Tag Archives: x-men

October 7, 2026

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Apocalypse

By Joe
Come the Apocalypse.

One of the big bads of X-Men: The Animated Series was none other than Apocalypse. He appeared in the opening clash to start almost every episode and when the show was looking to end on a high note it selected Apocalypse as the villain to center that story on. When X-Men ’97 arrived in 2024, Apocalypse was conspicuously absent apart from a throw-away line by Wolverine in the show’s second episode. That is, until the very end when a post credits stinger featured the immortal one amongst the wreckage of Genosha signaling that he was going to have a part to play in season two. We may have had to wait a bit longer than expected for that second season, but perhaps to tide us over we had Hasbro and its Marvel Legends team which unveiled Apocalypse at last year’s New York Comic Con. The made-to-order item would arrive in 2026 and now as we sit on the eve of New York Comic Con 2026, Apocalypse has indeed arrived.

He’s a big boy, but still in the shadow of the Sentinel.

Even with Apocalypse set to play a large role in X-Men ’97 season two, I was skeptical we would get a Marvel Legends figure of the villain. That’s because in 2022 Hasbro released a retro card version of Apocalypse in his animated colors. Apocalypse was rather famously re-colored to purple and blue for the cartoon as opposed to his black and blue look from the comics. It was a curious decision and as a kid one I probably did not like, but overtime it’s become charming and nostalgic. Still, it’s probably not a popular colorway with the majority of Legends collectors so just getting that one figure was a surprise. And it’s a figure I liked then and still like because they did re-sculpt some of the figure to give it more of an animated look, and since the figure was a re-color of a previously released build-a-figure, he was larger than the standard Legends release.

Eternal enemies.
Good luck, Cable.

Whenever Apocalypse is brought to plastic, there’s always a question of how big should he be? Thanks to the original Toy Biz release, my first understanding of Apocalypse was that his mutant power allowed him to increase in size. And it can, but he also possesses a great deal of other powers to use against his foes. Because of his unique abilities, he’s always changing in size. Some of that is probably due to the inconsistent animation of the old series where there’s even shots of Apocalypse at almost eye level with Archangel. For the most part, he’s quite a bit bigger and the official height chart the animators were supposed to go off of put him at over 7′, which interestingly had him as being shorter than Juggernaut. For this made-to-order figure, Hasbro decided to go big.

He’s big on theming.
This setup for the cables works so much better than past figures.

Apocalypse comes in the same style of box as the previously released Sentinel. It has no window, but instead a render of the figure and the accessories inside against a yellow backdrop. Since it’s not something sold in stores, I don’t really care about the omission of a window box. The packaging inside is easy to get through with an absence of annoying tie-downs. Once removed, Apocalypse will tower over the other X-Men ’97 figures (well, except for the Sentinel) at approximately 12″ in height if not a little taller. And he’s not some bean pole as proportionally he’s pretty massive. I don’t know for sure, but it feels like his height was based on the scene inserted into the opening of some episodes of X-Men ’97 showing Apocalypse confronting Cable beneath his temple. Which itself was a recreation of a scene from the original series. This size also likely puts him in proper scale for the scene depicted at the end of the fourth episode of season two and he even seems to come with an accessory that is a reference to that. There’s a nice mass to all of his limbs and his torso which isn’t something Legends is always good about. Even the old retro card figure when viewed from the side has something of a flat chest. This Apocalypse is round and full and really embodies the look of the character in the show.

It doesn’t show on camera, but the retro card figure is a darker purple and the upper body, boots, etc. is blue where as with this new figure they’re a different shade of purple.

And more than any other Legends release I’ve encountered, this guy looks like he stepped right out of my television. The subtle change in the shades of purple in use are captured exquisitely. The old figure was a purple body with blue accents while this Apocalypse is basically just multiple shades of purple. The only color in use that I’d consider blue is found on the figure’s head. There’s a yellow tint to his exposed flesh which matches the show and his eyes are the inferno-like red and yellow. There’s not a ton of paint on him, but the body has been hit with a clear, matte, finish. It makes photographing him slightly challenging for my very amateurish setup. The difference in colors between this new figure and the retro card one are pretty stark in person, but in pictures it looks far more subtle. All of the details are here though like the piping on his arms and subtle changes in textures throughout. The cables, always the bane of any Apocalypse figure, are a metallic silver and they now connect to the rear of the belt and above the elbow which makes them a lot more manageable. I actually have yet to have one pop out by accident and they do seem more pliable than the old figure. That one has them pop out all the time whenever I pose it. The only visual negative is some of the paint around the lips is a little sloppy on mine. There’s also some hot spots with the finish along the side of the figure which I think is the result of the bubble packaging. Neither are noticeable from shelf range, but is apparent in-hand.

Apocalypse has a lot of foes.

Apocalypse comes loaded with stuff and it’s basically all things seen in the early part of the show’s second season. Hasbro almost certainly was able to look at material from the show to create these which is in contrast to how Marvel has been with a lot of the movies of late. For hands, we get a set of fists and a set of asymmetrical open hands. The right hand is a little looser than I’d like, but at least swapping parts is pretty simple. There is one alternate head and it’s a grimacing one which looks great and has a clean paint application. I do wish we got a third, evil smile portrait from the execution scene at the end of episode four. For attachments, Apocalypse has various weapons and even a defensive item. He has his big, snap-on, shield which is emblazoned with his signature “A” and looks incredibly goofy, but it’s well-represented here. It basically slides up the forearm until snug and works well. He also has a blade hand attachment, a spiked ball, and a drill. All of them are entirely plastic with no paint and Hasbro used its semi-metallic plastic for the “metal” parts. There’s some swirling on the morning star that looks bad, but none on the other two. Apocalypse also has his arm canon which first showed up in the original series and was also an accessor with the retro card figure. It comes with two different blast effects. One is similar to the Sentinel blasts as there’s a rear plume and a cone of energy in the center. The second is just the plume with a clip in the middle to plug another figure into it. This is almost certainly in reference to a specific scene, though you won’t be able to accurately pull that off in plastic as the articulation isn’t quite up to snuff there. It’s a neat idea and you can use it with most Legends figures though I wish the impact was larger and more dramatic. He has multiple muzzles on the arm canon and it can accept the Sentinel blast effects so long as you only use the center piece. That’s the only way to get multiple blasts going. Lastly, there’s a diorama piece that’s a blast hitting a rocky ground and it’s pretty damn cool. I’m going to have to figure out a way to work it into my display as a result because it would be a waste not to.

The Sentinel blast works too.
You can fit more into the canon if you omit the muzzle flash.
The clip-on blast works better with non-caped characters.
This is the face my cat makes when I pick her up.

Apocalypse is a pretty chunky boy so articulation isn’t going to be his strong suit. It’s not a total bummer though as he works reasonably well for a man his size. We get: double-ball head, ball-hinge shoulders, bicep, double elbows, wrist swivel and hinge, ball-jointed diaphragm, ball-jointed waist, ball-socket hips, thigh swivel, double knees, boot swivel, ankle hinge and rocker. Where you’re likely to get the best range is at the head and in the torso. He’s too chunky to crunch forward much, but the ball joints in the torso and waist work really well with rotation, tilt, and just general nuance posing. The arms are a bit too chunky to get the elbows to bend past 90 degrees and no butterfly joint does limit things at the shoulder. The big shoulder pads rotate with the arm so they don’t get in the way, at least. He’s not going to do splits or kick forward as far as 90 degrees, but the gait he gets is adequate and the ankles work very well. I also like the included boot swivel so if you want to rotate the feet you can without breaking up the sculpt in the thighs. He can hit walking poses and sell his effect parts well. What he can’t do is reach across his body or convincingly get down on one knee. Again, there’s a certain scene in episode 4 I’m thinking of here that’s just not possible to pull off, unfortunately, but all things considered the articulation is fine.

These are the weapons he turns to when he wants to get medieval.
“Only a coward feels mighty when stepping on ants.”

Do you want a giant Apocalypse from X-Men ’97? One that looks close enough to his appearance in the original animated series as well? Then you should probably get this one. He’s not cheap at $120, but he’s currently listed as in-stock on Hasbro Pulse as of this post going live. This is an impressive chunk of plastic of season two’s signature villain, and while finding space in one’s collection could be a challenge, he will immediately bring some presence to any display. I’ve always liked Apocalypse so I’m predisposed to like this figure. It’s something I never expected, but am happy is here. I hope Hasbro sold a lot of them and that the X-Men ’97 figures are making them money because I’m counting on more getting announced this weekend at New York Comic Con. Apocalypse was a made-to-order item, but if you want to get one just keep your eyes on hasbropulse.com as there are likely more which will go up for sale in due time.

“Crash upon me and be broken!”

For more Apocalypse and X-Men ’97 goodness, check these out:

Marvel Legends X-Men Retro Card Series Apocalypse

It is Halloween and that means it’s time for costumes, candy, and spooky fun. It’s also Halloween 2022, a pretty important date if you grew up loving those mutants who ran around in colorful spandex fighting for a better tomorrow. That’s because 30 years ago on this very night, the animated series X-Men premiered on…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Sentinel

When X-Men premiered on Halloween 1992 the big bad guy of the day wasn’t Magneto, it wasn’t Apocalypse, it was the Sentinels. The mutant-hunting robots were chosen because they represented the threat from humanity as it pertained to the protagonists of the show. Any show or comic book can put some scary dude in a…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends Mephisto

It’s now been a couple of years since Hasbro did a light pivot from the HasLab model of action figure delivery to the made-to-order one. That’s not to say the HasLab is dead, but we haven’t seen a Marvel Legends themed one since Giant Man which was solicited in September of 2023 and delivered about…

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by Joe

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September 21, 2026

Mondo X-Men ’97 1/6 Scale Storm

By Joe
Behold! The fury of the Storm!

With the arrival of Storm, Mondo moves one step closet to completing the X-Men team from the original Fox animated series. She follows Jubilee, Gambit, Rogue, Cyclops, Wolverine, and Beast, but since this line got started during the launch of the very successful X-Men ’97, she arrives with that title upon her box. For fans who have been collecting this line, that distinction has been a little irritating at times. No, I can’t say most care about what’s on the box, but some of the figures within have too strongly favored the continuation as opposed to the original series, but with Storm that is not the case.

Storm comes in the usual, large, box with artwork on the front by former storyboard artist Dan Veesenmeyer. Images from those same storyboards are used to fill out the background and it’s tough to tell what episode. It might be “Slave Island” though it could be “Savage Land, Savage Heart.” Regardless, it’s Storm going off with her powers and it looks pretty neat. The figure inside is another sculpt from the renowned Alex Brewer with paint by Tom Rozejowski and Hilary Arce. Hector Arce is credited with the art direction while Jordan Christianson designed the packaging. It is a box like Beast’s and does not include a window like past releases, but that’s fine considering the contents are heavily wrapped to protect the paint.

