‘X-Men ‘97’ Season 2 is mutant perfection
‘X-Men ‘97’ Season 2 is mutant perfection
The show’s second season proves once again that telling new stories with nostalgic characters can be a winning formula.
Loyal readers know how excited I was for the second season of “X-Men '97” to arrive on Disney+ on Wednesday. The first season was a heavy dose of nostalgia, but it managed to capture the essence of its predecessor series without simply repeating the same stories ad nauseum.
But would Season 2 of “X-Men ‘97” be the same after writer Beau DeMayo was fired from the show shortly before the first season was released? I was a little unsure, even though DeMayo had written Season 2’s episodes before being dismissed, but after watching the first three installments of Season 2, it certainly feels like the magic is back.
“X-Men ‘97” picks up in the aftermath of the first season. In 1997, the X-Men have disappeared, and the government is pursuing increasingly anti-mutant policies. In the future, Jean, Scott, Storm, Wolverine, and Morph have located Nathan, the mutant who will grow up to be Cable. And in the past, Magneto, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Beast, and Professor Xavier find themselves face-to-face with En Sabah Nur as he prepares to take power.
The first three episodes of Season 2 do a brilliant job of reintroducing Apocalypse as a villain without spoon-feeding the viewer as to his identity. In my view, this is one of the main advantages of telling superhero stories with TV shows as opposed to with movies. Big studio pictures often come with guidelines from the top that the films should be as accessible to as large an audience as possible, often leading to inartful exposition solely there to catch moviegoers up on who’s who.
The flipside is that “X-Men ‘97” might be less accessible for viewers who didn’t watch the 1992 “X-Men” animated series. But fans who come to the new show with at least a baseline of knowledge of the old show will find its characters familiar, its storylines rich and well-written, and its perils fresh.
The voice acting of Season 2 is once again excellent. The show managed to bring back several voice actors from the 1992 series, including Cal Dodd as Wolverine, Lenore Zann as Rogue, George Buza as Beast, and Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm. A few veteran Star Trek actors like John de Lancie, Michael Dorn, and Gates McFadden voice characters in Season 2, and while he’s not credited, I swear up, down, and sideways that I heard Mark Hamill in the season’s second episode as War, one of Apocalypse’s four horsemen.
Once again, “X-Men ‘97” Season 2 does not shy away from what was always the central theme of the X-Men: standing up for underrepresented and repressed groups who have been labeled as undesirable. The inclusion of X-Factor, the government-affiliated team of mutants that tries to show that cooperation is possible, in Season 2 proves the series isn’t afraid to tackle the subtleties in such global issues, highlighting its sophistication once again. But make no mistake: “X-Men ‘97” knows where it came from, and honors the past of its characters with its continued narrative focus on issues of prejudice and violence against those deemed different.
Viewers can catch the new season of “X-Men ‘97,” along with Season 1, and the 1992 “X-Men” animated series on Disney+. New episodes of “X-Men ‘97” Season 2 will stream there each Wednesday until the finale episode on Aug. 12.
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.”