing inspiration from several different sources related to the X-Men over…

Keep reading
by Joe

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Comics, Television

June 29, 2026

The Return of X-Men ’97

By Joe
I’m guessing you already heard the news, but in case you haven’t: the X-Men are back.

The return of the ’92 era X-Men featured in the classic animated series could not have gone any better. I was extremely excited for that show’s continuation via X-Men ’97, but at the same time a bit fearful. Could it really live up to my own expectations even as I tried to tamp them down? It turns out that it absolutely could and I truly feel we were gifted something unique. Not many shows are allowed to grow up with its audience. Even long-running shows like The Simpsons or Sponge-Bob Squarepants mostly stay the same and rely on picking up new fans as older ones fall off. X-Men ’97 really did take a show crafted for 7-12 year olds in 1992 and age it up for that same audience 30 years later. And the fact that it worked was pretty remarkable. That first season ended two years ago so it’s been a bit of a wait for the show’s second season. For that first season, I reviewed every episode and intended on doing a season one wrap-up or overall review, but I never got around to it. As a warm up for this second season, now seems like the appropriate time to share my final thoughts on that first season while also getting hyped for what’s to come.

I watched quite a bit of the first season of X-Men ’97. When a new episode would premiere, I’d get up and watch it while riding my exercise bike which really helped get my heart rate going. My son also took an interest in the show so we’d usually watch it together after school and then I’d watch it again the next day to prepare for my review which I’d post on Friday. Recently, with the release of the new trailer for season two I went back and watched the whole season again in one sitting. It was a rainy Sunday so a perfect time to refamiliarize myself with the show again. Before that rewatch, my opinion of the first season was that it was quite good, but also felt rushed at times. Upon rewatching it, I felt it didn’t go by as fast as I remembered. Some stuff certainly did like the entirety of the “Inferno” plot being condensed into one episode. I still don’t like how that one ends with Cyclops declaring he won’t abandon his son and then immediately flipping or how the clone Jean Grey just pulls the name Madelyne Pryor out of thin air. The “Lifedeath” arc was the other one I felt got rushed, but upon reflection I no longer think so. It was probably my least favorite plot in the season so the idea of spending more time with Storm and Forge isn’t really a recipe for making the season better. Once the show hit the fifth episode, “Remember It,” it moves at a nice clip. The events of that episode are felt throughout the rest of the season and dedicating three episodes to the finale was also a smart move. The final episode of the season is more of an aftermath episode with a lot of character work. Cyclops and Jean seem to resolve their differences and have that nice moment with Cable while Xavier and Magneto reconcile with the damage they’ve inflicted upon each other over a lifetime despite their love for each other.

Effect shots like Nightcrawler taking Wolverine and this jerk on a ride through his teleportation simply were not possible in the original series.

The production values of the first season were also wonderful and the biggest upgrade over the original series. Much of the voice cast returned and while many sound a bit older, their acting chops have only been further honed over the decades. The redone X-Men theme is grander and worthy of cinema and I am delighted that Marvel seems to have settled on it as the theme for the X-Men from here to eternity. The animation though is the clear upgrade. Going from the original series to this one reminds me of the first time I saw the Star Wars prequels. No, not in terms of the quality as a whole, but just in what we were allowed to see the characters do. The technology is now available to match the imagination of the writers and storyboard artists. The old show would never have been able to pull off the action that this show possesses. The action sequences from that show are what have arguably aged the worst. And you don’t have to watch X-Men ’97 for very long to see this on display as in the very first episode we get that incredible sequence where Storm enters the battlefield and uses her powers to blast the desert sand with lightning turning it into a sheet of glass. She then unleashes a tornado on the same which shatters and grabs the shards of glass to create a violent, Sentinel-destroying, freak of nature. Such a thing would not have been possible in 1992 either due to the talent of the animators or the budget supplied by Saban.

The prospect of topping that first season is what really drives my excitement for the second season set to premiere on July 1st. Last year, attendees at New York Comic Con were treated to a new trailer to hype that season which was sadly never made public. While there were leaks, us regular folk had to wait until fairly recently for a proper trailer. A follow-up has already been released and the hype train is now traveling at full speed. When that first season ended, the X-Men were scattered across time. Some appeared to be stranded in the present like Wolverine and Morph, while a small group was sent to ancient Egypt where they meet En Sabah Nur, better known in the present time as Apocalypse. Cyclops and Jean were also shot forward in time where they meet Mother Askani and their son, Nathan, who is now a boy of about 10 by the looks of things. And if that wasn’t thrilling enough, the final stinger for that first season featured Apocalypse combing through the ruins of Genosha and uncovering a playing card while musing on the subject of death, an obvious foreshadowing for what is likely in store for the fallen Gambit.

The sister of Colossus, Magik, is an unexpected casualty of the Genosha massacre.

I’m not going to go through all of what is in the trailers for season two, but I wanted to touch on some things featured prominently. One, it sure looks like we have more Genosha fallout to deal with. One of the scenes featured in the trailer is Colossus, wearing for the first time his yellow and red costume, cradling the body of his sister Illyana, also known as the mutant Magik. We later see a scene where Colossus, now in his Acolytes outfit, is leading Rogue and Nightcrawler to a shrine where his sister’s picture is front and center among others lost in the attack on Genosha (and now that I look at it more closely, is that a picture of Iceman to the left of the Never Forget sign?). This is an interesting development as in one of the final scenes of the first season we see Forge and Bishop conversing in front of a wall of portraits of mutants as Forge is attempting to account for them. Magik is featured and is noted as being alive, but clearly something has changed since then if she actually fell in Genosha. It was a huge catastrophe and it’s reasonable to assume more bodies were still being recovered, though at that point they probably would have had a firmer idea on who was alive and who was presumed dead. Much of the second season had already been written by the time the first aired, but just before the show premiered the showrunner Beau DeMayo was fired by Disney. It stands to reason that a new showrunner would likely have ideas of their own and things may have changed.