Out of the box, Storm stands about 11″ to where the top of her head would likely be under that rather large mass of white hair. Factor that in, and she’s over a foot tall making her one of the tallest in the line. As I alluded to in the opening paragraph, this is very much a Storm based on her appearance in the original animated series. The tell-tale mark in this case are her thigh-high boots and heels. In X-Men ’97, she ditches those for a more traditional boot line halfway up her calf. The sculpt is quite nice as Brewer was pretty generous with the curves. The costume, a bit of a point of contention amongst comic fans (Is it white? Silver? A glossy black?), is a cartoon-accurate white with a lot of black shading. There’s some gray-blue shading mixed in as well which helps make Storm look like she leapt off the screen. All of the yellow accents are where you would expect them to be as are her trademarked lightning bolt earrings. By default, she has her big, poofy, hair which will make her a bit tough to stand, but is animation accurate. The only critique I have for the sculpt is her face is still not quite what I picture for Storm from the show. Her chin comes to more of a pronounced point in plastic where her jaw was a bit more square, but with soft lines, in the show.

The plastic cape looks great, but severely limits posing.

One of the challenges of creating Storm for this line rested with her cape. To preserve the look of the show, a painted cape made out of plastic is ideal, but since her cape connects to her wrists that basically kills any articulation in the arms. Mondo’s solution then was to give the collector options. Storm has an all plastic cape that’s well-painted and looks great. It includes her shoulder pads and plugs into her clavicle area with the yellow cuffs fitting over her wrists. It’s in a neutral position so Storm won’t be able to do much with her hands while wearing it, but if you’re the sort of person that just goes for a pretty vanilla pose on your shelf it will look nice. For those looking for something more poseable, there’s a soft goods cape as well. It’s actually two pieces and also includes the yellow cuffs, but it’s all soft goods. The outside portion is white while the inner part of the cape is gray. It’s not going to fool anyone and does look like a soft goods cape, but it does strike a nice compromise. And if you don’t like the look of the soft goods, yellow, wrist cuffs on it Mondo did include two optional yellow, plastic, ones. I think these are mostly intended for slipping over her wrists for those who don’t want to put the cape on at all, but they can be muscled over the soft goods cuffs too for a stronger, more saturated, look. Based on the pictures on Mondo’s website, it also is possible to remove the cape from the shoulder pads, but it doesn’t look easy so I have opted not to try. I’m also not sure which cape that applies to.

For those who prefer their Storm have more of a punk vibe.

Storm may be wearing her ’92 costume, but she does have some ’97 inspired portraits to approximate her look in that series if it’s your preference. The default one features the big hair and her iris present while there’s an alternate one with the eyes whited-out. This is what happens whenever Storm uses her powers so if you’re posing her with lightning effects make sure you have the right eyes unless you want to look like a fool. The sculpts look to be identical with just the eye paint being different. It makes sense, though I wish her non-powered up look featured a smile. If you want her to look a bit more intimidating, there’s a slightly angrier expression where the wind is pushing her hair up. It’s definitely a cool look and one I’ll be hard pressed to ignore when it comes to my own, personal, display. For the X-Men ’97 enthusiasts, she also has a neutral portrait with mohawk and an angry one with that same mohawk hairstyle. The angry one features the added detail of little holes beside her whited-out eyes that can accommodate two lightning effects. I believe this is based on her grand entrance in the first episode of X-Men ’97. Also included in this timed edition of Storm is another neutral portrait with a ponytail hairstyle. I think this hairstyle made an appearance a couple of times in the original series, but I remember it most from the episode “Orphan’s End.” It’s a good spread, though I’m a little disappointed that none of the heads feature a smiling expression. She’s either stoic or angry and while Storm does tend to be quite serious much of the time, she’s not joyless.

She has a pair of “weapons” as well, including this terrific homage to the Toy Biz Storm.

To go with all of those expressions is an assortment of hands. By default, Storm has these style posed hands. The kind of gesture she would make while reaching out and getting ready to direct her powers at a target, be it lightning, wind, or something else. She also has a similar set with little crackles of lightning affixed to them. They’re soft and pliable, but also do make it a little tough when trying to put her hands on (and swapping is not easy – go for heat). She also has two clenching hands with similar lightning effects on them and a set of gripping hands. For those gripping hands, Storm has the staff weapon featured in her battle with Callisto in the episode “Captive Hearts.” It’s the strange, double lightsaber weapon that has a gray handle in the center and translucent blue plastic for each end. It looks fine, but I’m surprised at the lack of paint in the center handle. The other handheld accessory is a large, translucent, yellow, lightning bolt. This feels like a direct callback to Storm’s original Toy Biz figure right down to the little, squared-off, grip on the side of it. It looks pretty neat and I do love it when Mondo slips callbacks into these packages. The hands that are likely to be among the favorites of anyone with this figure are the ones with lightning shooting from the finger tips in a wide arc. It’s more translucent yellow plastic and it’s an effect similar to what Hasbro attempted with their X-Men Storm, but executed far better because the plastic for the hands is not painted over translucent plastic. The last hand option is a unique piece. It’s a small plant with a right hand affixed to the bottom. Above the plant is a rainstorm and a dark cloud and affixed to that cloud is another lightning bolt connected to a left hand. Unfortunately, mine arrived with the hands basically parallel to each other which made it impossible to get onto Storm as the top needed to be facing the opposite direction. By heating it, I reshaped the little lightning bolt and was able to get it onto my figure, though this stressed where the lightning was glued into the cloud and it snapped when I took it off. Mondo is sending me a new one at no cost to me so it’s not a big deal, but something to watch out for if you get the same. The last accessory, is another mutant power suppressor collar like the ones Gambit came with. You should now have enough to reenact the episode “Slave Island” with Storm, Jubilee, and Gambit if you so desire.

Can’t forget the ponytail look.

For articulation, Storm is pretty typical of the line. We get: double-ball head, ball-hinge shoulders, single hinge elbows with a swivel, ball wrists, diaphragm, waist, hips, thigh cut, double-jointed knees, hinge ankles and rockers, wired cape. The thigh cut is a nice addition since it’s hidden by the line of her boots. The torso works really well with its ability to arche back and forth at the diaphragm and a little at the waist. Plus you get the rotation and tilt you likely would want. The single-hinged elbows are a minor shortcoming, but the shoulders are the weakest point. Because her costume bunches up at the shoulders which is captured by the sculpt, she can’t raise her arms out to the side into a classic “T” pose. The range is about 45 degrees, but she can rotate at the shoulders without issue so it’s something that can be worked around to some degree. Even with the heels and big hair, Storm can be made to stand on her own with a little persistence. I don’t know that I’d leave her on a shelf like that, but the good thing is that I don’t have to. Mondo also included their new flight stand. Unlike the one I received with Nightcrawler, this one fit over the articulated post for me without having to disassemble it. The only problem is that she’s so slight of frame finding a place to use the claw on her is tough. It’s pretty much the bust area or nothing. I wish they had a smaller claw for smaller figures, but on the plus side this will work with pretty much all of the other figures in the line if you want to put Wolverine in a leaping pose or allow Magneto to hover.

Before I “fixed” it, this is how the plant hand arrived.
This is how it’s supposed to look.
From Mondo itself. Image by Raúl Barrero.

Like all of the figures in this line, Storm doesn’t come cheap. The MSRP is $245, but it also required a tariff fee and shipping which brought the total for me to north of $300. Is she worth it? If any of the others are then yes and by the standards of the line she not only features a lot of stuff, but looks great and articulates about as well as can be expected. I love all of the options and I appreciate Mondo giving us two kinds of capes for our display. The only downer for me is how Mondo doesn’t allow for us to swap the hair. If Storm could do so it would really open up the display possibilities. I love the eye lightning, but I don’t know if I’ll ever want to display her with her X-Men ’97 hairstyle when I’m mainly going for a ’92 look for my display. If the hair could be moved around it would solve that problem, Plus, that’s a lot of extra plastic to have to include. The issue with the tree accessory is unfortunate, but not a big deal for me. As of right now, I have not received my replacement part, but I have an “order” created for it by Mondo so I’m not concerned at the moment. I might also just try and repair the one I have since it is a clever little item. My criticisms here feel pretty minor though and at the end of the day I think Storm is one of the best figures in the line so far. It’s getting tough to pick favorites, but I’ve been really impressed by Storm, Beast, and Nightcrawler. Next up is Jean which Mondo is billing as the team completer, but we all know there’s still some pretty important characters still waiting for their own chance. Jean won’t be out until next year though so it’s going to be a little while before we have another figure in the line to talk about, but at least it’s not the last.

EDIT: Jean went up for preorder on September 22 with an expected ship date of November 2026 so apparently we are not done with X-Men this year!

UPDATE: I received my replacement “Storm Plant” from Mondo about two weeks after contacting them. The new part did have the hands in a new orientation, but unfortunately it’s still unusable. When the bottom hand is connected to the figure, the fingertips of the top hand are now pointing at her chest. Previously, they were pointed in the same direction as the bottom hand. I can only conclude the issue must be pretty widespread and I wonder if checking which direction the parts are going is even part of the factory review. It’s too bad they glued everything as not only would that have prevented the issue, it would have made it easier to get onto the figure. I think I’ll explore a permanent fix to the one I broke rather than ask for a third one.

We are so close!

For more from Mondo’s X-Men line, see below:

Mondo X-Men ’97 1/6 Scale Beast – Limited Edition

Back in the old Toy Biz line, it felt like we had to wait a long while for an action figure of Beast, or The Beast as the opening title of X-Men: The Animated Series referred to him as. Perhaps that was due to the character spending the bulk of the first season out of…

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by Joe

Mondo X-Men ’97 1/6 Scale Nightcrawler

Yes, I’m afraid this is another toy review that needs to begin with a word about tariffs. It was the talk of 2025 in the toy collecting community because it caused considerable delays, disruptions, and worst of all, increased prices across the board. One line impacted by the introduction of these new costs more than…

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by Joe

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

September 14, 2026

X2: Wolverine’s Revenge

By Joe
Original release date April 15, 2003

For much of my childhood, Wolverine and the X-Men had a pretty mediocre track record when it came to video games. The games released for the Nintendo Entertainment System were atrocious with X-Men being borderline unplayable and the solo Wolverine game just a miserable experience. During the 16 bit era, it did get better. While Spider-Man and the X-Men was one of the biggest disappointments of my youth, the outings for the Segan Genesis were at least decent. I would classify the first X-Men game as mediocre, but in the moment it felt special because everything else was so terrible. The sequel was genuinely good and over on the Super Nintendo Capcom was able to give us Mutant Apocalypse – a game no one would confuse for a classic, but it did make the X-Men legitimately fun to play as. Come the PlayStation and Saturn era, things got murky again. The X-Men stayed with Capcom for a series of fighting games that did become classics, though during that era the home ports were hit and miss as the PlayStation wasn’t really built to handle them while the Saturn just wasn’t a console many people owned. Activision still hung onto the license though and put out a pair of 3D fighters where the first was fine and the follow-up less so.

Come the PlayStation 2 era, Activision still retained the rights to the X-Men only now the franchise was on another upswing thanks to the movies released by 20th Century Fox. Licensed games, especially move tie-ins, had never really recovered from the early days where the products were mostly known for being shoved out the door half-baked and often half-finished. For every Golden Eye on Nintendo 64, there were numerous examples of games that were awful like The Crow: City of Angels or The Matrix. And Activision itself didn’t have a sterling reputation, but it did put out a perfectly cromulent Spider-Man game based on the movie. Still, that wasn’t enough to get me or my best friend to lay down our hard-earned money for a copy of X2: Wolverine’s Revenge.

