X-Men ’97 Showrunner Reveals Key Animated Series Arc to Watch Before Episode 8

X-Men ’97 Episode 8 will begin a three-part story arc leading to the Season 1 finale of the series. Fans have been wondering what kind of surprise turns they will see in the “Tolerance is Extinction” arc, and showrunner Beau DeMayo may have just given us a major clue. 

In a tweet, DeMayo wrote that X-Men ’97 fans should set aside some time for “revisiting ‘One Man’s Worth’ before next week’s #XMen97 episode.” That’s going to get a LOT of X-Men fans imaginations going, as “One Man’s Worth” was a pretty wild story of time travel do-overs. 

X-Men: The Animated Series – “One Man’s Worth” Explained

“One Man’s Worth” was a two-part story arc featured in Season 4 (Episodes 2 and 3) of X-Men: The Animated Series. The story saw future Sentinel Nimrod making a Terminator-style attempt to travel back in time and assassinate Charles Xavier – one man whose absence could change the entire world. Nimrod targeted Charles in 1959 when he was young; Xavier’s death back then resulted in the X-Men never forming, and the horrific “Age of Apocalypse” timeline becoming the new reality instead.

X-Men time traveler Bishop and his sister Shard allied with AoA variants of Storm and Wolverine (who are married!) to go back in time to 1959 and stop Nimrod, Master Mold, and the Sentinels’ mutant lackey Trevor Fitzroy from killing Xavier. The mission fails multiple times; when Bishop and crew return to an altered future ruled by Master Mold, it’s only Trevor Fitzroy’s change of heart (and a holographic message to his past self) that allows Bishop to finally prevent Xavier’s death, thereby wiping the Age of Apocalypse and the Master Mold machine supremacy timelines out of existence. 

What Wil X-Men ’97’s “Tolerance is Extinction” Be About?

X-Men ’97 Episode 7 “Bright Eyes” revealed that the real perpetrator of the Mutant Massacre in Genosha was the mysterious Bastion, who allied with Mister Sinister and shared technology far beyond modern-day means with both Sinister and Sentinel creator Bolivar Trask. That technology includes cybernetic programming that can transform normal humans into Sentinel sleeper agents of immense power – enough for one hybrid Sentinel to take down the entire X-Men team. 

The ending of “Bright Eyes” saw Cyclops’ son Cable come back from the future to save the X-Men from the Bolivar Trask Hybrid Sentinel. Cable’s intel on how to beat a Hybrid Sentinel, and his clear knowledge of Bastion, foreshadow a new story arc about the fight to avoid some dark alternate future Bastion causes. In the now-classic “Remember It” episode of X-Men ’97, Cable also appeared just before the Genosha Mutant Massacre and implied to his mother, Madelyne Pryor, that the cataclysmic events leading to her death have happened before in other timelines, which Cable has tried (and failed?) to save.

That all sets up “Tolerance is Extinction” to be a larger saga of Cable trying to prevent the future that Bastion is trying to create – and, if Beau DeMayo’s hint is on point, we’ll probably see a couple of failed attempts to defeat Bastion along the way, and some iconic X-Men alternate realities as Easter egg nods to hardcore fans.

It may also be a major connective thread to discover that “Bastion” is directly influenced by “One Man’s Worth” and the future timeline of the machine supremacy, making “Tolerance is Extinction” a direct sequel to that Animated Series arc. It’s not hard to pull off if you know Bastion’s comic book origins; Bastion and Operation Zero Tolerance could be Nimrod finally getting long-awaited revenge on the X-Men. 

X-Men ’97 is streaming on Disney+.