X-Men '97 Director Reveals Animated Series Origins of Bastion's Parents

05/01/2024 03:11 pm EDT

X-Men '97 Episode 8 was the official beginning of the finale arc, "Tolerance is Extinction" and it revealed the entire backstory of new villain Bastion, his deadly Prime Sentinels and "Operation Zero Tolerance" mission to turn mutants into the greatest slave labor force ever seen. 

After the episode dropped, X-Men '97 director Beau DeMayo took to social media to reveal a crazy X-Men: The Animated Series Easter egg in Bastion's origin story. Turns out, Bastion's parents weren't just two random people – they were two background characters from a pivotal episode of X-Men: TAS. 

X-Men '97: Who Are Bastion's Parents? Explained

Before the premiere of X-Men '97 Episode 8, Beau DeMayo gave Marvel fans a list of X-Men: The Animated Series episodes to watch, including the two-part story arc "One Man's Worth". That storyline saw Bishop, his sister Shard, and a married version of Wolverine and Storm from a different reality all team up to prevent Nimrod and Master Mold from assassinating Charles Xavier in the year 1959 when Xavier was a young university student. 

When making contact with Xavier at a townie bar, the group caused a small riot over the presence of several black people and an interracial couple – major sources of prejudice in that era. Surprisingly, it turns out that Bastion was born to some of the more tolerant people of that era.

As DeMayo demonstrated in his Twitter thread, the flashback scene of Bastion's parents reveals that his mom was the waitress who served Bishop, Shard, Wolverine, and Storm in the bar – a woman who was flabbergasted when her boss, the owner, got violent over having to serve black people. Meanwhile, Bastion's dad was the leather-jacket-wearing man who aided Wolverine in the bar fight, pulling out the rug from under one of the owner's goons, "Moose" and "Rocko. The Easter egg connection is a smart one: the flashback further revealed that some surviving part of Nimrod's tech in 1959 infected Bastion's father, a janitor, creating a human-Sentinel hybrid. Bastion was born from that corrupted DNA, making something more than man or machine.

The way that X-Men '97 incorporates both comic book deep-cuts and callbacks to the original Animated Series is truly impressive. Tying Bastion's creation to a legacy of tolerance and love raises some interesting new questions about where the villain's arc could end up.

 It's also one more incentive for Marvel fans to go back and watch X-Men: The Animated Series – as they should. 

X-Men '97 is streaming on Disney+