X2: Wolverine’s Revenge should really just be called Wolverine’s Revenge, or just something else with Wolverine in the title. What shouldn’t be featured in the title is X2 and Hugh Jackman should absolutely not be on the cover. This game has nothing to do with the movie released the same year. Sticking Jackman on the cover was just to lure folks in, I guess, even though there was plenty of video games coverage for people to know what was going on. This is a true comic book video game with a script by Larry Hama himself. The only connection beyond the cover is that Patrick Stewart is featured as the voice actor for Professor X in the game. Was Jackman already too big of a star to voice Wolverine? Possibly, but in his place is Mark Hamill who does a pretty nice Wolverine. I’m surprised he didn’t go on to voice the character again, but future games replaced him with Steve Blum who may have come cheaper. Or maybe Hamill just wanted to do Wolverine once to say that he did? Either way, this is a game that has stuck in my brain for years because it’s the last game I can recall where a friend and I rented it and stayed up all night to beat it. We alternated back and forth since it is a solo experience which honestly probably made it a better experience. I’ve always wanted to replay it as a result, and with a brand new Wolverine game that looks to be the best of its kind set to be released (or maybe not since early reviews have been mixed at best), now feels like a good time to go back and check this one out.

The game introduces its gameplay mechanics via flashback to Wolverine’s time in the Weapon X program.

Wolverine’s Revenge is a pretty typical 3D action game of its era. You control Wolverine in a fully 3D environment and are expected to hack and slash your way to the end. It’s a hybrid stealth-action game where it’s undoubtedly easier to go the patient route and take enemies out one by one as opposed to running into the fray claws brandished. Wolverine and the styling of other characters is of the era with him in his attire featured in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men where the characters were designed and illustrated by Frank Quitely, but Activision and Gene Pool Software UK probably knew fans would want something more classic so those costumes are available and not especially well hidden early in the game. In this one, Wolverine has discovered he’s been stricken with a virus implanted in him during his time in the Weapon X program. He has only 48 hours to discover the cure or else he’s toast so it’s back to Winnipeg (or wherever the facility is in Canada) to uncover the secret and probably tangle with some old foes in the process.

The presentation in Wolverine’s Revenge is one of the best things it has going. Hamill is quite good as Logan and the other voice actors are all pros. When it wants to be, the score is of a near theatrical quality though there are many quiet moments since this is a stealth game after all. The graphical presentation is mostly decent. It’s a little early in the life of the PS2 so it does kind of resemble a PlayStation 1 game just in how the models are constructed, but with much better textures. And since this is technically a movie tie-in, I’m guessing there were some time constraints involved. It’s not ugly or anything, but no one would be singing its praises where graphics are concerned. The environments are not especially spacious, but you do spend the majority of the game in underground facilities and the like so it was never going to have an open world feel to it. There are some scenarios that are open, but they’re honestly the more boring portions of the game as there usually isn’t much to do or discover within them. And since the emphasis is on stealth, the tighter confines are welcomed as they provide more opportunities for Wolverine to hide and sneak up on foes.

Stealth is the name of the game for much of this one and it makes sense when guards are too stupid to check the roof of a truck.

Where things start to go off the rails though is just in the general controls and camera. The camera is basically free floating and needs to be constantly fiddled with. When moving along in a stealthy manner, it’s passable as manipulating the camera when Wolverine is stationary or moving slowly is fine. When things get chaotic it can be hard to focus on where danger is coming from or what a boss might be doing. And despite the game putting an emphasis on stealth, there are a lot of times where it forces the player into something else. When engaging in stealth, Wolverine has a simple selection of tools that mostly work. Holding R1 allows him to quickly move in a low, almost on all fours, crouch that counts as stealth. Holding L1 keeps him upright and has him walk slowly and quietly while holding L2 does the same, but with “heightened senses” enabled which is essentially infrared. This makes it easier to see enemies and even displays a scent trail to help locate enemies not in plain sight. Wolverine can also flatten himself against a wall and creep along it. When he reaches the edge of said wall, he can peer out from behind it without penalty which shifts the camera. It can feel a bit cumbersome at first, but it’s relatively easy to get a handle on after a little while and the game does do a good job of getting the player’s feet wet. When an enemy gets within striking distance while in stealth, the word “Strike” flashes across the screen and pressing the circle button will cause Wolverine to go into an animation where the enemy is taken out. While he does brandish and utilize his claws without hesitation, there’s no blood or gore to be found in the game as Activision likely wanted it to retain a Teen rating.

When stealth fails the game also starts to do the same. Wolverine can trade blows using square and triangle with square being punch and triangle kick. Pressing R2 deploys his claws which deals extra damage, but having them deployed negates Wolverine’s healing factor. When enemies get damaged enough to have most of their health depleted, they’ll be stunned. Wolverine can then finish them off with a strike command or pick them up. If they’re picked up he can stab them to death or toss them at another foe. When Wolverine is engaged with multiple enemies, multi-strike maneuvers become available. These are unlocked throughout the game by collecting dog tags which Wolverine receives as reward for stealth kills. When two or more enemies are in range, green arrows flash on the floor indicating a strike command is available. Activating them will allow Wolverine to take out up to three enemies in range. At first, the player will only have the circle attack available, but four levels can be unlocked and these are triggered by alternating circle and triangle. These maneuvers are not to be confused with finishing strike commands though as often it won’t be enough to take them out – especially later in the game which is one of my biggest pet peeves with this game.

Be prepared to spend a lot of time just waiting for that health bar to refill itself.

The enemies are just too damn strong. Basic grunts encountered take awhile to bring down. Wolverine, whether he has claws deployed or not, will need a good thirty seconds to take down a single foe. That may not seem like a lot, but when trapped in a room with six enemies it gets pretty tedious. Big groups of enemies often need to be taken down with running attacks. When running, pressing triangle causes Wolverine to go into a baseball slide which knocks enemies down. This doesn’t do much damage, but it does dislodge firearms which is really important for crowd control because a room full of guys blasting Wolverine with rifles will not end well for him. Despite being the best at what he does, Wolverine can’t take the sort of punishment one might associate with him. Aiding him is a fury meter located above his health. When full, this triggers a rage that allows Wolverine to do damage, but forces his claws to be out until it dissipates. He’ll do more damage and take guys out quicker, but it’s fleeting and works against the stealth approach. And when the game just wants to up the difficulty during the later stages (in particular, the hated Act IV), it just forces the player into taking on a bunch of enemies at once. One of the worst sequences in the game tasks the player with sneaking into a room with a command tower in it. Wolverine needs to enter the tower to unlock a door, but once the terminal is interacted with, two groups of five soldiers enter the room and four turrets in the wall emerge. There’s no way to stealth your way out of this because the enemies know Wolverine is in there. Jumping out and making a run for it won’t work because one of the soldiers is carrying a key needed to advance. You pretty much need to take them out. The only good thing is striking the wall turrets just once with Wolverine’s claws will cause them to deactivate, but doing so is easier said than done with all of the guns trained on Wolverine.

I tried and failed a bunch at this point. I’d wait in the tower as after a few minutes one of the enemy groups would walk out into another room as if to patrol. I’d run out, slash the two turrets on the left, then retreat back into the tower where the enemies wouldn’t follow. This would take out about half of my health and once in the tower I could let Wolverine’s healing factor bring me back up, which is not something that happens quickly. Once healed, I’d try to repeat that with the other two turrets, but unfortunately they were on the same side as the soldiers who didn’t retreat. That’s where I’d fail, sometimes while climbing the ladder back into the command tower. What allowed me to finally clear this is actually letting a stationary turret in the preceding room detect me before leaving it. It makes no sense as a gameplay mechanic, but instead of sneaking past it if the turret catches sight of Wolverine the turrets in the next room become activated. I then slashed at them to make the turrets retract and when I activated the terminal in the command tower they did not reactivate it. That made it much easier to take out the guards which is still tedious, but much easier.

Some of the other X-Men make cameos including Colossus.

As is common of action games, each act ends with a boss encounter. Some of the parts within an act itself also feature one and they pretty much all have a gameplay mechanic needed to be understood in order to defeat the boss. Wolverine can’t just go in claws slashing. One boss requires you to knock back thrown barrels while another tasks Wolverine with doing his best “So long, gay Bowser,” imitation to toss a boss off a platform several times. Some are more obvious than others while there are some encounters that are borderline archaic. It’s not a boss, per say, but there’s a “vortex” Wolverine needs to quell in one stage before it reaches a power source and the only way to do that is throw enemies at it. There’s really nothing in the game to clue the player in on that though and it’s basically an instant death if Wolverine contacts it so have fun replaying everything up to that moment again and again. Most become easy to figure out though, but actually clearing them can still be a chore. Collision detection is not the game’s strength. In the platform fight, objects rain down on the battlefield and you need to be further away from them than you would probably expect to avoid taking damage. On that same fight, getting knocked off the platform is also an instant death. I’m not one to complain about a game “cheating” me, but twice when I had the boss down to literally no health (you have to throw him one more time post that achievement) I got swiped at by him from the left only for it to knock Wolverine in the same direction. As in, it would be like hitting a golf ball square and it somehow goes backwards. Both times, this attack knocked me off the platform and it looked ludicrous and I have no explanation for why the game would do that. Another fight puts Wolverine in an electrical cage of sorts. In order to win the fight, Wolverine needs to lure the enemy into charging into specific spots on the electric fence, but the camera is brutal. The game wants to keep the full arena in frame which forces it to drawback too far. Wolverine also isn’t particularly nimble or equipped for that type of dodge mechanic and it feels pretty clunky. To make it more annoying, enemies outside the field lob toxic gas grenades which stun Wolverine and negate his healing factor. After the bad guy hits the force field, he gets stunned and Wolverine has to hit him a couple of times to make a “Strike” prompt appear and the window is tiny. I would basically hit the attack button twice and then mash the circle button and just hope he went into the strike animation.

Most of this review is me just complaining about the game and that basically sums up my experience with it. This is a Wolverine game that fails in making the player feel like they’re controlling Wolverine. Sure, the avatar on screen looks enough like Wolverine and has cool claws, but he’s pretty clunky to handle, dies easily, and isn’t the killing machine one would expect of him. The story is decent in that it provides some motivation to see it through and there’s a ton of familiar foes in this one. It does end on a cliffhanger which is amusing now since no sequel followed. The designs are squarely in that 2000s era which isn’t my favorite, but I don’t fault the game any for that. I also do kind of like that it’s of its era. The most important question today is should this game be experienced by someone in 2026? And I’d say only if you’re really curious. You don’t need to play the whole game to get the full experience so shut it off once the frustration kicks in. For those who just want to play a Wolverine game and actually have a good time, Wolverine Origins is much better. It’s not a masterpiece or anything, but is good, mindless, fun and the only true drawback is that it’s tied into a truly awful movie. And as this goes live we’re on the eve of a brand new Wolverine game by Insomniac for the PlayStation 5. While I’m not completely sold based on what I’ve seen, there’s a good chance it will be the best Wolverine game to ever come out even if it too is a far cry from better titles like God of War or even Insomniac’s own Spider-Man.

