X-Men ’97 S2 Ep. 9 Review: “Survival of the Fittest” Brings the Season to an Unsatisfying End
After being blown away by Season 1 and the first half of Season 2 of X-Men ‘97, it’s hard not to feel like ever since Ep. 5 this season has gotten gradually worse and worse. While the key issue leading up to “Survival of the Fittest”, the two-part finale, has been pacing, an issue the show has faced since the start, it’s not the main issue as the season comes to an end but rather a lack of focus. Season 1 was tight, with every key event mattering and coming together in the end in a way that made the whole season feel better. While people will be quick to blame the more character-focused side episodes as wasting time, I strongly disagree, while I’ve had issues with each, they all did essential character work and fleshed out the world. The final problems stem largely from just very weak ideas, with almost the feeling of obligation to see the Gambit as Death story without knowing exactly how the new creative team wanted to tell it. Nothing shows this more clearly to me than the Candra plot, which appears out of nowhere in the previous episode as a bizarre retcon, then is never mentioned again. The vague “fraction of Apocalypse’s power” that is introduced is just discarded without a word, feeling like a relic of an earlier draft when it would’ve been the key to Death’s defeat.
The issues with Death from the previous episode persists as the show fails to really make it clear what his ultimate plan is and where the line between Gambit, Death, and Apocalypse is. We see absolutely no indication there’s really anything wrong with Gambit until Cable shoots him in the face, which makes Rogue willing to sacrifice her life for him in the big Celestial mouth feel utterly meaningless without any sense he’s actually in danger. Having finished the episode it felt obvious that the finale would be an adaptation of New X-Men’s “Silence: Psychic Rescue in Progress”, obviously without Emma Frost once again, to at least a little bit justify the wearing of the uniforms and show Gambit as being at least incapacitated with Apocalypse inside him. After the “death” of Death, Gambpocalypse takes his final form in one of the worst designs I’ve ever seen in the history of comic books. It’s impossible to take this bizarre mix of Gambit and Apocalypse seriously when he looks that silly, even if he does manage to one-shot mind-control all the X-Men with his vague tarot cards, which receive no less clarification in this final episode.
As mentioned before the plot of “Survival of the Fittest” feels like more of an obligation to the previous season’s ending and that’s particularly apparent in the Summers conflict, which, much like last episode, feels like where this season is actually heading. Unfortunately, once again, Gambit does not prove to be an interesting enough barrier between the two, but the actual fight scene and drama between them works really well, particularly thanks to great performances from Scott, Jean, and Cable’s actors. There’s a real reluctance to the fight that makes it really sad to watch this family be torn apart all for a prophecy they helped set in motion, and a better version of this finale would be centered entirely around that. We get no real ending to their conflict either, Cable kills Gambit and makes everything worse but there’s no resolution after that, either mending the relationship, or pulling it further apart.
Rogue makes her big sacrifice to find the power to defeat Apocalypse and save Gambit, which comes with a fairly terrible Celestial design upgrade. If only there were a group of people with Celestial-created designs the show could draw from, that would be Eternally a better design. While the upgrade itself looks bad, I will take a moment to praise how beautifully animated the connecting constellation designs that appear around her are. Rogue’s Celestial appearance appears after the X-Men stand defeated, with only Charles facing down Gambpocalypse and his menacing monologue about survival of the fittest and all his usual stuff. Charles interrupts with a monologue of his own about the power of love, and how that is how the X-Men will always triumph over him which feels a little undercut by Rogue then showing up with god powers.
I’m all for the power of love being the key, but you need to pick what direction you’re going for. Rogue’s attempted sacrifice is then revealed to have been taken by Nightcrawler, in a move that really can only be described as a way to write off a character they had no interest in. ‘97 has consistently had a pretty poor understanding of Nightcrawler, reducing him, as many poor writers do, to nothing more than his faith and forgetting he is one of the most fun characters in the Marvel Universe, a flirty swashbuckler from the circus full of joy, the real heart of any X-Men team. Instead he felt like a priest, and even in his last moments he rambled about the power of faith.
A real underrated star of this season is Teddy Sears as Havok, whose little rivalry with Jubilee is one of the highlights of both this episode and the whole season. He may not have had a massive role but he kills with what little he has. A lot of the side characters this season felt like they lacked a clear purpose, especially the rest of X-Factor and the new members of X-Force, so it’s nice to see at least one of them doing as much as they can with what they’ve got.
Back to the pacing issues, I don’t think it’s ever been worse as the show comes to an abrupt halt following Nightcrawler’s death. We get a brief montage of a happy ending over his little speech, and then nothing, leaving so many plots oddly dangling in such an unsatisfying way. It’s a real shame to see the Season come to a close in such an unsatisfactory way, and the lack of any real direction or excitement for the future compared to the bold plot twist of S1 makes it even worse.
Check out our review of the first few episodes!
