X-Men '97 Season Season 2 Premiere Review: Back to the Past, But Also the Future and Further Into the Past | Den of Geek

This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episodes 1-3.

After its blistering first season, X-Men ’97 fully established itself as much more than a nostalgic continuation of X-Men: The Animated Series that ran between 1992 and 1997. Sure, the classic team was back, all decked out in the same Jim Lee-designed costumes from the ’90s series, along with much of the first voice cast. But the new show immediately set itself to making up for lost time by not just adapting some of the stories form the past thirty years of Marvel Comics, but also by making explicit the social relevance only hinted at in the cartoon series. Add in cleaner, anime-influenced animation, and X-Men ’97 became one of the most thrilling shows on television, a rare recent win for the otherwise underpowered MCU.

However, the high bar set by season 1 became absolutely daunting when Disney fired showrunner Beau DeMayo, replacing him with head writer Matthew Chauncey. Worse, season 1 ended with a delicious cliffhanger, splitting the team into two groups, one to a dark future controlled by the villain Apocalypse and the other to Ancient Egypt, where Apocalypse had not yet embraced his survival of the fittest ethos. Could X-Men ’97 continue to mutate, letting season 2 be the next step in Marvel Animation’s evolution?

Based on the first three episodes, we can answer the question with a qualified “Yes.” Episodes one through three not only take the baton left by the predecessor, but they actually resolve most of the time travel arc, following the breakneck pace established in season one. Yet, while the show still delivers all the ’90s mutant soap opera one would want, the series shows none of the political relevance that made the X-Men so important in the first place.

Episode 1, “Days of Past Future,” follows Forge to the year 3960, where Cyclops (Ray Chase) and Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale)—along with Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith), Morph (JP Karliak), and Wolverine (Cal Dodd)—have been reunited with their son Nathan (Michael Johnston). As shown last season, Cyclops and Jean sent the infant Nathan into the future, as the only hope to cure him of a deadly techno-organic virus. Here, we learn that Nathan has been in the care of the mysterious Mother Askani (Gates McFadden), who trains him to become the grizzled X-Force leader (and, yes, another time traveler) known as Cable (Lawrence Bayne). When Forge (Gil Birmingham) arrives to bring them home, Cyclops and Jean must wrestle with the possibility of abandoning their son a second time.

Episode 2, “A Force to Be Reckoned With,” returns to the present, where two teams form to take the X-Men’s place. Cable recruits Sunspot (Gui Agustini) and Jubilee (Holly Chou) to join Psylocke (Naoko Mori) and Archangel (Christopher Barger) in X-Force, a military-style team that takes the fight to the bad guys. Conversely, there’s X-Factor, a government-sponsored team led by Cyclops’ brother Havok (Teddy Sears). The two groups come to blows over their wildly different approaches, showing how the conflict between Xavier (Ross Marquand) and Magneto (Matthew Waterson) repeats among the next generation of heroes.

That conflict comes to the fore in “Rise of Apocalypse Part I,” in which Professor X and Magneto try to prevent the outcast En Sabah Nur from ever becoming Apocalypse (Marquand). When Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith) locates the duo, as well as Rogue (Lenore Zann), Beast (George Buza), and Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough), Nur is on the precipice of a major decision, as another time-traveling conqueror has made his presence known.

Three episodes may sound like more than enough time to tell three quarters of a full story, but with runtimes of less than thirty minutes, the story must move fast to cover all the necessary ground. The episodes draw inspiration from multiple comic book arcs, including the four-issue series The Adventures of Cyclops and Jean Grey and The Rise of Apocalypse, and introduce dozens of new mutants. Further, each episode must tell a complete story, with coherent arcs for its main characters.

For the most part, the three episodes succeed admirably. Dividing the main team into two halves breaks them down into manageable chunks, making room for the action set pieces that have become the series’ hallmark. Even in these three episodes, every main mutant—and a surprising amount of the side characters—get time to shine. Chauncey and his animators take glee in finding new ways for the team to show off their powers, from Storm controlling the sun (while delivering an incredible monologue, of course) to Nightcrawler kicking and flipping as he teleports around enemies. In particular, episode 2 gives Jubilee a sequence that holds up to Nightcrawler’s Oval Office attack in X2 or the Quicksilver set-pieces from Days of Future Past and Apocalypse.

Moreover, the episodes include healthy amounts of fan service. In addition to X-Force and X-Factor, “A Force to be Reckoned With” gives screen time to members of Generation X and the New X-Men. Apocalypse’s origin brings in deep Marvel cuts like the Celestials and the Fantastic Four villain Rama Tut, who has his own ties to a famous abandoned MCU character. Most impressively, the episodes make a motif of Apocalypse’s famous “eternal shore” speech from the original series, turning it into a prophecy that spans centuries.

That attention to detail gives hope to anyone frustrated by the short shrift given to some of the heavy hitters. In particular, none of the first three episodes really acknowledge the huge change in Wolverine’s power set. While we see him pop his bone claws, and comic fans know what’s going on under the bandana he now wears as a mask, Logan seems like the same old hairy mutant we saw last year. Rogue barely has time to mourn the death of Gambit, reduced to making a few worried expressions when Magneto starts acting imperious.

Surely, these and other characters will have their time in the spotlight over the next six episodes. The first three episodes leave us less confident about the political themes that marked the first season. X-Men ’97 season 1 was a masterclass in using the mutant metaphor to highlight real-world oppression, showing how minority populations live in constant danger of those who will kill to maintain the status quo. The destruction of Genosha hit not just because we saw some beloved characters die, but because it reminded us of countless acts of violence against marginalized people, members of the LGBTQ+ population in particular. With a main story that spans centuries, season 2 doesn’t find space to speak about our current moment. Even the conflict between the resisting X-Force and the assimilationist X-Factor lacks the spark of the 30-year-old stories that inspired it, to say nothing of 2026.

It would be a shame for Chauncey and company to drop the social relevance ball. Chris Claremont and his co-creators transformed X-Men from perennial Marvel C-listers to the world’s most popular superhero team precisely because they explored the mutant metaphor to its full potential. X-Men ’97 season 2 admirably continues the first season’s lead in carrying over the dense storytelling, the soap operatics, and the inventive fight seasons that began with the Claremont run. Making the show apolitical would be the worst kind of mutation, a devolution in quality instead of another evolution.