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Arcade 1Up Marvel Super Heroes Counter-Cade

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Spider-Man (Arcade)

Forgive me if I’ve said something similar before; but younger people are shocked by the norms of the past! Yeah, it’s a very “old man” thing to say, but it’s also an easy way to impress someone younger. And in this case, the shocking thing to say is that Marvel Comics often found itself in…

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September 2, 2026

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Professor Charles Xavier with Hoverchair

By Joe
I never thought we’d get this in plastic.

The second season of X-Men ’97 may be over, but we still have more on the way to talk about starting with this year’s Marvel Legends San Diego Comic Con exclusive. It was just over a year ago that I reviewed the reissue of the Charles Xavier with Hoverchair based on his appearance in the comic books. At the time, I decided to grab that figure because I wasn’t convinced Hasbro would ever give us a toon accurate version of the character and chair. I figured, at best, they’d just reissue the existing chair again, but maybe in a brighter yellow. How wrong I was. Announced as an exclusive for San Diego Comic Con this year was the Professor Charles Xavier with a screen accurate hoverchair to go with it. I honestly didn’t see that coming even though I know that the X-Men ’97 figures have been pretty successful for Hasbro. Since I had no plans to attend San Diego Comic Con this year (or any year) I was going to be at the mercy of what Hasbro did following the event which leads me into the following tangent.

The comic con exclusive goes back many years. I have no idea when it started, but I can remember reading about them in Wizard back in the 90s. They are to be expected and in this day and age most of them aren’t true exclusives since they’re sold online. Still, last year Hasbro did a Marvel Legends three-pack featuring a reissue of Sauron, Rogue in her Savage Land attire, and a new version of Shanna the She-Devil. Rogue had never been depicted in that look before so there were plenty of collectors interested in the set for that. Sauron was previously a build-a-figure so the chance to get him in a three-pack was also tempting for some. Shanna was a brand new character for Legends and paired very nicely with the recently released (at the time) Ka-Zar and Zabu which made the set really desirable for a lot of fans. Hasbro wasn’t willing to meet demand and few non-attendees were able to get a set when it went up for sale on Hasbro Pulse following the event. I wasn’t personally interested, but I know many collectors still sore about it. The prospect of the same happening with Chuck did not give me much confidence and it leads me to my main criticism when it comes to exclusives: they shouldn’t be essential to a collection. Rogue in a one-off look? Sure. A reissue of Sauron? That’s fine. A somewhat goofy, deep pull like Death’s Head? Bring it on! A main character from a hit show in his most recognizable and iconic look? What?! No!

Chuck sure likes green.

Professor X in his green suit should be an easy figure to acquire. He should have been a regular retail release. Did retailers pass on him? Maybe, but I doubt it. I don’t think any are sitting on much X-Men ’97 stock so the chance to have another character to sell while the second season was in full swing would probably be pretty appealing. That’s not what happened, and when reports surfaced that Xavier sold out at the event I wasn’t feeling too good about getting one myself. Then Hasbro changed how they do things when it comes to Pulse. For their storefront, fans can pay Hasbro an annual sum for the privilege to buy stuff from them. The perk being they get free shipping, but also first crack at exclusive products. In previous years, that meant a one hour headstart on the general public, but this year that one hour was turned into twenty-four. If Premium members were getting a full day all to themselves to buy product what chance did I have? I wasn’t about to hand Hasbro another fifty bucks for Charlie so I let it ride, and to my surprise it all worked out. Xavier was there the next day and remained available for at least an hour. That may sound like a quick sell-out, but when it comes to exclusives that’s a pretty generous amount of time. They also opened up preorders following that which is what should have happened with the Savage Land set the prior year. They did that for basically every other brand exclusive so I don’t know what the issue there was. Hasbro made a silly decision in making Professor X an exclusive, but at least they had the foresight to make enough and keep him available past that for a little while longer.

“Admit it: you’re jealous of my blankie.”

As for the release itself, it’s probably what you expect. The main draw is the chair. In the show, the chair was always blockier, usually very yellow in appearance, and quite sleek. The comic version is more narrow, bulbous, and just all together a different shape. I have no idea why the animated series changed it up, but I’ve always preferred this look to the comic one. And it’s never made it to plastic. Even the old 90s Toy Biz figure featured a chair with the comic design even though that toy line was loosely based on the cartoon. And for this release, Hasbro got it right. It’s the right shape, the right color, has some nice accents on it, and doesn’t feature any unsightly seems anywhere like the older chair. The only assembly required is the seat back has to be inserted and it features a far more understated flight stand that’s just transparent plastic with some concentric circles on it. It’s simple, but it looks the part and that’s all that is needed. The only nitpick I have is it’s a little hard to get a figure into it. If the front panel could pop off it would make it a lot easier, but it’s not like it’s impossible. Plus, Legends figures aren’t covered in paint so it’s not as if you have much to worry about when it comes to paint rub.

The effect part works much better plugged into the chair (left) than into the helmet (right).

I lead with the chair because it’s the star of the show, the actual figure is just fine. Professor X “stands” at about 6.125″ to the top of his bald head. He’s the same height as the older figure and much of the sculpt is also the same. The torso and jacket are reuse while the arms and legs were redone to make them pin-less. The sculpt for both is all new as the wrinkles and seems are different. The arms also dropped the buttons at the ends of the sleeves in favor of just painted on ones which was a bit of an odd choice. The feet are the same while the hands are new. If they’re from another figure I don’t know, but they’re not of the old one. The head is obviously new and this one does resemble the character from the show. It’s a stoic expression and looks good, but it also looks pretty big on the body. This body is very slight. That works for some takes on Xavier, but not really the animated one. He’s built like a house in the show which isn’t captured here. I wish they had gone with one of their bigger suited bodies with broader shoulders, but they probably wanted to reuse this torso with the correct tie on it. They at least did a good job of getting all of the greens to match. There’s not a lot of paint to be found on here, but what’s present is neatly applied.

Watch out: Charlie is packing!

What’s unfortunate is the small frame looks more out of place when Charles is placed in his chair. He could get lost in this thing which is noticeably bigger than his old one. At first I thought maybe it was the chair that’s too big, but then I stuck the Savage Land Xavier in it and he looks great. That’s a bigger sculpt and he fills out the chair quite well. The heads from this set also fit that body which is nice. And speaking of, there are two portraits: stoic and yelling. The yelling one works for a more aggressive Xavier, though I wish we got a third one featuring a smile (this is a $50 set, after all). The other accessories include two sets of hands: open and gripping. The gripping hands are asymmetrical as one is intended to grip the included keypad which pops out of the chair’s right armrest. He can hold that with his right hand and the left gripping hand is a touch more relaxed like he’s punching something in on that keypad. There’s also an extra right hand with a two-finger gesture that stands in as his mental powers gesture for reaching to his temple. The same Cerebro helmet from the Savage Land figure is also featured here and now we can see why there’s a hole on the back of it as there’s an included power effect. It’s a large, transparent, circle with sculpted circles throughout it. I think this was released with a Daredevil in the past and it works as a physical manifestation of his power set. It can not only plug into the helmet, but there’s also a hole in the chair back for it too which works well should you not want to utilize the helmet. When plugged into the helmet, it can be a challenge to get it to balance right as it wants to pull the helmet back. As for the chair, it too has some accessories in the form of swap-out canons on the front. The panels on the left and right slide off and the canons slide in to replace them. The customary translucent, red, blast effects are included as well to further sell the illusion and they’re fine. There’s a little gold paint at the base, though they may arrive a little warped. The canons and key pad were both featured in the season two episode “Danger.exe” so Hasbro clearly had advanced notice on what this chair could do.

Savage Land Charles seems to fit better than the one that came with the chair.

Articulation for Professor X is the same as the old figure. Considering he’s a paraplegic, he doesn’t really need to do much, but it’s nice to have options. This new head gets a bit of tilt on the ball hinge which is appreciated for the character and the knees, elbows, and ankles are what you would expect of the line. There are no butterfly joints and the only thing I actively do not like is the ab crunch. It serves little purpose for Xavier and I’d much prefer a diaphragm swivel. I think that would be far more useful than even the waist swivel he has for a guy in a chair.

“I’m gonna need Jubilee to show me how to use this…”

The figure did come in specialty packaging designed to resemble an old television. It’s neat, but just a slipcover which they annoyingly taped to the box inside. It does, however, provide for some hope of a re-release if you missed out and still want this figure. Make the slipcover the real exclusive and just release the figure in a standard box. Which would be a good thing because I think people will want this. It’s a main character from a popular show that has plenty of collectors. It’s not the sort of thing that should remain locked behind the exclusive label, but maybe everyone who wanted one already got one? This set was $50 which is probably a little too much, but not unexpected. The figure is pretty basic, but comes with more accessories than the typical Legends release these days. The chair is its own thing with its own accessories as well and it’s good. I wish the figure had a more accurate sculpt, but at least I have the Savage Land figure I can turn to should it please me (and I still hate the portrait that came with it so at least I can retire that). This release does leave me wishing that I didn’t bother with the old Xavier, but I doubt it has much resale value at this point. At least I have a body for old Guyrich.

We’ll keep it to the original roster to prevent this from getting even more crowded.

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Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Archangel

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Marvel Legends Professor X (Savage Land)

It feels like lately I’ve been getting swayed by clearance and discounts when it comes to my action figure purchases. Such is the case for today’s post on Professor X from the Marvel Legends line of action figures. Target had an exclusive version of Xavier featuring the character in his jumpsuit which showed up in…

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Marvel Legends Professor X with Hoverchair

Most view superheroes as idealized versions of people. Superman has all the power he needs to mete out justice as he sees fit. He’s a man who is super fast, super strong, basically invulnerable, and he even has laser eyes for good measure. Not every character can be Superman though and as the stable of…

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August 27, 2026

X-Men ’97 – Season Two Wrap-Up

By Joe

It’s been two weeks since X-Men ’97 aired its season two finale, which in the entertainment world might as well be two years. As a culture, we move on from things real quick, but I’m still letting that second season simmer in my brain as I collect my thoughts on the season as a whole. The second season of X-Men ’97 was a success, but it was a different experience from season one. That season put the human and mutant conflict at its center. There were other subplots, but the season built to a major climax with the X-Men taking on Bastion and his army of sentinels. The second season centered its conflict on Apocalypse. The X-Men taking on a literal god is going to lead to a different kind of story. Over the decades, the X-Men have done all kinds of stories. Some are more grounded than others while plenty take the group to strange and fantastic destinations. There have been successes and failures with both approaches, but for me personally I do prefer when the X-Men keep mutant persecution at its core. As such, I was predestined to like the show’s second season less than the first, but there are other reasons why season one was the overall stronger of the two.

Season two picked up where season one left off with the X-Men scattered across time and the rise of Apocalypse (Ross Marquand) in focus. In true X-Men fashion, things moved quickly. Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith) and Forge (Gil Birmingham) had already deduced where each member of the team had ended up and already had a plan to bring them all home when the second season started. The future flung X-Men were returned to the present in short order and the past dwelling mutants made their way back home in episode four after a slightly elongated stay. During that fourth episode, Magneto (Matthew Waterson) was executed by Apocalypse and Xavier (Marquand) left a broken mess in the desert sand. I did a mid-season check-in which I’ll link to at the end of this post so I don’t want to spend too much time on the season’s first half, but it provided a good setup for the Apocalypse conflict. It introduced multiple plot lines including both the existence of X-Force and X-Factor and let us know that Apocalypse was not the sort of villain the X-Men could ever hope to reason with.

