X-Men ’97 – Season 2

There is a sense in which X-Men ’97 is pure fan service. It brings a bunch of beloved characters back together, and tells stories about them that are mostly familiar. We are happy to see them again. We get to see Jean and Scott functioning as a happily married couple, the only dysfunction in their lives being their relationship with their son, Nathan, who has time-travelled and come back a grumpy adult. I was personally very happy to see Polaris getting a major role. Jean and Lorna were besties back in the Neal Adams days, when they were believably twenty-somethings and I was teenager looking up to them.

Of course there is also huge drama going on in the superhero sides of their lives, and in the mutant rights sphere. Season 1 saw the destruction of Genosha, the mutant nation, so things are going to be fraught. And this season sees the return of Apocalypse. There is a whole, coherent story arc around that.

What the scriptwriters appear to be trying to do is tell a few decades of X-Men history in a few short animated seasons. Inevitably that means that things feel very rushed. There is also a ridiculous ensemble cast. We have the X-Men themselves, plus X-Force and X-Factor. X-Force is a more militant mutant team headed by Cable (Nathan Summers) who want to kill Apocalypse. X-Force is a government-sponsored mutant team led by Havok (Alex Summers) and Valerie Cooper, a government agent. They want to round up unauthorized mutants to ‘keep the public safe’. I found it hard to keep track of all this at times. Goodness only knows how people not steeped in X-Men continuity are coping.

The one thing you can guarantee about the X-Men is that no one is ever Really, Most Sincerely Dead. They are only temporarily dead, until such time as someone decides to bring them back. In Season 1 we saw the death of Gambit. Season 2 brings him back as one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen. Cue much anguish for poor Rogue. Of course we know we will get him back in the end. Two other major characters appear to die in the process. My guess is that at least one of them will come back in Season 3. In the meantime we get some nice tear-jerk moments.

It is all a bit silly, but do we care? Of course not. These are the X-Men, they are our friends, and we love them. Your mileage may vary.