Warning: This article contains spoilers for the X-Men ’97 season finale, “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 3.” X-Men ’97 isn’t just a revival of 1992’s X-Men: The Animated Series — it’s the return of the Marvel Animated Universe. In the 1990s, long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel’s interconnected universe of animated shows included X-Men, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and The Incredible Hulk. Characters could make brief cameos (in true Marvel tradition) or even crossover with other series, as they did in Spider-Man‘s three-part “Secret Wars” storyline teaming the webhead with ’90s TV versions of Marvel’s most famous superheroes.
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“X-Men ’97fits into that ’90s timeline, along with the [original]series, as well asthose concurrent ’90s shows that would sometimescross over with theX-Men. The potential is always there,” Brad Winderbaum, X-Men ’97 executive producer and head of streaming, television and animation for Marvel Studios, said back in March. “Without goinginto spoiler territory, the original show does have a lot of funcameos, and ’97 carries that torch.”
Here, ComicBook breaks down every cameo and surprise appearance in X-Men ’97‘s “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 3” season finale, which sends the X-Men’s Blue Team and Gold Team on two fateful missions: reverse the damage that Magneto (Matthew Waterson) did to the planet and stop the human-Sentinel hybrid Bastion (Theo James) from carrying out the next extinction event.
Silver Samurai
When the telepathic Professor Charles Xavier (Ross Marquand) penetrates Magneto’s mind to hijack his powers and repair Earth, the psychic attack shatters Magneto’s psyche — sending a shockwave across Earth that is witnessed in Japan by the Silver Samurai. In the comics, the armored mutant teleporter, master martial artist, and swordsman is a sworn enemy of Wolverine and the X-Men.
In the X-Men: The Animated Series episode “The Lotus and the Steel,” the Silver Samurai was defeated by the adamantium metal-clawed mutant (who had his metal skeleton ripped from his bones by Magneto in “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 2”).
Iron Man and Captain America
The Avengers Iron Man and Captain America are in the war room with former anti-mutant senator turned U.S. President Robert Kelly (Ron Rubin), who must make the decision to enact the Magneto Protocols and launch Asteroid M-destroying missiles to prevent a “mutant doomsday.”
The Robert Hays-voiced Iron Man appeared in his own animated series that ran for two seasons and episodes of Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk; Captain America has appeared on the original X-Men: The Animated Series (voiced by Lawrence Bayne), Spider-Man (where he was voiced by David Hayter), and the star-spangled winghead (voiced by Josh Keaton) had a run-in with Rogue in X-Men ’97 episode 7, titled “Bright Eyes.”
Doctor Strange
The surgeon sorcerer Stephen Strange — a.k.a. Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme — is seen using his mystical abilities to perform emergency surgery at Manhattan Memorial Hospital after Xavier’s battle with Magneto restores power to Earth. A silent Strange made cameos in the X-Men: The Animated Series episodes “The Starjammers,” “The Inner Circle,” and “The Dark Phoenix Saga, Part 3,” reacting when Jean Grey merged with the cosmic Phoenix Force.
Daredevil
Daredevil, the horn-headed guardian angel of Hell’s Kitchen, is seen using his billy clubs to wrangle looters on the chaotic streets of New York City. The blind lawyer by day, vigilante by night previously appeared on Fantastic Four (voiced by Bill Smitrovich) and the “Framed” and “The Man Without Fear” episodes of Spider-Man (voiced by Edward Albert); first as Peter Parker’s lawyer, and then as Spider-Man’s ally in a battle with the Kingpin.
Cloak and Dagger
Tyrone Johnson and Tandy Bowen, the crime-fighting duo known as Cloak and Dagger, make their Marvel Animated Universe debut as they battle Bastion’s Prime Sentinels. In the comics, they used their powers of darkness and light as street-level heroes to to rid the streets of crime — starting with the drug-pushers that experimented on them, turning them into the hooded Cloak (with the powers of intangibility and teleportation drawn from dark energy in the Darkforce Dimension) and the beaming Dagger (wielding the power of the Lightforce and the daggers it creates).
Black Panther (King T’Chaka) and the Dora Milaje
King T’Chaka of Wakanda (Isaac Robinson-Smith) advises President Kelly against firing on Asteroid M: “Vote yes,” the Black Panther says, “and you bestpray our children read their textbooks more than their Bibles. For onlyhistory could be conned into forgiving us.” However, this creates a continuity error with Fantastic Four: that animated show saw prince T’Challa (voiced by Gargoyles and Spawn‘s Keith David) inherit the throne after his father, King T’Chaka, was killed by the sound-wielding supervillain Klaw.
