This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 5
As X2 demonstrated, there’s nothing X-Men fans love better than a secret base full of hidden files. That 2003 movie pushed DVD pausing technology to its limits, as fans would freeze the frame to read the names that briefly displayed when Mystique, disguised as Yuriko, copied classified computer files that referenced Dazzler, the Blob, Cannonball, and Husk.
Fittingly, the latest episode of X-Men ’97, “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs,” hearkens back to those easter egg-rabid days when Morph uncovers a cache of discs stored within an abandoned lab. Some of the labels have the names of deep cuts from Marvel Comics that only the biggest nerds would recognize (the secret agent Mastodon, the cyborg known as Psi-Borg, the Deadpool enemy Sluggo), as well as some more recognizable names, including Silver Fox and Winter Soldier. But the most important name on the list is also the most surprising: X-23, who fans of the movie Logan know as Laura, played by Dafne Keen.
As a later creation, X-23 never appeared in the original X-Men: The Animated Series. However, she did come original from cartoons, initially debuting in a 2003 episode of X-Men: Evolution. Soon thereafter, she made the jump to comics in 2003’s NYX #3, written by Joe Quesada and illustrated by Joshua Middleton. Since then, X-23 has been a mainstay in Marvel Comics, where she’s become so much more than a girl version of Wolverine.
Both the cartoon and comics have the same basic origin for the character. The Weapon X program that originally bonded adamantium to Wolverine, Sabretooth, and other characters takes a different approach to creating the next great super soldier, and instead decides to clone Logan. After 22 failed attempts, the 23rd attempt yields an embryo that geneticist Dr. Sarah Kinney carries to term. Dr. Kinney gives birth to a daughter named Laura, but the program’s head Dr. Rice continues to develop her into a weapon, activating her mutant gene and bonding her with adamantium at age seven.
Rice brainwashes Laura to make her into a killing machine, and even forces her to kill her mother, Dr. Kinney. After some even more unpleasant events, including her becoming a sex worker in her first comic book appearance, Laura eventually makes her way to the X-Men, where Wolverine takes her under his wing.
Like her father, Laura finds a way to reconcile her savage impulses with her noble nature and, when Logan dies, she takes on the mantle of Wolverine. She even keeps the name after his inevitable return, a decision that he supports. Along the way, Laura discovers more clones like her, including one who takes the name Gabby a.k.a. Honey Badger, and becomes her sidekick and a member of the New Mutants.
With more than two decades of quality stories under her belt, Laura has become a mainstay of Marvel’s mutants. Yet, for general audiences, she’s mostly a supporting character in Logan, as demonstrated by Keene’s return in Deadpool & Wolverine. Yes, Keene gets to play Laura as a well-rounded, but still formidable adult in that film, but she largely existed as a bit of key-jangling to get the audience to applause.
X-Men ’97, a show that’s not above jangling some keys, might be the perfect way to introduce the masses to the older, more complex X-23. While her addition would break from the ’90s theme, even this version of the X-Men has plenty of time-travel, and they’re already adding elements of Grant Morrison‘s run and Krakoa, both of which arrived well after the show’s current ’90s setting. X-23 would fit particularly well alongside Jubilee, Sunspot, and the other young mutants rounded up by X-Factor earlier this season. She’d help the show explore the next generation of mutants, those living in the shadow of Professor X and Magneto’s debates about the viability of Xavier’s Dream.
If the show can integrate X-23 into its universe, then the raid on Weapon X will prove to be fortuitous, not just for discovering more about Wolverine’s past, but also by addressing his future and his legacy.
X-Men ’97 streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.