I did miss the sentinels this year.

The second half of the season (which was actually four episodes so less than half) was less focused. We received the one-off Wolverine (Cal Dodd) centric episode in the fifth spot where Logan was able to lead a team of friends and foes alike to check out a Weapon X facility only to come face-to-face with the Brood. It was all a ruse by Wolverine to get his adamantium back and his actions claimed the lives of two former comrades in Maverick and Kane. What followed was an episode centered on a newcomer, Polaris (Carolina Ravassa), and another that reintroduced the mutant-hating Graydon Creed (Ben Pronsky). The finale gave us the long anticipated resurrection of Gambit (A.J. LoCascio) and the eventual confrontation with Apocalypse which resulted in victory for the X-Men, but at great cost.

Rogue got a substantial power-up in the finale.

My initial thought is to blame the shift in focus from Apocalypse to more condensed stories as the cause for the season losing some of its momentum. The only problem with that theory is I consider the Wolverine episode the best of the season. In that, we got a good character study that also introduced some new conflict between Morph (JP Karliak) and Wolverine. It’s the sort of story that I think X-Men does best. Had the other episodes done something similar I think the season would have felt like a bigger success. Instead, the episode “Danger.exe,” while addressing the PTSD Xavier was feeling over the death of Magneto was a welcomed addition, the conflict felt very small. Danger (Rachel Kimsey) as a character was uninteresting. It sprung up out of no where and was dispatched of with relative ease. Polaris was also properly introduced in that episode and while I think the character is fine, it’s a bit tough to get the audience to care about a new character when so many of the existing ones are not being well serviced by the show. “Strange Land, Savage Heart” made some attempt to refocus the show on the Genosha fallout and the mutant/human conflict, but also felt almost inconsequential. It also brought Colossus (Robert Cait) back into the fold, though he was immediately sidelined following the conclusion of that one.

So…what did everyone think of Gambocalypse?

And the bulging cast was a problem. The original series had a large, but manageable, cast of characters. Even so, some would go several episodes with little to do or say. Most episodes would try to break the team off into smaller squads to better spotlight a few as opposed to trying to focus on many. X-Men ’97 doesn’t seem to care and is happy to shelve characters if it serves the story’s purpose. Beau DeMayo was the showrunner for season one and the writer and architect for much of season two. As a big X-Men fan, he understood what made the engine go. He also, as a fanboy, seemed to want to race through several moments and events from the comics and I feel that lead to tunnel vision, at times. Some episodes in both seasons felt superfluous in the moment, but they often did serve a purpose in advancing a longer running plot. We had to speed-run Inferno in season one to understand where Cable (Chris Potter) came from as it had importance later on. On the flipside, Wolverine had to get his adamantium ripped out in season one because DeMayo just thought it was cool. Season two, despite it being what I consider to be the season’s best, had to devote an episode to Wolverine getting his adamantium back because the show was uninterested in exploring a de-powered Logan. And I think some moments and actions had to happen in season two because DeMayo was building towards Onslaught, which was then aborted. The show didn’t need to add Polaris, but maybe she was going to play a role with Onslaught?

This still hurts.

With the cast becoming unwieldy, it was no surprise that some needed to be culled. And the chosen method for that seemed to be death. Magneto was taken out in the fourth episode. While Onslaught on the horizon was likely to be his way back to the land of the living, it’s now possible he’s gone for good. Or, at least, gone for longer than Gambit. Magik (Courtenay Taylor), who never got a chance to be a character, was killed off to further her brother’s plot which was a shame. Heading into the finale, it still felt like more needed to go. Since the original series ended, we have added Morph, Bishop, Nightcrawler, Sunspot, Forge, and Polaris to the X-Men while only subtracting Gambit. Colossus was sort of added, though he never made it into the title. X-Force brought back Psylocke (Naoko Mori) and Archangel (Christopher Barger) while X-Factor also returned, but really didn’t get any character development outside of Havok (Teddy Sears) and even that was only slightly. X-Men ’97 decided someone had to go (and really, more probably do) and that someone ended up being Nightcrawler.

Many may hate that it happened, but Nightcrawler’s death was handled pretty well.

Nightcrawler’s sacrifice in the finale was both shocking and heartbreaking. It was also beautiful and really a proper send-off for the character. I don’t think anyone wanted to say goodbye to the fuzzy, blue, elf, but it would have been harder to find a better way to do so. In the episode, Rogue (Lenore Zann) makes a bargain with the celestial Eson (Waterson): her life for the power to take down Apocalypse and save Gambit. After she departs with her new glow-up, Nightcrawler realizes what she has done and offers himself up in her place. It’s done well as the show didn’t telegraph Nightcrawler’s choice. And this is a show that isn’t exactly subtle about much. Having Rogue save the day and look at her hands in bewilderment that she’s still alive only for the camera to pan to show a sad looking Beast (George Buza) standing alone clutching Nightcrawler’s Bible to his chest was a true gut punch moment. Nightcrawler’s contented narration as he explains to the god why he is choosing to give his life for his sister is well written (Brian Ford Sullivan is the only credited writer on the episode) and well performed by Adrian Hough. The images we see of the X-Men back home living their lives could be interpreted as Nightcrawler’s hope for his comrades, but I choose to see it as what did happen. It’s such a good way to close the book on Nightcrawler that I hope it isn’t undone. When Gambit died in season one it felt like there was unfinished business so I didn’t hate the show bringing him back, but with Nightcrawler there’s a finality here. That and if the show keeps cheating death then it will cease to have meaning. It took a season and a half’s worth of episodes, but the show basically exchanged Nightcrawler for Gambit and that’s forgivable regardless of who the favored character is.

I’m not a religious person, but I didn’t take any issue with Rogue choosing to remember her brother in this way.

Where the show has never faltered is with the production end. The animation is a huge step up from the original series. Action scenes remain inventive and perhaps the greatest tragedy in Nightcrawler dying is we won’t get to see his skills on display again. He got a nice send-off in that respect first with his dual against Exodus (who I am a bitter was dispatched unceremoniously) and then when under the control of Apocalypse as he damn near took down the entirety of the X-Men and X-Force by himself. The soundtrack by The Newton Brothers also remains excellent and they know just when to turn to that bombastic main theme. They also do a great job of weaving in the old themes from the original series like using Gambit’s theme during his dinner scene with Rogue. And there’s nothing that gets me more excited these days than that opening kicking in before each episode. I hope there never comes a day when I experience that opening without getting goosebumps all up and down my body.

Apocalypse went out like a chump in the end, but at least it was at the hand’s of a fellow god.

Season two pinned its success on the confrontation between the X-Men and Apocalypse as well as the minor conflict of the X-Men vs X-Factor. Was that a wise decision? I think so, but the results weren’t quite there. Apocalypse was really sidelined following that fourth episode. The show tried to keep him on the viewer’s mind with little moments at the end of episodes six and seven, but it wasn’t really enough. He spent the bulk of the finale inside Gambit, and once he emerged, he looked ridiculous and was quickly dispatched by a powered-up Rogue. The show really could have used a tenth episode to let the conflict simmer. Actually have the mutants fight Apocalypse for more than a minute. The issue there, and it’s one that has always existed with Apocalypse, is that he’s just too damn powerful. There usually isn’t a believable way for the X-Men to go toe-to-toe with him, but that’s also a problem of the show’s making. I’ve always loved the concept of Apocalypse, but his stories often end unceremoniously. At least here there was a plausible end to the conflict, even if it felt like the Power Rangers summoning the Megazord and quickly dispatching of a previously insurmountable foe. Or a Dragon Ball Z power-up that reduces a previously unstoppable opponent to a punching bag.

A happy ending?

That was season two. Overall, I enjoyed my time with it and I’ll miss having an episode to look forward to each week (let’s not do the three-episode premiere again, please, it only hastens the end), but the season was not without its problems. For season three, it looks like we’ll be heading back to a human/mutant conflict and that bodes well for the future. It’s also the true end of the DeMayo era (had it continued, we would have been getting a form of the Age of Apocalypse) which gives the season an uncertain feel. One of his strengths as showrunner was his willingness to be uncompromising in calling out bigotry within the show’s universe. That’s something it will need with a President Creed, but in the hands of someone else will that be softened? The finale marked the return of Mystique (Randall Carpenter) and the only clip shown of season three so far featured her Brotherhood of Mutants tangling with some sentinels. Will Creed be a season-long conflict, or will this be something that gets taken care of as quickly as our time-displaced heroes this season? The road ahead is less certain and I am looking forward to it, but the lack of a major cliffhanger this year makes the wait a little more palatable. And as of right now that wait is only supposed to be a year so here’s hoping that come summer 2027 we’ll have more X-Men ’97 to talk about.

See you next year!

Previously…on X-Men ’97:

X-Men ’97 – “Survival of the Fittest”

We have reached the end of season two of X-Men ’97, albeit probably sooner than we would have liked given the nine episode order. Ten already seemed short compared with the 13 the original series used to get so nine is borderline cruel. All that said, before we dig into the review for the season…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “The Dead Man’s Hand”

This was the episode of X-Men ’97 we all knew was coming eventually. I don’t think I need to provide a spoilers warning given the episode title before I say this is the return of Gambit. This was all setup in the closing moments of the first season when Apocalypse (Ross Marquand) found the queen…

Keep reading
by Joe

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

August 12, 2026

X-Men ’97 – “Survival of the Fittest”

By Joe
Original premiere date August 12, 2026

We have reached the end of season two of X-Men ’97, albeit probably sooner than we would have liked given the nine episode order. Ten already seemed short compared with the 13 the original series used to get so nine is borderline cruel. All that said, before we dig into the review for the season finale I do just want to say how happy this show has made me. It still blows my mind that I’m watching a continuation of something I loved as a child. When that theme song starts up, I get goosebumps all up and down my arms and the feeling that comes over me is something akin to a high. It’s fantastic, and I hate that it’s all over so quickly.

“Survival of the Fittest” is the culmination of the season long arc involving Apocalypse (Ross Marquand). Even though the big guy was somewhat put on ice after the fourth episode, he’s back and ready to go for the finale and caught in the crossfire is Gambit. Last week, Gambit (A.J. LoCascio) made his long telegraphed re-debut as he rose from the grave with an all new look, but an all new mind set as well. Gambit quickly set out to putting together a crew and he turned to his roots for that as he returned to Louisiana to corrupt the assassins and the thieves. Gambit choosing to return home should have been a tell for all who love him because Gambit vowed to never return there and by episode’s end we found out he wasn’t the one calling the shots: Apocalypse was. X-Force had found the withered husk of the mighty Apocalypse in the previous episode and the conclusion everyone seemed to draw was that Gambit had been resurrected as his horseman of Death and he made his maker his first victim. Oh, how foolish for Apocalypse cannot be killed so easily, and especially not by one of his own making. He likely needed a new host body and Gambit was his chosen vessel, but before he could resume his crusade against all he deems weak he needed to visit someone from his past: Candra.

The X-Men have a whole bunch of foes to deal with, but the big one is still Apocalypse.