Is this a bad sign for Bobby?

The Magik reveal further interests me because it calls into question other names on that bulletin board. My beloved Iceman is seen on it and seemingly fine, but there was also a blink and you’ll miss it moment in the fifth episode where an ice cream man on Genosha uses his mutant powers to make a treat for Leach. He certainly looks a bit like the Bobby character model from the original series so was he on Genosha too? With this show being far more willing to tackle social issues it would surprise me if the most prominent gay X-Man was unceremoniously killed off like that, but you never know. In the trailer, we see Bobby’s ex-girlfriend Lorna return to what appears to be the mansion and a photo of her and Iceman together is shown. Is she reflecting on the loss of him as well as the X-Men?

That you, Bobby Drake?

Lorna’s presence also coincides with the return of X-Factor and the apparent formation of Cable’s X-Force. Both teams are featured prominently in both trailers and it does make one wonder if the cast is perhaps getting too big? That’s a whole lot of people to follow, not to mention we see scenes of Wolverine and Morph paling around with the likes of Sabretooth and Deathstryke plus some young mutants including Kid Omega. In the old show, it wasn’t unheard of for groups of mutants to drop in and out so this could end up being nothing. We had episodes with Alpha Flight, X-Factor, The Morlocks, or episodes like “Slave Island” which were full of cameos. Not everyone is going to get the spotlight shined on them and that’s probably for the best with a cast as big as this one. I do think some characters will be featured more though and Polaris definitely seems to be one. The show also has yet to reveal that Cyclops and Havok are related and we saw their other brother, Vulcan, among the Shi’Ar in season one so that could come into play at some point.

During some part of the season it would appear that Wolverine will dawn a costume evocative of his feral appearance from the comics, but perhaps without the feral personality?

What does intrigue me perhaps the most is Wolverine’s arc this season. He is shown prominently in the trailer since he was given the line, “We’re back,” and he delivers it while striking a pose identical to the cover of his first mini series by Frank Miller. As he does, his claws pop out and they have been re-bonded with adamantium. What further intrigues me are the sequences we see where he’s in his skull cap look with bone claws. This harkens back to the “feral” Wolverine era in the comics. Some time after losing his adamantium skeleton during the “Fatal Attractions” arc, Wolverine is lured into a trap by Genesis, the son of Cable corrupted by Apocalypse. He tries to replicate the adamantium bonding process with Wolverine to turn him into a weapon for himself, but Wolverine’s body rejects it leading to this feral transformation. Perhaps that happens right after his skeleton is returned? It looks like he’s in his brown and tan costume in the trailer when he flashes those claws, but the feral look is yellow and blue so I think it’s something from later in the season. There’s also a group shot of Wolverine with his adamantium skeleton and brown costume that could take place anywhere in the second season timeline. We’ll just have to wait and see.

This feels like an homage to X-Men vs Street Fighter and I am here for it!

And then there’s Apocalypse. He’s obviously the big baddie this season and it looks like the X-Men will be confronting him across timelines. I can see this being the season long arc. Maybe not every episode will deal with that conflict (we know that Danger is featured), but I would be surprised if there isn’t some big showdown in the final episode with Apocalypse and perhaps a new set of horsemen. Nothing is teased about Gambit possibly returning as Death (unless you consider Rogue being handed a playing card foreshadowing) and that makes sense. They should refrain from such to preserve the surprise as much as possible so I think there is much that is still to come. I have seen some speculate that the events of this season could give rise to an Age of Apocalypse third season. That would be interesting since the original series already did something similar with the “One Man’s Worth” episodes, but that arc also didn’t involve Apocalypse so it wouldn’t be as redundant as it seems at face value. Those episodes were the genesis for the hypothetical “What if Charles Xavier were assassinated before starting the X-Men?” question that gave rise to the Age of Apocalypse in the comics which is why many of the character designs from that arc were featured in the episodes. And since we’re following the show’s version of “Fatal Attractions,” the prospect of Onslaught still looms. Hasbro even re-released Onslaught (or is set to) in its Marvel Legends line and they usually don’t do stuff like that with very specific characters unless there’s an outside reason for such. Perhaps that will be our season three which is right now scheduled to arrive in 2027 so we won’t have to endure an extra long wait to find out.

I am completely and utterly hyped about this second season and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it. Unfortunately, the premiere arrives while I’m on vacation so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to share my thoughts on it. I do plan to take time out of my vacation to watch it, but if I had been home I probably would have spent the Tuesday before binging the first season once again. Whenever I do get to it I am sure it will be a fun time and I plan on reviewing every episode right here on The Nostalgia Spot.

To help you get hyped for the return of X-Men ’97, here are the reviews of my favorite season one episodes:

X-Men ’97 – “Mutant Liberation Begins”

The first episode of X-Men ’97 left me grinning from ear to ear and eager to see what would happen next. I’m happy to say, the show’s second episode left me feeling very much the same. “Mutant Liberation Begins” starts off right where the previous episode ended. Magneto, has revealed that it was the wishes…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Remember It”

Last week’s episode of X-Men ’97 saw the show take a breather with a fairly low stakes plot involving Jubilee and Roberto getting sucked into a video game. The last 7 or 8 minutes of the episode concluded with a more serious tone as Storm and Forge found themselves at odds in the wildlands of…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 2”

Magneto was right. That was the realization many characters seemed to share at the end of last week’s episode of X-Men ’97. As we roll into the penultimate episode of the show’s first season, a lot is on the line and the show is drawing inspiration from several different sources related to the X-Men over…

Keep reading
by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Comics, Television