While Marvel’s small-screen releases in the Disney+ age have been almost uniformly less well-received than the MCU‘s movies, fans have eaten well since WandaVision kicked things off. That show remains a high point, but the likes of Loki, Daredevil: Born Again, Wonder Man, and Hawkeye have offered up some of the best moments in the MCU. Yes, Secret Invasion was a disaster, and there have been some more divisive releases, but if we’re grading things pass/fail, it’s been a resounding success, including from the animated branch of the universe.
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2 years ago, arguably the biggest surprise of the MCU era was in full flow: Beau De Mayo’s incredible revival of X-Men: The Animated Series shrugged off behind-the-scenes controversy and delivered 10 episodes of top-tier Marvel entertainment. The highlights would take too long to go through, but nothing came close to the fifth episode: the explosive, tragic, brilliant masterpiece of “Remember It”. X-Men ’97‘s Genosha massacre episode gave us the best Sentinels story ever committed to screen, and most importantly, gave Gambit the redemption he’d deserved since X-Men Origins: Wolverine criminally underdelivered on him. The fact that he had to die for that to happen is the mark of the episode’s tragic genius.
2 Years Later, I’m Still Not Over X-Men ’97’s “Remember It”
In “Remember It”, Gambit had been rejected by his beloved Rogue (in favor of Magneto, no less), and was quickly thrown into a high-stakes attack by Master Mold and the Sentinels, which left thousands of mutants dead. And then came the kicker, Gambit sacrificed himself to take down Master Mold; a hero’s death worthy of one of the greatest mutants in Marvel Comics history. The sight of Rogue, distraught, holding his broken body is a memory that will never leave me, and this was an animated episode. The episode was incredibly well-written, delivering spectacle on a scale that live-action could never manage, and it set a high point that X-Men ’97‘s return will struggle to ever meet again.
The sacrifice paid off years of build-up: Gambit had darkness in his past, but was inherently good, leaving the Thieves Guild behind him, and mostly shrugging off lingering suspicions about his morality. X-Men ’97 doubled down on the cool factor the comics had always delivered, but which had, for whatever reason, never been delivered in a live-action movie. Yes, Taylor Kitsch tried in Origins, but the material could charitably only really be called limited at best. Several plans to bring Gambit to the X-Men franchise before (and after) that had fallen apart, and Deadpool & Wolverine was still months away. As a Gambit fan, X-Men ’97 delivered what I’d wanted for years. And it broke my heart in doing so.
The ending of X-Men ’97 set up Gambit’s return as part of Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen, meaning we’re set for more, even if there’s a dark caveat. And it can’t come quick enough. Since Channing Tatum’s scene-stealing appearance in Deadpool & Wolverine, Gambit fans have mostly been starved, living on the promise of his return in X-Men: Doomsday and X-Men ’97’s second season. This summer, hopefully, will be the second summer of Gambit, and it really can’t come soon enough.
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