X-Men ’97 Season 2 Review: Does the Series Maintain Its Momentum?
It’s fair to say I’m a little obsessed with X-Men. I’ve spent the last 6ish years making LEGO figures out of them after all, which people tell me is an above normal level of being into something. Unlike a lot of X-Men fans though, my love of the franchise has nothing to do with the 90s cartoon, mainly because it ended before I was born but also because I was too busy watching Star Wars on repeat as a child to ever catch it on re-runs. When it hit Disney+ and I was at the height of my X-Men obsession thanks to the Krakoa era of comics, I gave it a go and it still didn’t really click with me. So when X-Men ‘97 started I was really only mildly interested in it. That was, until I watched the first episode and instantly fell in love, which only grew as the series went on. It wasn’t perfect, but it was so much more than the empty nostalgia bait I expected.
X-Men ‘97 Season 2 picks up pretty close to where S1 ended, with the X-Men scattered through time in both the past and future following the destruction of Asteroid M, and Bishop and Forge with only 1 goal: To bring the X-Men back…TO THE 90s.
One consequence of not growing up with the 90s series or reading a lot of 90s X-Men comics until very recently, is I’ve never been a huge fan of Jubilee beyond a couple of great issues (The aftermath of X-Cutioners Song comes to mind). I get the role she serves on the team, much like Kitty Pryde before her she gives a more relatable heart to the team, someone not as used to the danger of X-man life. But while Kitty felt like a character with real growth, Jubilee often felt stagnant. Even giving her a child was discarded like it meant nothing. So I was very pleasantly surprised at the real spotlight Jubilee gets in X-Men ‘97 Season 2. As shown in the trailers, we see her and Sunspot as a member of Cable’s X-Force, a role that gives her great opportunities to show her development beyond Mallrat into a hero of her own right. That goes beyond just showing some really creative and fun fight scenes and uses for her powers, but we also get a clear reminder of the things Jubilee has learned over the years with the X-Men and the sort of hero she’s become, someone who wants to help the helpless, not just stop the bad guys.
Apocalypse, despite being one of the X-Men’s longest running villains, is another character that has failed to click with me often, aside from Howard and Hickman’s recent “wife guy” push in X of Swords. While he talks a big game, has a great Walt Simonson design, and some killer henchmen, his “survival of the fittest” shtick gets old quickly, and most plots struggle to turn him into more than just another evil mutant. One of the reasons X-Men ‘97’s Apocalypse is defying that and really working for me so far is the great contrast between the two brilliant performances from Adetokumboh M’Cormack as a young En Sabah Nur and Ross Marquand as Apocalypse. While I’ll leave the developments of how they evolve to your own viewing, M’Cormack does a great job of humanising En Sabah Nur into a more understandable threat, making his inevitable transformation into Marquand’s somewhat robotic, cackling, incarnation of evil itself. The two truly form the rocks of the eternal shore, crash against them and be BROKEN!
A real highlight of Season 1 was the relationships between Scott, Jean, and Cable, and coming into X-Men ‘97 Season 2 we get a real tease of more potential drama as Scott and Jean find themselves face to face with the young teen version of the child they sent to the future in a somewhat abridged adaptation of one of my favourite 90s comics, The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. While far from a 1 to 1 adaptation, it nails the heart of that story, 2 parents desperate to treasure every moment with a son they’ve been torn away from before and know they could be torn from again at any moment. Even with the shorter time frame compared to the years spent with Nate in the comic, it’s just as tragic, thanks to the great performances of Ray Chase and Jennifer Hale, joined by Michael Johnston as a young Nathan (who you may recognise from recent hit horror movie Obsession).
X-Men ‘97 Season 2 shares S1’s biggest issue so far though, the pacing. S1 often worked through plots at lightning speed, adapting what would be 20+ issues in a single half an hour, largely successfully but frequently in a way that left a lot that could have been developed further. And while S2 doesn’t quite go this far and overall seems to improve, it’s timejump skips over several key developments that I would’ve loved to have seen, with several of the hurdles presented at the end of S1 already partially resolved by the time we catch back up with our X-Men. Character meetings, and our main characters processing those meetings and even recovering from the aftermath, both emotional and physical of S1, feel like such an interesting story that it’s a shame they won’t be told, or be relegated to a tie-in comic.
As much as I’d like to say I’m capable of reviewing an X-Men show completely unbiased, I’ll admit I spent much of S1 LeoPointing at the screen at every mutant I could recognise, and S2 is no exception, packed with fun surprises and familiar faces. While I’ll keep the “who” a surprise, there are also some fantastic guest performances in the first few episodes I can’t wait to openly talk about.
Having rewatched S1 just before the first four episodes of S2, one thing that really stood out to me is some of the animation improvements in the fight scenes. While S1 was still very strong, S2 already seems to be a big improvement, leaning more heavily into the anime experience of Studio Mir and Tiger Animation at times, while still maintaining that “Saturday morning cartoon” energy.
The first four episodes of X-Men ‘97 Season 2 are a worthy follow up, adapting some of the highlights of 90s X-Men but not being scared to diverge, mix in other stories or go their own way when necessary. Everything that made S1 work is still there and some great new elements, like the inclusion of Cables X-Force make it even better and promises a larger season as good as the first if not better.
X-Men ’97 Season 2 continues with the heroic mutant team of X-Men, divided and thrown across different eras in time as they struggle to navigate their return home. Meanwhile, back in the 1990s, suspicious foes and new strains of mutant intolerance are on the rise in the wake of the X-Men’s absence.