Candra (Debra Wilson) is who we were introduced to during the second season of the original series as the X-Ternal. She is the apparent deity the thieves and assassins aim to please in exchange for their supernatural powers. We saw Candra make an appearance in the past as part of Rama-Tut’s court, but at the time it wasn’t clear why? It turns out, she and Apocalypse would meet sometime after the events in Egypt and the big guy apparently took a liking to her so much so that he bestowed upon her some of his awesome power. She took it and ran and Apocalypse has been trying to reclaim it ever since. Now, it makes sense why he’d have interest in Gambit. If he knows about Gambit’s connection to her via the thieves (and why would he?) then posing as Gambit could bring her out of wherever it is she goes when she isn’t in that swamp and allow him to reclaim what he once gave up. And that’s exactly what happened and the only challenge Apocalypse faced came from a likely expected source in the X-Men. In particular, Xavier (Marquand) and Rogue (Lenore Zann). Xavier chose to battle Apocalypse in Gambit’s mind in what was nearly a 1:1 recreation of a similar battle for the soul of Jean during The Dark Phoenix Saga. Only this time, Xavier failed and it was Rogue who somehow was able to enter Gambit’s mind and make the save. I say “some how” because she and Gambit have never demonstrated a psychic rapport before, but he also handed over the power he took back from Candra to her. Perhaps that’s doing the heavy lifting here?

Val Cooper’s villain turn has been pretty gradual this season.

Speaking of, why did Apocalypse do that? Does this all go back to that conversation he and Rogue shared in the past regarding love? That’s one of the questions I had going into “Survival of the Fittest” where the X-Men need to free their friend from Apocalypse’s control, but also contend with recently allied X-Factor and the remnants of X-Force. Jubilee (Holly Chou) and Sunspot (Gui Agustini) defected from Cable’s (Chris Potter) team when it became obvious that Cable’s only objective is destroying Apocalypse even if that means killing Gambit in the process. X-Factor has it out for Charles and his X-Men and their choice to get involved on US soil has put them in the crosshairs. Will the supposed good mutants all figure out they have a problem bigger than each other or will everything just fall apart and play into the hands of Apocalypse?

If the X-Men are going to save Remy, then you know Rogue is going to have to play a big part.

For the finale, Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith) is given the honor of stating the “Previously,” line, though if you think that’s a tip for how the episode will go I will say it most certainly is not. Jubilee and Sunspot are back in the roll call this week, though Colossus still remains on the sidelines. Perhaps he’ll be a season three addition? The ending clash has also been changed to feature Xavier’s X-Men on one side and Val Cooper’s (Catherine Disher) X-Factor on the other. The X-Men remained in their Jim Lee era costumes for this clash all season and I wonder if that will be changed next year? Or maybe leaving them in those looks will always be a way to celebrate the original series? I wouldn’t mind a return to those looks, personally. I’ve never been a fan of the black and yellow which, like the original movie suits, seemed to be born out of the idea that the old, colorful, costumes were something to be embarrassed by.

X-Factor being accompanied by Sentinels is a perversion of what they should be standing for.

The episode wastes no time in getting to the conflict. X-Factor, along with Cable, Archangel (Christopher Barger), and Psylocke (Naoko Mori), are knocking on Xavier’s door while Gambit remains unconscious. He’s a ticking time bomb though and about the only answers anyone can come up with rests miles below the water’s surface. There, Beast (George Buza), Rogue, and Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough) have come upon the celestial ship of Apocalypse, last seen in the past as a temple, but last seen in this era back in the episode “Obsession” from the original series. Beast still has a small fragment of the ship’s A.I. and it’s enough to revive it and reactivate the portal to the celestial realm we saw En Sabah Nur enter and emerge from as Apocalypse in “Rise of Apocalypse.” The ship warns the group that entering such a place requires a price, but Rogue is determined to do whatever it takes to save Gambit while Beast and Nightcrawler can do little but watch.

On Genosha, we get to watch as Cooper’s forces storm the X-Corp building in a bid to get Cable close enough to take out Gambit. They are convinced that destroying Gambit is the only way to eliminate Apocalypse and it’s only a matter of time until he takes over Gambit’s mind and body, as he’s done to so many before. There is some good action spots including Jubilee and Havok (Teddy Sears) battling it out in airplanes, Wolverine (Cal Dodd) and Morph (JP Karliak) taking on the duo of Archangel and Psylocke, and a big showdown between parents and son. There’s a lot to pack into 30 minutes (it would have been nice to get an extended ninth episode given they axed the tenth), but the pace felt solid. The action was satisfying and the character moments were also present. I might have preferred to have more character moments to go out on, but I also can’t critique the ending. Without spoiling anything, it was beautiful.

There were some fun pairings in this one, like this confrontation between Psylocke and Wolverine that doesn’t go how Betsy imagined it would.

I went into this episode unsure if X-Men ’97 could stick the landing. The whole season had been building towards this confrontation, but along the way it reminded me that the big spectacles aren’t really the draw with X-Men. It’s the team dynamics, the inter-character conflicts, the soap opera elements that make the show unique among a litany of other options these days. It’s similar to how the draw with Spider-Man is less about Spider-Man and more about Peter Parker which was really on display in Brand New Day which appears on its way to be the most successful film at the box office ever in terms of number of dollars spent. Hopefully there is a lesson in there for Marvel. X-Men ’97 found a way to stick that landing and found it in an unexpected source. Should I have seen it coming? Perhaps, but I was content to just sit back and let the show take me on a ride this week and I never really found myself trying to forecast the end. I was concerned at the onset it would feel too much like the Dark Phoenix Saga because it certainly did the prior week. In a way, it did borrow elements from that this week, but with a different resolution. There was also the elephant in the room that is Apocalypse. I like Apocalypse as a villain, but my problem with him going back to the original series is that they never found satisfying ways to stop him. He would just sort of leave and the one time they really stopped him was at the end of “Beyond Good and Evil” when it was kind of a goofy, unsatisfying ending. One thing they absolutely get right with this finale is that it’s only sort of about Apocalypse, but it never loses sight of the fact that it’s primarily about Rogue and Gambit and the family they’ve acquired who will risk it all to help them. Even when it means, in the case of Cyclops (Ray Chase) and Jean (Jennifer Hale), taking on their actual family.

Cable arrived on Genosha amid literal fireworks and now he returns amid a hail of gun fire.

Like the end of season one, there is a post credits scene setting up season three so do make sure you stick around for that (or use the skip credits option). I’ll likely make a season two wrap-up post to get more into spoilers, but suffice to say I like what they’re setting up for season three. I just hope we don’t have to wait longer than a year this time (they showed a clip at San Diego Comic Con and could conceivably show another this weekend at D23 so that’s a positive sign) as that can really derail momentum. X-Men ’97 is one of the best things Disney and Marvel have going right now so I hope they don’t do anything to stifle that. This finale was terrific. If you felt the season was losing some of its momentum coming into the last episode then rest assured, this one is the payoff you likely hoped for. I do think it will be controversial and it will have some major lasting impacts on the show, but in the moment I found it satisfying even if a bit painful. Sometimes, that’s a mark of good art.

Previously…on X-Men ’97:

X-Men ’97 – “The Dead Man’s Hand”

This was the episode of X-Men ’97 we all knew was coming eventually. I don’t think I need to provide a spoilers warning given the episode title before I say this is the return of Gambit. This was all setup in the closing moments of the first season when Apocalypse (Ross Marquand) found the queen…

by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Strange Land, Savage Heart”

If you were hoping for a quick follow-up on the closing moments of last week’s episode featuring Apocalypse and a certain resurrected cajun, I’m afraid I have some bad news. The show is going to slow walk that plot as this week we’re dealing with more Genosha fallout. Considering the magnitude of the event, I’m…

by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Danger.exe”

After last week’s side trip up north to get Wolverine his skeleton back, this week’s episode of X-Men ’97 brings us back to the mansion which we really haven’t seen much of so far this season. The season’s sixth episode is centered on survivor’s guilt and the sins of a parent. For the guilt portion,…

by Joe

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

August 6, 2026

X-Men ’97 – “The Dead Man’s Hand”

By Joe
Original premiere date August 5, 2026.

This was the episode of X-Men ’97 we all knew was coming eventually. I don’t think I need to provide a spoilers warning given the episode title before I say this is the return of Gambit. This was all setup in the closing moments of the first season when Apocalypse (Ross Marquand) found the queen of hearts in the ruins of Genosha. To make it even more obvious, the script even called for him to say “…death” just to drive it home further. Gambit taking a turn as Death, the most prominent member of Apocalypse’s horsemen, is also a plotline ripped straight from the comic only for that the circumstances were quite different. As is always the case with television and movies, being able to see where the story is going is not a hindrance in and of itself, it’s how you present it.

Everyone can relax, Gambit has returned.

When last we saw the members of X-Force, they were stumbling upon the apparent corpse of Apocalypse as well as that same playing card so we really didn’t have to waste time getting into things. The episode begins with X-Corp enjoying a friendly game of poker, because of course they are, which also allows Beast (George Buza) to explain what The Dead Man’s Hand refers to (aces over eights, if you’re curious). X-Force comes storming in to share their find and Jubilee (Holly Chou) has the responsibility of handing over the playing card to Rogue (Lenore Zann). They all know what this means and the episode quickly pivots to a search and rescue as they need to locate Gambit (A.J. LoCascio) and free him from the darkness Apocalypse likely imbued within him. Remember that little comment Archangel (Christopher Barger) dropped back in the second episode about Rogue saving him from Apocalypse’s control? Yeah, that was to setup this moment as everyone instantly assumes Rogue can do the same for Gambit, provided they can get her close enough to do so. The only thing they don’t know is what state Gambit is in and how on Earth did he manage to kill Apocalypse? Did he?

They even have their own X-branded poker chips.

There is a bit of impetus to the rescue mission because it’s going to take X-Corp back to the States since that’s where Gambit has gone. And if X-Corp is operating in the U.S. then they are bound to attract the attention of Val Cooper’s (Catherine Disher) X-Factor. Worse, if X-Factor were to get involved or locate Gambit first there’s no telling which way that confrontation could go. As a result, this episode moves at a pretty brisk pace which is mostly fine where the main plot is concerned, but it’s a bit of a bummer because we have some pretty big reunions that don’t get much time to breath. Cable (Chris Potter) is reunited with his parents for the first time since their emotional parting at the end of last season. Cyclops (Ray Chase) is quite eager to become a happy, healthy, family, but Cable seems pretty cool to the idea. Or he’s just a man too devoted to his mission of eradicating Apocalypse to spend time being happy. This is also Jubilee’s first time seeing her mutant family since the events of the first season and that little detail gets absolutely no time. We couldn’t even spend thirty seconds on it? Another character from earlier in the season is also brought back into the fold. I expected it, because it was so weird to see them appear earlier, but I don’t know that I care for the direction it took. I’m content to see if it goes anywhere next week before rendering a final verdict.

I love Cable’s eye roll.

What isn’t short-changed is the impact Gambit’s death and return has on Rogue. Not only is she likely wracked with survivor’s guilt stemming from the events on Genosha, but she’s also burdened with the guilt of not telling Gambit she chose him over Magneto before he died. This is her chance to set things right, but she’s hesitant. Gambit died. She held his lifeless corpse in her arms and now he’s suddenly alive? What does that do to a man? I guess she could always ask Morph (and if we don’t get to hear Morph’s opinion at some point that will be a real miss). That dynamic understandably takes center stage for much of the episode and it’s handled pretty well.

