X-Men ’97 Finally Addresses Major Dangling Plot Thread From The Animated Series

X-Men ’97 Episode 7 has finally let fans of X-Men: The Animated Series breathe a sigh of relief, as one of the biggest dangling plot threads from the original cartoon finally got tied off. 

That dangling thread would be Cable, who appeared in X-Men: The Animated Series but never had his connection to Cyclops and Jean Grey addressed in the show. Thanks to X-Men ’97, we can now say that Cable and Cyclops have had “the talk” that X-Men fans have been waiting decades to see onscreen! 

(WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!) 

In the X-Men ’97 Episode “Bright Eyes” Marvel’s mutants are still reeling from the Genoshan Mutant Massacre that happened in Episode 5. The X-Men head to the frontlines of Genosha hoping to aid with the relief effort, and instead get contacted by Bolivar Trask, creator of The Sentinels, about a parle.

The meeting with Trask and the X-Men reveals that a new organization (OZT) with a new anti-mutant leader is waging war on mutants. Rogue shocks everyone when she drops Trask off a skyscraper to punish him for Gambit’s death; Trask shocks everyone when he transforms into a cyborg Sentinel, with enough power to thrash the X-Men squad of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Wolverine, Beast, Nightcrawler, and Rogue. The X-Men look like they might be the next mutants to get massacred until Cable shows up to defeat the Trask Sentinel. 

While Cable is helping the battered Cyclops to his feet, Jean Grey psychically deduces that Cable is Nathan Summers, Cyclops’ son with Madelyne Pryor. As stated, fans have waited decades for the X-Men cartoon universe to address the Cyclops-Cable connection. Hilariously, X-Men ’97 doesn’t allow the moment to linger too long: after Cyclops realizes that Cable is his son, Cable outright states that there is no time for them to get in their feels (“Let’s skip the reunion, dad.”) Cable has com back from the future with a pivotal mission to stop OZT’s leader Bastion, whose anti-mutant campaign could spell doom for mutantkind’s future. 

Cable’s X-Men: The Animated Series History Explained

Cable showed up in X-Men: The Animated Series Season 1 as a nameless mercenary working for a general called “The Leader.” When The Leader turned out to be evil, Cable split from his group and became a revolutionary gunning for The Leader. 

Cable’s hunt took him to Genosha, where he helped free Gambit and the X-Men from the nation’s mutant power-suppressing collars and defeated The Leader. Cable’s next target was Gottfried Adler, the scientist who invented the Genoshan collars. When he hunted Adler to Muir Island, it was revealed that Mystique had already killed the man and taken his place. Cable battled the X-Men but left the battle by returning to his future time.

X-Men: TAS Season 2 brought back Cable from the future (with his proper bionic arm) for a story arc in which Cable’s timeline was threatened by Bishop coming back to the present and causing an alternate future to pave over Cable’s reality. Cable had to ally with his nemesis Apocalypse to try and go back in time to kill Bishop; ultimately, the X-Men found a way to ensure that futures Bishop and Cable come from both exist on the timeline, ending Cable’s assassination attempt. Season 4 of X-Men: TAS gave fans a major climatic story arc, in which Future Apocalypse tries to use a time travel device to affect history. Cable joined with Bishop and the X-Men and seemingly destroyed the threat of Apocalypse for good. 

Now, in X-Men ’97 it’s clear that Cable’s future is a perilous timeline – this time because of Bastion and his next generation of Sentinels, which have already mass exterminated mutants. 

X-Men ‘97 is streaming on Disney+.