Black Panther previously appeared as an unspeaking cameo in the X-Men: The Animated Series episodes “Sanctuary, Part One” and “Sanctuary, Part Two,” when Magneto declared the liberation of mutantkind and announced they had a home on the mutants-only Asteroid M.
The Winter Guard
Russia’s super-team makes a brief cameo as the Winter Guard — the mutant Arkady Rossovich / Omega Red, the mutant Laynia Petrovna / Darkstar, and the armored Crimson Dynamo — are seen fending off an invasion by Bastion’s Prime Sentinels. On X-Men: The Animated Series, the tentacled Omega Red was birthed by the Russian government as the Soviet Union’s answer to Captain America, and he clashed with Wolverine when Logan was a member of the government mutant black-ops force Team X.
Darkstar sided with the X-Men and her countryman Colossus to battle Omega Red in the “Red Dawn” episode of the original series, and a version of the Crimson Dynamo battled industrialist Tony Stark over on Iron Man.
More Mutants
After Bastion’s devastating attack on Genosha, a fleet of Prime Sentinels touch down before five mutants (from left to right): Northstar, Psylocke, Cipher, Puck, and Aurora.
Northstar, Aurora, and Puck are members of Canada’s Alpha Flight — a government-sponsored mutant team that also consists of Vindicator, Sasquatch, Shaman, and Snowbird — former teammates of Wolverine who first appeared in the “Repo Man” episode of X-Men: The Animated Series. The telepathic energy blade-wielding Psylocke only appeared in a handful of episodes of the original X-Men, as did siblings Northstar and Aurora: in “Slave Island,” they were among the mutants enslaved by Sentinel creator Bolivar Trask on Genosha.
Sauron / Mister Fantastic
In a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it “cameo,” the shape-shifting Morph (J. P. Karliak) briefly transforms into the winged Sauron — a dinosaur-like mutate hailing from the Savage Land — to fly safely to the ground. They later morph into Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four. Other characters who have made Morph-shifting “cameos” on X-Men ’97 include Psylocke, Lady Deathstrike, Colossus, Magik, and the Hulk.
The Children of Magneto
When Professor X attempts to repair Magneto’s shattered psyche, his mind is flooded with images of “others who are fighting their own current,” Xavier says. “People like Rogue, who help us stay afloat when our limbs tire or the waters rage.” Though they appear only in shadow, Magneto’s little-seen children — the mutants Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch and her twin brother, Pietro Maximoff / Quicksilver — are present on a boat with Rogue. As is the magnetism-manipulating mutant Lorna Dane, a.k.a. Polaris, a former X-Man who joined the U.S. government’s X-Factor team in the X-Men: The Animated Series episode “Cold Comfort.”
Though the original animated series never acknowledged Polaris as Magneto’s daughter like her comic book counterpart, her presence in Magneto’s mind suggests the master of magnetism is aware she is his child. After Wanda and Pietro appeared in “Cold Comfort,” the siblings learned that Magneto was their father in the season 4 episode “Family Ties.”
Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson, and Flash Thompson
As devastation unfolds on Earth, a trio of familiar spectators watches television in horror: Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson, and Flash Thompson as they appeared on Spider-Man: The Animated Series. While the cameo seems to suggest that Spider-Man found the missing MJ after that animated series ended with her lost somewhere in the multiverse, it should be noted that Spider-Man‘s series finale aired in 1998 — one year after the events of X-Men ’97. (A costumed Spider-Man swung in for a brief cameo in “Tolerance is Extinction – Part 1.”)
Mother Askani and Nathan Summers
After many of the X-Men go missing and are presumed dead— including Scott Summers/Cyclops (Ray Chase) and Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale) — it’s revealed that the couple were somehow transported to the year 3960 A.D. It’s there that they encounter Mother Askani (Gates McFadden) and a young Nathan Summers — Scott’s son with Jean clone Madelyne Pryor who was sent into the future, where he becomes the time-traveling Cable.
This is inspired by the four-issue limited series The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, which saw Rachel Summers — Scott and Jean’s telepathic daughter from an alternate, apocalyptic future — bring her time-displaced parents into the late 37th century. In this dystopian future ruled by the ancient mutant Apocalypse, Rachel became known as Mother Askani, leader of the rebel fighters Clan Askani. Meanwhile, in Ancient Egypt in the year 3000 B.C., Xavier, Magneto, and the remaining missing X-Men meet En Sabah Nur: a.k.a. “The First One,” who is destined to become Apocalypse in the present.
All episodes of Marvel’s X-Men ’97 season 1 are now streaming on Disney+.
