‘X-Men ‘97’ Is Burying Itself Alive
Season Two ends with no shortage of spectacle, but its relentless parade of plot twists, character arcs and callbacks leaves its biggest emotional moments gasping for air.
It’s about to get real spoilery in this bitch. You’ve been warned.
Once upon a Beau DeMayo, X-Men fans were eating good.
But ever since The House of Mouse fired the X-Men ‘97 showrunner—who was allegedly HR’s worst nightmare behind the scenes—it was only a matter of time before the cracks in this refurbished animated series began to show.
And now that the Season Two finale is upon us, it’s the opportune time to discuss every last one of those cracks.
DeMayo was banished from Disney’s other theme park, Marvel Studios, mere weeks before X-Men ‘97 premiered back in 2024. And while the first season of what became a massive hit for Disney+ was completed under his stewardship, Matthew Chauncey was brought in to rewrite and rework what “one of animation’s most promising young talents” left behind.
Season Two came out the gate strong.
With our merry mutants splintered between that dark future Skynet warned us about and an ancient past without Sabrina Carpenter or chicken wings, it’s up to Forge and Bishop to hop in the DeLorean and bring their beloved X-People back to the present. They succeed, but at the cost of unveiling Cable’s secondary mutation: abandonment issues. And because Apocalypse will never become the neighbor humans can borrow sugar from, he opts to vaporize Magneto instead.
These first four episodes do an exceptional job of capitalizing on all the splendor and spectacle of the first season, but from the fifth episode on, Season Two should’ve come with a grouchy flight attendant telling us to hold our bladders and fasten our seat belts. Cohesion becomes arbitrary, and X-Men ‘97 abandons any semblance of a narrative arc in favor of delivering a greatest-hits compilation. This shift in trajectory is seismic—almost as if the show’s engine was ripped out mid-flight.
Once the X-Men return to the present, the show finds itself playing pinball in the middle of an earthquake. One second, Wolverine hosts a high school reunion to get his adamantium back; the next, the Danger Room transforms into Optimus Prime and starts bitch slapping everyone like Suga Free at a convent. Add in Jubilee sucking face with X-Force, X-Factor shucking and jiving for the government, Colossus doing his best Anakin Skywalker impression, a subpoena from the Superior Court of Savage Land County, and there’s a lot going on.
Too much going on.
Have you ever tried to read a book while the pages keep flipping? That’s exactly why so many of the biggest moments of this season fall flat: they aren’t provided enough soil to fully bloom into the poignant moments they’re intended to be. Nightcrawler’s sacrifice in the season finale should’ve been gut-wrenching, but when it’s shoehorned between Val Cooper’s empty bluster and Rogue cosplaying as Mega Man, I actually felt guilty for not caring. It also doesn’t help that they pulled this exact same rabbit out of the hat last season, when Gambit sacrificed himself to wipe out the Sentinels.
And with Illyana and Magneto—the best-written character in the series—already twiddling their thumbs in the afterlife, eager to return to the land of the living, now we gotta wait on a devout Catholic swashbuckler too?
How many episodes is it gonna take to untangle that mess next season?
There’s also the clunkiness of Gambit and Apocalypse’s intertwined story arcs, and how the two oscillate between crucial components and insignificant afterthoughts depending upon the needs of the episode. I get that the whole Graydon Creed mutant supremacist thing was supposed to reinforce Nightcrawler’s compassion and make his eventual fate land even harder, but with only nine episodes of storytelling to work within, some of that melodrama would’ve been better spent dissecting Apocalypse’s machinations—or Gambit’s skincare regimen.
X-Men ‘97 is a phenomenal show that provides the blueprint for exhuming a canceled series from the grave and reanimating it—literally—to critical acclaim. But without Beau DeMayo at the helm, it’s teetering toward Weekend at Bernie’s. That’s certainly not due to a lack of ambition or fanfare; it’s because that ambition is burying the heart of the series alive.