You know, most people just bring a bottle of wine or something when they show up at a friend’s new house for the first time.

There is some great action to be found in this one. In particular, one character really gets to shine in a way that might make some wonder if they’re the most dangerous member of the team. It’s awesome and I will say no more as I don’t want to spoil it. Visually, the episode is pretty interesting for its mix of costumes. Some characters are wearing threads from the 70s while others are sporting their looks from the 2000s. Every decade except for the 60s might be on display here. I do have to say though, I was a little disappointed in Gambit’s new look. He’s basically just gray scale Gambit. They added a strap across his abdomen, but I think that’s it. He does have a unique looking power set now which seems to focus on Tarot cards as well as a sick, new, ride he may have stolen from Lobo. I suppose a cynic might roll their eyes at such, but it’s fine. These are comic book stories, they’re allowed to be cool for the sake of being cool.

I don’t mind the mish-mash of costumes on display, but I do kind of hate that we’re bringing in the movie looks for things like Cerebro (or Cerebra).

The episode moves fast and ends somewhat abruptly. It has what I’d call a soft resolution, but the bigger battle is still to come. In that, it feels more like the first part of this season finale that’s on the way. The episode moves some pieces around so that everyone can get involved. The only X-Men left out of this episode entirely are Forge, Polaris, Bishop, and the newly added Colossus (who did not get added to the opening title – what gives?). I was a little surprised to see Polaris and Bishop left out since it seems like the show is building something there, but I would be even more surprised if we don’t see them next week. Maybe some team members needed to be left out so they can swoop in at just the right time next week? I will say, for a penultimate episode it didn’t leave me as excited as I would have expected it to. It’s certainly not on par with last season’s where Wolverine got his skeleton ripped apart by Magneto. I’m also still wondering if some of my predictions come true before the season ends. It seems like we have a pretty straight-forward finale coming up, but there’s also certainly some curves ahead. I both look forward to it and dread it because nine episodes is just too short for a season and then we return to our X-Men ’97-less existence.

Previously…on X-Men ’97:

X-Men ’97 – “Strange Land, Savage Heart”

If you were hoping for a quick follow-up on the closing moments of last week’s episode featuring Apocalypse and a certain resurrected cajun, I’m afraid I have some bad news. The show is going to slow walk that plot as this week we’re dealing with more Genosha fallout. Considering the magnitude of the event, I’m…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Danger.exe”

After last week’s side trip up north to get Wolverine his skeleton back, this week’s episode of X-Men ’97 brings us back to the mansion which we really haven’t seen much of so far this season. The season’s sixth episode is centered on survivor’s guilt and the sins of a parent. For the guilt portion,…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs”

When X-Men went into development for the Fox Kids Network, it didn’t take the writing staff (who was unfamiliar with the property going in) long to figure out that Wolverine was their ticket to television royalty. The character really took off in the 1980s and helped the X-Men storm into the 1990s as the most…

Keep reading
by Joe

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

July 29, 2026

X-Men ’97 – “Strange Land, Savage Heart”

By Joe
Premiere date July 29, 2026.

If you were hoping for a quick follow-up on the closing moments of last week’s episode featuring Apocalypse and a certain resurrected cajun, I’m afraid I have some bad news. The show is going to slow walk that plot as this week we’re dealing with more Genosha fallout. Considering the magnitude of the event, I’m not sure we’ve really had enough of it. The episode is going to open with a flashback to that attack to help setup a plot during the present. The human and mutant conflict is center stage once again, and some old friends and foes from the original series get to make their X-Men ’97 debut. Oh, and we’re going to the Savage Land!

The opening title adds Polaris (Carolina Ravassa) to the mix this week so she’s onboard for real. She’s also been assigned to X-Corp along with Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith), though no one is sporting the black and yellow in the opening just yet as they’re all still rocking the blue. As for that flashback I mentioned, that is being done to introduce Colossus (Robert Cait) and Magik (Courtenay Taylor), his younger sister whom cartoon viewers only know as Illyana. She was featured in the original series as the kid sister whom Colossus was always looking out for. As we saw with a Morph transformation during the first season, she’s grown up some to a teenager which seems to track if we were introduced to her in 1992 and it’s now 1997. As the trailers for the season let on, Magik is not going to make it through the attack in Genosha. The scene is brief showing her alongside her brother as they try to help fellow mutants and stand against the massive tri-Sentinel, but Colossus can only stare on helplessly as his little sister is annihilated leaving him grieving over her corpse.

Colossus is back, but sporting Acolyte purple.

This, like in the comics, is the catalyst for Colossus joining Magneto’s Acolytes. We too saw them in the original series with the two-parter “Sanctuary” where they weren’t really positioned as villains, just followers of Magneto. In that story, Acolyte Fabian Cortez attempts to murder Magneto and the X-Men have to expose his crimes. As far as we know, his body has been absconded by Apocalypse following the events in the episode “Fifth Horsemen” so he should not be turning up anytime soon. And we are introduced to the Acolytes via them dropping in on a campaign rally by everyone’s favorite mutant hater Graydon Creed (Ben Pronsky). Apparently, Sabretooth did not murder him at the end of the episode “Bloodlines” which Sabretooth alluded to during his appearance this season. Creed has been left with a scar on his face, but otherwise seems fine. At least, fine for now as the Acolytes, now lead by Exodus (Bo Poraj), have plans for the would-be president. Feeling that he has not been held accountable for his crimes against mutant kind, the Acolytes intend to take him and dispense justice as they see fit.

Poor Illyana, we hardly knew her.

Xavier (Ross Marquand) is able to take point here and sends X-Corp, minus Cyclops and Jean, to the Savage Land where the Acolytes have made their home. It makes sense since that was where Magneto originally intended to launch his mutant utopia, but things obviously changed. Mr. Sinister also called this place home back in the original show’s second season, and via the great citadel in the middle he was able to operate a device that nullified mutant powers and that is apparently still operational. The X-Corp members are separated quickly with Polaris and Bishop left out in the jungle while Rogue (Lenore Zann), Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough), and Beast (George Buza) get to tour the new mutant haven under the watchful eye of their former ally, Colossus. Their goal is to bring Creed home fearing his murder at the hands of mutants would be disastrous for human-mutant relations. The Acolytes seek only to punish him with the punishment being death. Toss in the fact that Creed is Nightcrawler’s biological brother and you have yourself quite the little soap opera. Nightcrawler, being a man of faith, does not wish to see his brother killed even if he personally has no real love for him. And since they can’t exactly fight their way out without their powers his solution is to propose a trial with him defending his brother and Exodus standing as the prosecutor. In the judge’s chair sits Colossus whom Nightcrawler has faith in that he’ll see some worth in Creed and spare his life.

I’ve always found Exodus to be a bad ass design.

The idea of a trial is pretty hokey on its surface, but I have to concede it does play an important role in adding some color to the Graydon Creed character. It’s easy to just hate him for being a bigot and think no deeper than that, but the episode finds a rather compelling angle all while not making him out to be someone we should have any amount of respect for. The Polaris and Bishop pairing is pretty underserved though. There’s an interesting angle here in that once Bishop loses his mutant powers all of the energy he had stored within him (he’s basically a battery) is trying to escape, but letting it out would likely kill him and perhaps anyone nearby. He can only withstand it for so long putting a running clock on this mission that is basically never acknowledged again apart from the initial explanation. There’s also clearly a chemistry forming between Bishop and Polaris which is played well, but again, not enough time is devoted to it.

From the trailer with maybe Iceman in a frame on the ground over Rogue’s left shoulder.
From the episode. Now it could just be me, but that image I thought was Iceman appears to be desaturated here. Also, they removed Gambit.

I did not like the Magik death reveal when it was shown in the trailers and I still don’t like it very much now. Mostly because she’s just a plot device to motivate her brother. Yes, she served that role in the preceding series, but not at the expense of her life. If you’re going to kill her off, at least let her get to be a character first. Instead, we get nothing which feels like a waste. This being a show based on comic books, it would hardly be a surprise to see her come back and maybe she’ll even be one of the horsemen of Apocalypse, but that’s not a get out of jail free card for bad character writing. Colossus is still quite likable and I was delighted to see Robert Cait return to reprise the role. We do get an action sequence to cap things off and it too features another character death that felt both implausible and like a waste. Sometimes this show comes across as too cavalier when it comes to killing characters off, mostly because they just don’t get enough runway beforehand. At least the appearance of the shrine first spotted in the trailer brings about no more deaths. Even the image that appeared to be Iceman seems to no longer exist. Has that character been spared a gruesome fate? It would seem so since no one has even spoken his name despite his connection to Polaris.

I hope we get to see more this pairing.

I did really enjoy the Nightcrawler/Creed dynamics in this one. Even if you are not a religious person (and I am not), it’s easy to empathize with Nightcrawler in this one. He’s just trying to find a peaceful solution. He does not defend his brother’s crimes or feel that he should not answer for them, but he firmly believes it would not be right to murder him. He gets tested and pushed, but I really liked his solution. I also just plain like bringing Creed back into the fold because he’s such a detestable human being and a great foil for the X-Men. An element of the show was lost when he basically faded away after season two and keeping the mutant/human conflict in focus is really crucial, in my opinion. The episode does end in a similar fashion to last week’s as the show essentially slow walks the return of Gambit as Death. It does feature a swerve that I didn’t see coming, though it’s one that could also be functionally meaningless as far as the plot is concerned. I guess we’ll find out next week as that episode is titled “The Dead Man’s Hand” and if that isn’t the big Gambit episode then I don’t know what would be.

Previously…on X-Men ’97:

X-Men ’97 – “Danger.exe”

After last week’s side trip up north to get Wolverine his skeleton back, this week’s episode of X-Men ’97 brings us back to the mansion which we really haven’t seen much of so far this season. The season’s sixth episode is centered on survivor’s guilt and the sins of a parent. For the guilt portion,…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs”

When X-Men went into development for the Fox Kids Network, it didn’t take the writing staff (who was unfamiliar with the property going in) long to figure out that Wolverine was their ticket to television royalty. The character really took off in the 1980s and helped the X-Men storm into the 1990s as the most…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Rise of Apocalypse: Part 2”

Unlike the first three episodes of season two of X-Men ’97, this fourth one is going to spend all of its time in one era. And as you could probably guess, that era is 3,000 BCE since that is where we left off last week. I consider these reviews that I do spoiler free, but…

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by Joe

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July 27, 2026

Marvel Legends Onslaught

By Joe
Behold! The most divisive villain in X-Men history!

We’re deep into the second season of X-Men ’97 and it might be appropriate that Hasbro chose this time to unleash Onslaught upon the masses. Onslaught goes back to 1996 and is the manifestation of Charles Xavier and Magneto via complicated, comic booky, means. He was the big bad of a whole arc that changed Marvel Comics for a good while afterward ushering in the Heroes Reborn era and X-Men ’97 may be looking to bring him into the animated universe. Or not, if former showrunner Beau DeMayo can be believed. We’ll just have to wait and see, but the mere possibility of his appearance in the show might be why Hasbro chose to re-release the former build-a-figure as a solo retro card. Sold exclusively at Target, this figure went up for preorder a couple of months ago and now it’s here for me to talk about.

