“Gambit see your bet and raise it,” the red-eyed Remy LeBeau (voiced by A.J. LoCascio) says in X-Men ’97 episode 5, “’cause the cards always be in my favor.” Titled “Remember It,” the episode sees a motorcycle-riding Gambit charge the bike with kinetic energy and use it to knock his chère, Rogue (Lenore Zann), out of the path of a green plasmoid blast fired by the three-headed Wild Sentinel Master Mold during a devastating mass casualty attack on the mutant nation of Genosha.
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But before the robot exterminator can eliminate Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough) and other mutants taking refuge on a rooftop, the Ragin’ Cajun kinetically charges his bō staff and, leaping into action, is impaled by a protruding rod mid-air. “Mutant intruder neutralized,” Master Mold’s (Eric Bauza) metallic voice declares as blood seeps into le diable blanc‘s white suit. Gambit’s luck has run out.
With a smirk, the thief has stolen a final moment. “The name’s Gambit, mon ami,” he says, charging the rod as it glows with explosive purple energy. “Remember it.” Making physical contact with the protrusion, Gambit energizes Master Mold, destroying the Sentinel with a touch.
The episode ends with Rogue — grieving Gambit as he lies dead in her ungloved hands amid the wreckage — sobbing, “Sugar… I can’t feel you.”
In the new art book X-Men ’97: The Art and Making of the Animated Series, supervising producer and director Jake Castorena revealed Gambit’s death in “Remember It” — the halfway point of the 10-episode first season — was designed to propel the raging Rogue into the back half, and that there were multiple viable endings for Gambit. (See more from the art book here.)
“It wasn’t about Gambit necessarily, but it was about what story and arc are we setting Rogue on,” Castorena says in an excerpt from the book. “It’s about what fits the story. What is the story we’re trying to tell? [It’s] story over everything, and what pushes [the] narrative forward.”
The X-Men ’97 creative team gave considerable thought to Gambit’s heroic sacrifice and how his explosive powers would single-handedly take down Master Mold. In one version of the scene, “Gambit was going to land on Master Mold’s head, barefoot and with no weapons.”
“He was going to charge Master Mold with his bare feet and hands, just to show that it needs to make connection with Gambit’s skin — that it’s not just his fingers,” Castorena said. “I just wanted to give Gambit that moment, leaning into, ‘Oh, you don’t kill me. I kill me.’ I wanted to show him taking agency of it.”
FX Lead Designer and FX Supervisor Chris Graf, who also animated Cyclops’ (Ray Chase) superhero landing in the “To Me, My X-Men” series premiere, was inspired by X-Men co-creator Jack Kirby’s iconic comic book “crackle” for Gambit’s calling card.
“The idea with Gambit’s energy was to use white-hot outlines on anything he touches with his signature pink-colored kinetic energy layered behind,” Graf explained. “Using the Kirby crackle in our design any time we need a specific FX to feel particularly powerful is really helpful in amping up a design to feel like the energy is overflowing. Gambit is incredibly strong, and we wanted that to be extremely apparent in his battle with Master Mold.”
The episode’s director, Emi/Emmett Yonemura, also hinted that Gambit’s death might not be permanent. A mid-credits sequence in the three-part “Tolerance Is Extinction” season 1 finale saw Apocalypse (voiced by Ross Marquand) discover one of Gambit’s playing cards in the ruins of Genosha.
“So much pain, my children. So much death,” the ancient mutant says, suggesting Gambit might become Death, one of the four Horsemen of Apocalypse, in X-Men ’97 season 2. “I mean, you see that hand, and you see that card,” Yonemura teased. “That’s all we want people to know.”
X-Men ’97: The Art and Making of the Animated Series is on sale now from Abrams; the Marvel Studios Animation series returns with season 2 in 2026.
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