Will ‘X-Men ‘97’ Season 2 match Season 1’s brilliance?
Will ‘X-Men ‘97’ Season 2 match Season 1’s brilliance?
The animated series releases its second season on Disney+ on Wednesday, and it’s the title I’m most excited for this week.
When I saw the first promotional materials for “X-Men '97” Season 1, I thought, “Cool, it might just be a nostalgia play, but I’m the audience it’s a nostalgia play for.” The “X-Men” cartoon of the 1990s was a staple at my house, and its earworm-y theme song was one of the most memorable of my childhood.
After watching the first season of “X-Men ‘97,” however, I was completely blown away. The show somehow managed to tell incredibly adult stories, including themes like slavery and genocide, while still using the animated format and characters of the 1990s show. Was “X-Men” always this good, and my younger mind just wasn’t mature enough to wrap around the narrative I was being shown? Perhaps a rewatch is in order, but all of that is to say that I’m quite excited for the debut of “X-Men ‘97” Season 2 on Wednesday, July 1.
The show’s second season finds the X-Men divided across different periods of time following the events of the Season 1 finale. Each must find a way to return home, while back in the 1990s, new foes are on the rise in the wake of the team’s disappearance. And all the while, the X-Men’s deadliest enemy, Apocalypse, waits for his chance to strike.
Watch the ‘X-Men ‘97’ Season 2 trailer
To be sure, part of the allure of “X-Men ‘97” is the nostalgia involved. The show managed to bring back a large portion of the original voice cast, including Cal Dodd as Wolverine, Lenore Zann as Rogue, George Buza as Beast, Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm, and Adrian Hough as Nightcrawler.
But it wasn’t the nostalgia that made the first season of “X-Men ‘97” so good, in my opinion. It was the way the show’s writing confronted events that had direct global parallels. Since the creation of the characters by Marvel in 1963, the X-Men have always been used as a vehicle to tell stories about minorities, downtrodden classes, and diversity through the fantastical lens of comic books.
Season 1 represented those themes quite well, but what really shook me was the way the series handled the mutant genocide on the island of Genosha. Thousands die, and Gambit sacrifices himself to stop the Sentinels from continuing their deadly work.
I was aware that the Genosha storyline from historical X-Men comics, but I didn’t think the show would deal with it so directly, and the writing team absolutely pulled it off. It was an absolute credit to head writer Beau DeMayo, who was abruptly fired by the studio ahead of the show’s first season debut.
That makes me a little trepidatious about the show’s second season, but early reviews of the show’s second season leave me feeling hopeful that it will be able to live up to the legacy of the first. And the presence of the X-Men’s greatest foe in Season 2 doesn’t tamp down my anticipation either; the age of Apocalypse is about to begin.
Season 2 of “X-Men ‘97” will release its first three episodes on Wednesday, July 1. Following that day, one episode per week will drop until the finale on Aug. 12. The season will have nine episodes in total, and will be exclusively available on Disney+.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”