X-Men ’97 Director Talks Cable’s “Heartbreaking” Season 1 Storyline

Cable stepped up in a big way during the first season of X-Men ’97, though his storyline had some heartbreaking moments. Fans barely got a chance to meet the young Nathan Summers before his parents, Cyclops and the Jean Grey clone Madelyne Pryor, were forced to send Baby Cable into the future to save his life. Of course, Cable returned with a vengeance, teaming up with the X-Men to bring down Bastion and Mister Sinister. If Cable’s story arc was emotional for viewers, just think how the creators behind-the-scenes felt crafting the time traveler’s experience.

ComicBook spoke to X-Men ’97 director Emi/Emmett Yonemura, where we asked Yonemura about the show’s soap opera elements. When asked what relationships were the best to explore, Yonemura turned to Cable. “I mean, I really like exploring more of Cable. Cable was one of my favorites in the original series, and I love that he’s basically just our Kurt Russell who comes in, says A one-liner, does his action,” the director said. “But I love that we can explore him a little bit more now. And especially with Madelyne, I really love that we elaborated on him trying to save her over 200 times in that moment at Genosha, and that we give Maddie that moment with him. I mean, that was one that I was really excited to explore because I hadn’t fully seen it myself, but it’s heartbreaking.”

X-Men ’97 directors discuss the Season 1 finale

While speaking to ComicBook about their work on the first season, X-Men ’97 episodic directors Chase Conley and Emi/Emmett Yonemura shared their thoughts on how Season 1 ultimately wrapped up.

“We’re just happy to stick the landing,” Conley revealed in our interview, which you can check out above. “I think that we had a lot of storylines that we wanted to try to wrap up, but really, we planned for all that stuff anyway, so it was really just about executing. And the main theme of our season, I think from Episode One all the way to Episode Ten was escalation. And Episode Five is peak level. It’s like, ‘How do we escalate from here on an emotional level?’ But there’s a lot of things that we set up that we needed to pay off that, I still think, hit just as hard. I mean, of course, seeing Gambit die is, it is hard to rival that as far as just a guttural kind of reaction. But it’s nice to see Xavier rejoin the team. It’s nice to see the world, how they view essentially what they perceive to be the X-Men lying about his death in order to garner sympathy from the world. And how his reemergence, in terms of the scheme of things, has a ripple effect as far as extremists and things of that nature. And also too, it’s not just the typical upping the stakes, in terms of it’s going to get bigger and scarier and the world is going to end. But it’s truly earned, as far as everything goes. And nothing would radicalize someone like being ground-level, witnessing millions of people like you, that are just trying to live their lives, be murdered. You may want to go up and consider destroying the Earth if you had the opportunity. Righteous indignation is a thing.”

The first season of X-Men ’97 is now available to stream exclusively on Disney+.