X-Men ’97 Gave Polaris the Spotlight, Now Marvel’s Comics Need to Keep It Going

With the X-Men coming to the MCU, there’s more spotlight on them than ever. While it can seem like all of this is rather new, owing to the success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day and the rash of new X-Men movie announcements that followed, it honestly started back in 2024, when X-Men ’97 hit Disney+. This series took fans back to the decade of the X-Men, picking up where the old X-Men: The Animated Series left off. It was nostalgia bait of the highest order; it not only tickled the childhoods of elder millennials, but it did so with great stories that paid homage to the tales of the late ’90s. X-Men ’97’s second season dropped in 2026 and was more of the same, but it also did something very interesting with an X-character that Marvel has mostly dropped the ball with.

Polaris is one of those secondary X-characters that has been around for decades. She first appeared in the days before X-Men (Vol. 1) became a reprint book, a mysterious magnetic mutant who ended up working with the X-Men and starting a relationship with Havok. X-Men ’97 picked up with her during her years with X-Factor, working with the US government to battle mutant threats. While the show version was different from the comic, Polaris ended up becoming the breakout star of the team, joining up with the X-Men and forming a fun bond with Bishop. In the comics, things aren’t nearly as shiny for her. Marvel has lost their way with Polaris, and X-Men ’97 shows that there’s more to the magnetic mutant than we’re currently getting.

Polaris Is the Most Mismanaged X-Woman of Them All

Anyone who’s read Marvel Comics for any long period of time knows how bad being a superheroine in the Marvel Universe in the past can be and Polaris has suffered from all of the worst parts of it. To begin with, there’s the fact that for years, her stories were dominated by men. For a long time, she was just Havok’s “plus one”, showing up with the team when he did and becoming a member. Once it was revealed that she was a daughter of Magneto, their relationship became the center of her character. She’s never been able to just be Polaris.

Then, because this is Marvel, she’s had the “turned evil because of her powers” storyline, when she was transformed into Malice (not to be confused with the evil Susan Richards Malice from the John Byrne run; see what I’m saying here or do I need to bring up Jean and Wanda?), fighting against the X-Men in the Outback Era as a member of the Marauders. Despite being the second woman to join the X-Men back in the day, her relationship to the team itself is never really talked about. It’s always her relationships with the men in the group, her powers, even coffee in the Krakoa Era (I’m not joking; some of you know what I’m talking about and some of you were lucky enough to never read the Duggan run) that get all of the attention.

In a lot of ways, Polaris is something of a blank slate despite having had a rather long existence. She’s someone who has never been allowed to grow in any major ways, mostly acting as a cool powerset who can date other characters. However, X-Men ’97 did something more with her. To begin with, it focused on her moving out from under the shadow of the man in her life. In X-Men: The Animated Series, she dated Iceman and eventually ended up with Havok, but in X-Men ’97, she walked away from Havok and X-Factor, her history with the X-Men calling her back to the team.

It was such a simple thing to do and it paid off. It allowed fans to see her for more than just the powerful girlfriend she had been for decades and as a character with her own history with the X-Men. The same thing could be done in the comics with little to no trouble. There are so many relationships that have been ignored with Polaris; for example, she’s known Jean for years and yet they never seem to interact. X-Men ’97 remembered that she was a character all her own and the comics need to follow suit.

The Krakoa Era tried to give Polaris some spotlight of her own, putting her back on X-Factor, without Havok, making her one of the senior members of the team before giving her a yearlong stint with the X-Men. She was fantastic in X-Factor (Vol. 4), but X-Men (Vol. 6) made her into a coffee obsessed millennial with a chip on shoulder, or the least interesting version of her you could imagine. It was meant to give her something of her own, but it was so shallow that only the most desperate Polaris fans enjoyed it (looking at you, X-Men subreddit). It was a step in the right direction, but it didn’t go far enough.

Polaris Could Become the X-Men’s Greatest Constant

I’ve always been something of a Polaris fan; she was one of my favorite parts of Peter David’s X-Factor run. Over the years, she’s had some good periods – the early days of the Ed Brubaker run in the mid ’00s were cool for her and her various returns to X-Factor are usually fun – but she’s also had some terrible times, like the Chuck Austen run (which made her evil again for no reason other than relationship drama with Havok) or the Duggan run (I can’t impress how bad coffee Polaris was). However, the real problem isn’t the good or the bad, it’s the way the character has been made into an extension of male characters. Everything that makes her unique is pushed below the tide line.

X-Men ’97 was a proof of concept that a Polaris who was actually on her own could be cool. It showed her tapping into her own history with the team and doing something for herself for once. It’s exactly what the comics should do for her. This is the map the comics should follow; stop bringing up Magneto or Havok or a boyfriend; bring up her time with the team in the past, what being an X-Man meant to her, stuff like that. Make her a character unto herself, something that few have tried to do lately.

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