The Marvel Animated Universe is in full swing.
More than 30 years after X-Men: The Animated Series jump-started the MAU, Marvel Studios’ X-Men ’97 revived the interconnected universe of ’90s animated shows Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and The Incredible Hulk. Picking up where the original series ended after five seasons in 1997, Marvel Animation’s sequel show X-Men ’97 — featuring the original voices of Wolverine (Cal Dodd), Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith), Beast (George Buza), Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough), and Rogue (Lenore Zann) — also assembled Earth’s mightiest heroes for surprise cameos in the season finale and throughout the 10-episode first season.
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Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man — and Peter Parker’s long-lost girlfriend, Mary Jane, missing since 1998 — all appeared exactly as they did in the ’90s, though only Captain America (voiced by Josh Keaton) had any lines. Even before the web-slinger swung by for a brief but silent cameo in episode 8, fans weighed whether the return of X-Men might mean another revival was possible: Spider-Man ’98.
“I’d obviously love to participate in such an awesome venture,” Christopher Daniel Barnes, who voiced the radioactive spider-bitten superhero across five seasons of 1994’s Spider-Man: The Animated Series, wrote on social media after Spider-Man’s X-Men cameo. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been contacted by anyone regarding this possibility and I also currently have no connection to the X-Men 97 show.”
Invoking the words of Spider-Man’s co-creator, Barnes added: “Let’s remember Stan Lee and remain ‘True Believers!’ Maybe I’ll get that magical phone call, have to sign an NDA, and then go weirdly silent on the issue! Here’s hoping!!!” (In 2021, Barnes said there was “no truth” to a rumor he was to reprise the fan-favorite role on the big screen in the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, but added: “I wish it was true. That would just be super cool.”)
The Spider-Man rights are a tangled web. The simple version is that Sony owns the film rights to Spider-Man and related characters in live-action and animation, but Disney — which owns the Marvel Comics character — has been able to produce Spider-Man animated shows since 2012’s Ultimate Spider-Man. Disney doesn’t own the Sony-made The Spectacular Spider-Man, but the company does own 1994’s Spider-Man, 2017’s Spider-Man, and the preschool series Spidey and His Amazing Friends.
Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios, which produced X-Men ’97 via Marvel Animation, are the producers on Marvel’s upcoming Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (the retitled Spider-Man: Freshman Year), with Hudson Thames (Marvel’s What If…?) voicing freshly-bitten high school freshman Peter Parker in the new MCU-inspired animated series.
When Brad Winderbaum, an executive producer on X-Men ’97 and head of streaming, television and animation for Marvel Studios, was asked about potentially reviving other Marvel shows like the ’90s Spider-Man series for Disney+, Winderbaum answered: “You never know, is the answer. I will say that just like the originalseries had some really fun cameos that you didn’t expect to happen, youcan expect the same thing in X-Men ’97.” ‘Nuff said.
All episodes of X-Men ’97 are now available to stream on Disney+, along with X-Men: The Animated Series and Spider-Man: The Animated Series.
