'X-Men: The Animated Series' Has A Forgotten Original Ending

In the '90s, one of Marvel's biggest successes was X-Men: The Animated Series, which earned more than 70 episodes, becoming one of the longest-running superhero shows of all time. The series pushed more mature storylines than other animated offerings, helping inspire generations to research the heroic mutants. Despite the series becoming beloved by many, the series cut a regular feature of the closing credits as to not be accused of merely being a 30-minute toy commercial.

As chronicled in the book Previously on X-Men, the earliest episodes of the series featured CGI renderings of the core characters along with a brief biography to help inform audiences about the characters' history. In the video above, you may notice that the CGI models look familiar to action figures, raising concerns from the Broadcast Standards team.

One element of attempting to tell mature stories in the animated series was avoiding the incorporation of long bits of exposition, especially in regards to characters who had decades of backstory. Instead, fans could stay tuned at the end of each episode to be reminded of a character's attributes and abilities.

X-Men: The Animated Series was released after series like Transformers, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles debuted, which were primarily created to help justify the distribution of toys. With the series airing on Saturday mornings, X-Men was lumped in with other merchandise-driven fodder, despite its multi-episode storylines.

Given the advancements in animation techniques, the animation team was reportedly under pressure to utilize the new style, with the closing credits sequences being a compromise of those pressures while also attempting to use this style most effectively.

After appearing in the first eight episodes, the closing credits were altered to feature montages of episodes and previews of future installments.

Sadly, while Jubilee was a core member of the series, the closing credit logos always covered up her biography, as she was the last character featured in the CGI renderings. The character's biography does appear in full on VHS copies of the original episodes.

Do you wish the credits continued use of the CGI renderings? Let us know in the comments below!

[H/T CBR]