He’s technically not as big as he’s supposed to be, but he’s pretty big.

Back in the Toy Biz days, Marvel Legends did a build-a-figure Onslaught, but not like this. That version of the character was its “crab form” that had a skull-like face and digitigrade legs. It was basically not the version most wanted or thought of when thinking of Onslaught, but in the pre-Legends days Toy Biz had done an Onslaught figure in the armored Magneto form so maybe that was why they were reluctant to do that again? Many years later, Hasbro finally did the figure in the more familiar look as a build-a-figure and, like several other build-a-figures before it, it’s now being repackaged as a stand-alone action figure with only minimal tooling changes. I don’t have the prior version so I can’t say for sure what’s different, but some have claimed the head has been retooled. I can’t tell just by looking at pictures. The only thing I know for sure is the paint job is a little different, most notably the hands, and this version omits the Red Skull optional portrait. Otherwise, it’s a big figure on a big card for a bigger price.

He’s not going to do much, so it’s all about presence.

The retro card makes for a nice display option for those who keep these things mint-on-card, but for me I’m ripping this big boy open. Onslaught stands around 8″ tall and he’s most comparable in my collection to the previous build-a-figure turned retro card release Apocalypse. Red and purple dominates the look here and most of it is just colored plastic. There’s a shininess to the purple this time that may be new, but again, I don’t have that old figure. It’s not done via paint but rather Hasbro’s shiny attempt at molded plastic and it looks okay, but there’s no fooling anyone what this thing is. It’s a big hunk of plastic. Most of the paint is reserved for the head which has the purple trim, black “face,” and white eyes. Onslaught never had a face when helmeted so this is definitely the preferred route and it looks fine. There’s also a little paint on the circles of his armor and even a hit of a matte red on the outer part of his thighs. The shoulder pads are massive and, if anything, actually could be bigger but I understand Hasbro’s reluctance to go beyond what’s here. They help dominate the silhouette and even contribute to the torso looking a bit blocky. There is a taper to it, but you almost have to raise the shoulder pads or outstretch the arms to really get a feel for it. Otherwise, this guy presents as pretty chunky head-on. I wish there was actually more bulk front-to-back, but such is often a failing of Marvel Legends. The character was so preposterous in the comics that it’s kind of impossible to properly render him in plastic, but this is mostly fine.

“Daddy..?”
“Charles, I did not sign up for this!” “Come on Magnus, you need to step up!”

Since this mold is a few years old, the construction and articulation is a little dated. If you hate pinned limbs in your figures well then too bad, Onslaught has pins in his knees and that’s that. There’s a ball-hinge at the neck, shoulder hinges, bicep, elbow, wrist, ab crunch, hip, thigh, knee, and ankle articulation. It’s all a bit stiff and somewhat limited because this guy is pretty damn chunky and not conducive to much range really anywhere. The head is pretty well buried in the neck and can only do so much. The shoulder pads do swivel and can kind of get out of the way, but not enough to let the arms come up a full 90 degrees. You can disconnect the shoulder pads in the back rather easily, but it only allows so much extra. Perhaps because this was originally a build-a-figure, the arms pop out of the socket pretty easily and sometimes when you don’t want them to. Despite how blocky the ankles look, there’s enough clearance to get a good ankle rocker. The cuffs on his forearms also rotate which is good for adjustment posing. The bicep swivel is more like a sleeve as the elbows are single hinged. It basically just moves to keep the muscle group lined up. The elbow itself also swivels. He’s a very limited poser as a result, but at least there’s some size here to kind of make up for that. Is it enough though?

“Yay! I want to go to the park!”

Because this guy has no accessories. Just his “cape” which comes in the box unattached and pegs into the figure’s back. Basically, what you see is what you get and it will set you back $40 if you can find one in Target. The register date was July 20th so if you find one at this point there’s no fear of a register lock event. If you want an Onslaught and didn’t get the prior one then this is fine. It’s a lot cheaper than having to buy an entire wave of figures even if it’s still overpriced at $40. I think it’s pretty lame of Hasbro to not slip in some accessories of some kind. How about some fists? Maybe some kind of energy effect? I don’t really care about the Red Skull omission, but there should be something here. When that retro card Apocalypse dropped it had a newly tooled torso, a new portrait, the old portrait, two sets of hands, and a newly tooled arm canon and blast effect parts. That’s a good value! It was also 2022 and it seems like these days you’re getting less with every Legends release, but paying more money. Onslaught certainly captures that. As for me, I always liked the look of the character even if the story kind of sucked. I also know that if this guy does show up in X-Men ’97 then I would have regretted passing on this release. Is that a good reason to spend forty bucks on an action figure? Probably not.

He may be more at home with the Gamerverse.

For related entries on Onslaught, check out the following:

Marvel Legends Professor X with Hoverchair

Most view superheroes as idealized versions of people. Superman has all the power he needs to mete out justice as he sees fit. He’s a man who is super fast, super strong, basically invulnerable, and he even has laser eyes for good measure. Not every character can be Superman though and as the stable of…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Magneto

It was two years ago that Hasbro made the announcement that it was wading into the weeds of X-Men, the cartoon series that aired on the Fox Kids Network from 1992-1997. The line was released across eight installments in 2022 (plus a ninth if you include the obviously animated-inspired Apocalypse released on a retro card)…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men Retro Card Series Apocalypse

It is Halloween and that means it’s time for costumes, candy, and spooky fun. It’s also Halloween 2022, a pretty important date if you grew up loving those mutants who ran around in colorful spandex fighting for a better tomorrow. That’s because 30 years ago on this very night, the animated series X-Men premiered on…

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by Joe

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July 23, 2026

X-Men ’97 – “Danger.exe”

By Joe
Original premiere date July 22, 2026.

After last week’s side trip up north to get Wolverine his skeleton back, this week’s episode of X-Men ’97 brings us back to the mansion which we really haven’t seen much of so far this season. The season’s sixth episode is centered on survivor’s guilt and the sins of a parent. For the guilt portion, we have Charles Xavier (Ross Marquand) who witnessed the death of his friend, rival, and surrogate brother Magneto at the hands of Apocalypse. For the sins of the father angle, we have Polaris (Carolina Ravissa) who we really don’t know much about. Sure, if you’re a comic reader then you probably know plenty about the sometimes daughter of Magneto, but anyone who only absorbs X-knowledge via the animated series just knows she’s a former member of the team who once dated Iceman and is now a member of the government task force known as X-Factor. Oh, and she has a green hair for some reason.

Polaris gets something of a spotlight episode this week which just makes me wonder if a certain ancient, evil mutant has a plan for her?

Since both the original show and this one have dedicated so little screen time to Polaris, it’s even possible that viewers have no idea that she essentially has the same power set as Magneto. The comics have always been a bit non-committal with her lineage. Some writers made it a point to say she wasn’t related to Magneto while others have said the opposite. Obviously, if she has the same magnetic powers then one is going to naturally wonder if the two are related, though there are plenty of mutants with similar powers that are not so it’s also not a requirement. For this universe, we were shown previously the two are likely related since Polaris appears in silhouette form in the first season finale in Magneto’s mind. I guess that means he knows about her, and that much is confirmed early on in the episode “Danger.exe.” At the beginning, Polaris is shown breaking up a weapon’s smuggling ring being lead by old friend Carl Denti aka the X-Cutioner (Lawrence Bayne), though he’s no longer sporting the fancy costume. He’s teamed up with a bunch of other folks all in service to the reverand William Stryker (JP Karliak), the enemy featured in the classic story God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont. More casual fans will recognize him as the foe in X2: X-Men United though for that role he was turned into former military and the whole preacher thing was dropped – a pity. Here he’s just a cameo, but I do hope he plays a bigger role in the episodes to come at some point.

Xavier using the Danger Room to relive Magneto’s execution is pretty grim.

Polaris breaks up this gathering in pretty extravagant fashion. She also loses her cool a bit which puts her in hot water with X-Factor’s leader and government liaison, Val Cooper (Catherine Disher). Seeing the two have a very different idea for how members of X-Factor should approach their work, Polaris finds herself dismissed, but that’s not so big of a deal when your fallback plan happens to be the X-Men. Lorna returns to find her room had been left untouched, which is impressive since the mansion has been destroyed at least two times since she left. Her and the professor get to have a little chat and things seems to be going well, all until the Danger Room’s artificial intelligence breaks free and turns on everyone. This is where Xavier comes in as he and a small team have returned to Genosha to pick up the pieces. The Danger Room A.I., simply known as Danger (Rachel Kimsey), seeks a confrontation with its maker in Charles and that’s the physical conflict of the episode. The mental one is Xavier overcoming his guilt and helping Lorna to not be afraid of where she comes from in order to cut loose and use her powers to help those who are in need.

There is some…danger…incoming for the X-Men this week.

This episode is a little less meaty than most of the ones we’ve had this season. I liken it to the Lifedeath stuff from last season as there’s some necessary character growth, just minus the big, world-changing, moments. There is a lot of subtle change at play here as Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith) has been promoted to headmistress and put in charge of the education at the Xavier Institute. The government has also forbid the X-Men from acting as a paramilitary organization and the institute is only allowed to remain open if it’s to function as a school. Basically, anything they do outside of education is going to put them into conflict with X-Factor and it feels like we’re setting up a showdown between the two. How X-Force plays into all of this remains to be seen as we haven’t checked in with them in quite some time now. There are also a lot of new students at the school, most of whom we saw in that X-Force centric second episode so I’m assuming there is some cooperation between the X-Men and X-Force, or they just ditched the kids on their doorstep. A bit surprising that Jubilee didn’t hang around.

Looks like another wardrobe change for the X-Men is in order.

In terms of the bigger picture, there was an interesting conversation between Xavier and Lorna where Charles basically confesses he tried to preserve Magneto’s psyche just before Apocalypse murdered him, but failed. Are we aborting on Onslaught? That’s a strong possibility. The episode concludes with a long-expected scene as well which may or may not pay dividends next week. I would not be surprised if it’s put off until the penultimate episode. This episode is also noteworthy in that it does not feature Wolverine. It’s hardly a surprise to see an episode of X-Men ’97 not feature the runt, but following the end of last week’s episode it was a bit disappointing to not see if his relationship with Morph has been affected. The episode does put some players on the move and there is an attempt at placing the focus back on Apocalypse despite the emphasis on a villain of the week format. I get the sense that the show is maneuvering its pieces into place before the big conclusion. With only three episodes to go in the season, it feels like things are about to pick up.

Previously…on X-Men ’97:

X-Men ’97 – “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs”

When X-Men went into development for the Fox Kids Network, it didn’t take the writing staff (who was unfamiliar with the property going in) long to figure out that Wolverine was their ticket to television royalty. The character really took off in the 1980s and helped the X-Men storm into the 1990s as the most…

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by Joe

X-Men ’97 – “Rise of Apocalypse: Part 2”

Unlike the first three episodes of season two of X-Men ’97, this fourth one is going to spend all of its time in one era. And as you could probably guess, that era is 3,000 BCE since that is where we left off last week. I consider these reviews that I do spoiler free, but…

Keep reading
by Joe

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

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…

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by Joe

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