X-Men ’97 Trailer Teases Major Marvel Comics Story

Professor X is dead. The dream lives on. Marvel Studios’ X-Men ’97 continues where X-Men: The Animated Series left off in 1997: with mutant menace Magneto (voiced here by Matthew Waterson) joining the X-Men after their fallen leader, Charles Xavier (Ross Marquand), was gravely injured and taken into space to recover with Empress Lilandra of the Shi’ar Empire. Decades later, Marvel Studios Animation has released the first X-Men ’97 trailer revealing what happens next — the X-Men mourning Professor X, whose last will and testament transfers Xavier’s School for the Gifted over to his once-friend-turned-enemy Magneto. 

The trailer opens with Professor X’s funeral and anti-mutant protestors outside United Nations Headquarters, where the master of magnetism is put on televised trial by Dr. Valerie Cooper (Catherine Disher). Magneto — now without his anti-telepathy helmet and wearing a purple suit emblazoned with an “M” — later appears at the X-Mansion to inform the X-Men of Xavier’s legacy: “Everything he built now belongs to me.”

X-Men ’97 revisits the era of the ’90s cartoon, but the events are being pulled from the pages of 1985’s Uncanny X-Men #200. The classic “Trial of Magneto” storyline put the X-Men’s arch-villain before a special tribunal of the International Court of Justice and charged him with crimes against humanity. (Magneto held the world hostage, threatening the great powers with annihilation unless they disarmed their nuclear arsenals and ceded to him their political power.) Xavier — secretly declining from a heart condition — assisted Magneto’s defense counsel and charged team leader Cyclops with exonerating the X-Men, framed for “Free Magneto” terrorist attacks across the globe.

Following an attack from the Fenris Twins, a dying Xavier entrusted Magneto with taking over as headmaster and teaching the next generation of homo superior: the New Mutants. “You seek to make amends — here is your chance,” Xavier told his old friend. “Do what no one believes can be done. It will stand as a far nobler monument — and better safeguard to mutantkind — than your martyrdom at this trial.” Magneto promised to carry on in Xavier’s place as Empress Lilandra took him into space to be treated by the Shi’ar Empire’s advanced alien technology. “I gave you my word, Charles. Come what may… I will be true to it,” Magneto vowed.

“His last wish was that I take his place — and try my best to fulfillhis dream of a world wherein human and mutant may live together inpeace,” a reformed Magneto told Xavier’s students in The New Mutants #35.As he sought his redemption, Magneto led the New Mutants — Cannonball,Cypher, Karma, Magik, Magma, Mirage, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, and Warlock —and fought alongside the X-Men as their ally. It was around this time that Cyclops and Jean Grey clone Madelyne Pryor had a baby —  Nathan Summers, the future time-traveling mutant Cable — and Storm took over as X-Men team leader.

Marvel Studios’ X-Men ’97 is streaming March 20 on Disney+.