A pretty common complaint about many of the live-action X-Men movies to date is that they tend to draw from the same shallow pool of characters time and time again. Considering the hundreds, maybe thousands, of characters that have appeared across the comics for decades, it became a little tiresome when the likes of Magneto and Wolverine were put front and center, but someone like Sebastian Shaw only gets one feature film, and a villain like Mister Sinister is never used once. Though the Marvel Cinematic Universe is poised to reboot the X-Men and make them part of that larger franchise down the line, X-Men fans are really getting their fix elsewhere.
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Since X-Men ’97 premiered two years ago, not only has it been a consistent pick for the best TV series from Marvel Studios, but it has also been one of the most acclaimed releases from the studio in years, boasting a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. Now that Season 2 of the series has premiered, Marvel fans have been treated to three new episodes that confirm the show hasn’t missed a beat despite an extended absence. On top of just being quality storytelling with great animation, X-Men ’97 is finally giving some characters from the comics their time in the spotlight. Spoilers for X-Men ’97 Season 2, Episode 1 debut.
X-Men ’97 Delivers the Final Horsemen and Doesn’t Nerf Their Powers
The Season 1 finale of X-Men ’97 scattered the titular mutants across time, with the three-episode premiere of Season 2 confirming that the different teams are being forced to fight the mutant villain Apocalypse on all fronts of the timeline. Though the version of Apocalypse that appears in the television series is already an improvement over the one we got in the feature films, it’s his horsemen in X-Men ’97 that show how dedicated the series is to really putting underused characters in the spotlight.
As seen in the pages of Uncanny X-Force, The Final Horsemen are the ones seen in X-Men ’97‘s first episode of Season 2, and for readers, they’re rendered almost exactly the same as they were in the comics. In Rick Remender and Jerome Opena’s series, the Final Horsemen are a collective of mutants from throughout history that were hand-selected by Apocalypse (given he’s thousands of years old) to serve as the final incarnation of Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death.
In the comics, this group is given their name because they’re only to be activated when all the other Horsemen have failed, the strength of their powers signaling the start of the age of Apocalypse. The original story arc that they appear in in Uncanny X-Force has the Horsemen make quick work of the titular team, with Death nearly getting the better of Wolverine.
With X-Men ’97, these Final Horsemen may not be referred to by that name, but they have the exact same designs and power set as the characters in the comics, and are just as powerful. The series introduces them in a sequence where they nearly destroy Cyclops and Jean Grey with their combined powers, only to stop as Apocalypse’s servant, Ozymandias, arrives on the scene to deliver them to their master. Later in the episode, they still manage to show their might. Though the combined powers of the X-Men naturally defeat them, the series still treats readers to an adaptation of the Final Horsemen that at one point would have seemed like a pipedream to imagine them appearing in any kind of X-Men project that wasn’t a page in Marvel comics.
X-Men ’97 Continues to Pull From Modern Comics
Though it may seem ridiculous to newcomers that there’s a random mutant drummer boy who sends out waves that appear deadly, it’s one of the latest pieces of X-Men ’97 that confirms the series isn’t just looking at past comics featuring the mutants but is pulling from more modern titles as well.
Naturally, when the original X-Men: The Animated Series was on the air from 1992 to 1996, it had thirty years of comics to pull from, though it did bring in a lot from the series being published at the same time. Since the original series ended, Marvel has published thousands more X-Men stories. Though many may have assumed that X-Men ’97 would pick up from the cliffhanger and simply continue bringing to life stories from that era of X-Men, instead, the series has used its new life as a chance to remix stories from all eras, including the modern one.
The first season of X-Men ’97 did adapt classic comic stories that the original series wasn’t able to, like “The Trial of Magneto” and even “Lifedeath,” but it also started to pull from comics from the 2000s. One episode draws directly from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s New X-Men, delivering a version of the “E Is for Extinction” storyline.
With Season 2 of X-Men ’97, the use of the Final Horsemen (who didn’t make their comic book debut until 2010), it’s clear that the series is going to continue exploring modern X-Men stories through the lens of this still very 90’s-centric show. These antagonists aren’t the only elements from the past 25 years of comics that will make their way to the series, though, with details like the New X-Men costumes being spotted in trailers for the new episodes.
There’s another key detail that shows the modern X-Men comics have become an important piece of the X-Men ’97 puzzle and it will become even more important now that the Final Horsemen have been defeated. As fans know, Gambit sacrificed himself previously, with multiple teases popping up since then that indicate he will become a new Horseman of Apocalypse.
As readers will recall, Gambit took on this role in the comics as well, but only after the 2005 House of M event, yet another indicator that X-Men ’97 will remix modern and classic comic stories as it carries on. It does raise an interesting question: Will X-Men ’97 reach a point where it begins adapting even more recent X-Men comics like Brian Michael Bendis’ All New X-Men or even the epic House of X and Powers of X? Time will tell, but right now it’s just refreshing to see someone adapt the X-Men in a new medium and acknowledge the cool characters that the movies skipped.
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