This article contains potential spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2.

The first trailer for X-Men ’97 season 2 was full of treats for fans. But for fans of the Ragin’ Cajun Gambit, the trailer was nothing but sadness. We get to see a little of Rogue mourning her beloved, but nothing indicating that he’ll do what the X-Men do best: come back to life.

X-Men ’97 writers and producers Eric and Julia Lewald aren’t ready to say that Gambit will return. But they are willing to offer some hope that Remy LeBeau will be back. Season 1 ended with a post-credit scene that saw Apocalypse holding one of Gambit’s playing cards and musing about “So much death,” perhaps a gesture to a comic book storyline that involved Remy.

“We probably don’t wanna get too close to answering that specifically, but appreciate that a lot of folks are picking up breadcrumbs,” Julia told Entertainment Weekly about the scene, playing it coy. But Eric went further, adding, “If you were a betting man, I would say, follow the breadcrumbs.”

Where do those breadcrumbs lead? Well, to death. Or, more specifically, Death. In the 2006 storyline Blood of Apocalypse, Gambit seeks out the immortal supervillain shortly after the events of M-Day, when the Scarlet Witch de-powered nearly all of the world’s mutants. In X-Men #182–187, written by Peter Milligan and illustrated by Salvador Larroca, Gambit believes that Apocalypse could revive the mutant population, and so he agrees to become the Horseman Death, with one caveat: that Apocalypse leave his mind intact.

Gambit makes that demand because he’s well-acquainted with Apocalypse’s MO. From his earliest appearances in the pages of X-Factor, Apocalypse has always sent four Horsemen to do his bidding: Death, Famine, War, and Pestilence.

Apocalypse always forms his Horsemen from existing people, and often heroes. Archangel came to be when Apocalypse took the X-Men founding member Angel and transformed him into the Angel of Death (mixing biblical metaphors, but we’ll allow it). Over the years, other X-Men have become his Horsemen, including Wolverine, Storm, and even Professor X.

But Gambit wasn’t careful enough as Apocalypse controlled his mind anyway, a process that took an unpleasant alliance with Mister Sinister to reverse.

Whatever the value of Gambit’s intentions in the comics, they won’t matter in X-Men ’97, because he no longer has any intentions at all. Gambit valiantly sacrificed himself to destroy the Omega Sentinel that attacked the mutant island of Genosha in the first season of the revival series, stopping an already monumental death count from getting even higher.

As we saw in the trailer, season 2 of X-Men ’97 will focus on Apocalypse, with a team in Ancient Egypt dealing with his younger, non-villainous identity En Sabah Nur, and another in the future where he has conquered the planet. With the X-Men fighting him across so many timelines, Apocalypse will have to get help wherever he can. And if that’s the only way that we get Gambit back on our screens, well, fans will gladly follow those breadcrumbs.

X-Men ’97 season 2 premieres on Disney+ on July 1, 2026.