X-Men ’97 Season 2 just radically changed the show’s iconic opening sequence. Marvel’s mutant heroes have returned, but this time the story is a little different; the X-Men are scattered across time, with one team stranded in 3,000 BC and another 3960 AD. The first three episodes spin out across the timeline (even featuring the return of Kang the Conqueror), which means each gets a unique opening sequence based on the episode’s heroes.
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But all that’s just setup for the biggest change of all. X-Men ’97 Season 2, episode 2 makes an even bigger change: it doesn’t focus on the X-Men at all. Rather, it completely rewrites the opening sequence to focus on a whole new team, and in doing so introduces a classic ’90s spinoff group. It’s time to meet X-Force.
X-Men ’97 Officially Introduces X-Force
In the comics, the X-Force team first appeared in 1991. Their story began when the New Mutants, the next generation of Charles Xavier’s students, fell under the mentorship of Cable. X-Force had a tense relationship with the X-Men of their time, because Cable treated them as soldiers rather than as heroes, and he didn’t draw the line at killing. The brainchild of Rob Liefeld, X-Force is emblematic of ’90s comics: they’re darker, the heroes are actually antiheroes, and they featured more sexualized female characters and men with absurdly big guns.
That said, the X-Force of X-Men ’97 is a very different team. It draws on incarnations from different teams over the years, with Cable explicitly referring to them as a “black ops unit” – a term typically associated with a later version, where Psylocke and Archangel were members. That revision hints at another possible change, because it was an X-Force team secretly run under Cyclops’ leadership. It’s possible X-Men ’97‘s X-Force will be very different indeed.
Who Are the Members of X-Force ’97?
Cable’s strike teams draws on different versions from the comics, but there’s one major twist. Here are the official X-Force ’97 team members:
- Cable himself is the team leader (of course), and he considers the team to be soldiers in his unending war against Apocalypse. X-Men ’97 Season 2 stresses Cable’s relationship with Cyclops and Jean Grey, who are responsible for setting him on this course. Given that’s the case, his mission feels like an uncomfortable outgrowth from the X-Men’s.
- Jubilee is the most surprising addition to X-Force, and she serves as the anchor for X-Men ’97 Season 2. At the same time, this is a very different version of Jubilee to the one we’re used to.
- Sunspot was introduced in X-Men ’97 Season 1, and he serves as another narrative throughline. In the comics, the solar manipulator was indeed part of the first X-Force.
- Archangel was a key player in several X-Force teams in the 2000s. These comics explored his relationship with Apocalypse, with Archangel even becoming Apocalypse’s heir. It’s entirely possible we’ll see this story as the show continues.
- Psylocke, often Archangel’s lover, played a vital role in these 2000s stories. X-Men ’97 Season 2 plays Psylocke straight as a British telepath in the body of a Japanese assassin, and she doesn’t have Professor X’s morality.
Appropriately, X-Force’s true rivals aren’t villains at all; they’re another X-Men spinoff team from the ’90s, the government-sponsored X-Factor. X-Men ’97 Season 2 riffs on one of the most disturbing X-Factor stories of all time, where Cyclops established that team to incarcerate mutants in public. Appropriately enough, Jubilee mocks X-Factor team leader Havok as a “knock-off Cyclops,” when he’s playing the questionable role Cyclops had in the comics.
X-Force ’97 Merges Jubilee With Another X-Force Character
X-Force ’97 Season 2 makes massive changes to Jubilee. It gives her one of her classic ’90s looks, an outfit she wore when she was part of Generation X. But the story itself is nothing like the one from the comics, because Jubilee is blended with an actual X-Force member: Tabitha Smith, aka Boom Boom. The two are based on the same ’90s archetype – skater girl, sarcastic and quippy, with explosive powers. But there are subtle differences in character, and your mileage may vary; I confess that these made the episode a little jarring for me, as a long-time X-Men fan. That said, I can’t help feeling I should have seen it coming.
That said, in thematic terms this “Jubilee In Name Only” offers the same kind of uncomfortable arc readers in 1991 likely experienced. There, the New Mutants were presented as the future of Xavier’s Dream, and it was shocking to see it co-opted into a mutant black ops team with questionable morality. The original X-Men animated series handled Jubilee the same way, so it does make thematic sense for Marvel to put Jubilee in this role. The comics themselves struggled to give Jubilee a strong arc as the ’90s continued, so this may well make for a more compelling story.
The first three episodes of X-Men ’97 are streaming now on Disney+, and new episodes will be released weekly. Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
