X-Men ’97 Season 2 has increasingly drawn the Avengers into the story, but that repeats a huge comic book mistake. The first season of X-Men ’97 quietly accomplished the impossible, drawing together all the various ’90s animated shows into a single shared universe. It’s a genius strategy, making this a direct forerunner of the MCU, and it means the Avengers already exist in the X-Men’s timeline – as do the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, and so many others. Season 2 has quietly doubled down on this approach, increasingly bringing in other heroes.
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The season premiere saw Morph shapeshift into the form of Thor, God of Thunder – one of the few times an Asgardian actually appeared in any of these shows (albeit indirectly). Now, episode 4’s post-credits scene sets up major Weapon X reveals courtesy of Captain America and Black Widow. It seems Wolverine has called in a favor, with his old friends successfully acquiring information on the Weapon X Project. But, as exciting as these cameos may be, they do cause a problem.
Marvel’s X-Men Comics Have Often Struggled With the Avengers
The X-Men have an Avengers problem. It isn’t just that the two superhero teams tend to collide in infrequent versus matches (although that’s part of it). Rather, it’s because the shared universe causes major problems whenever the stakes rise. X-Men and Avengers comics often deal with threats on a greater scale than ever before, with the entire world at risk. In the ’90s comic book story “Fatal Attractions,” Magneto released a powerful electromagnetic pulse that blasted across the entire world. Somehow, incredibly, it didn’t really have an impact on the Avengers at all.
Matters only became worse in the 2000s, when the mutant nation of Genosha was destroyed by rogue Sentinels. An entire civilization was wiped out in a matter of hours, and the X-Men headed out to find survivors. But where were the Avengers? Why did Earth’s Mightiest Heroes choose to sit out an act of genocide? And, worse still, why didn’t the Avengers choose to help after the fact? The latter is particularly notable; you can easily understand why the Avengers might be otherwise occupied during a brief disaster, perhaps dealing with another global threat, but you’d still expect them to show up afterwards. But… there was nothing.
Genosha (and a subsequent mutant “Decimation”) was something of a turning point for the X-Men / Avengers relationship. In the aftermath, the X-Men became increasingly isolated from the rest of Marvel’s superhero world – and rightly so. They refused to participate in the superhero “Civil War,” simply because they couldn’t risk the few surviving mutants. Besides, as Emma Frost abruptly reminded Iron Man and Carol Danvers’ Ms. Marvel, the Avengers had failed to be there in the X-Men’s hour of need. Captain America tried to make amends after a post-“Civil War” resurrection plot, but it was too late to make headway.
X-Men ’97 Has Set Up the Same Problem
But X-Men ’97 Season 2 is now unintentionally repeating the same mistake. To be fair, Season 1 had a couple of smarter touches; it did indeed show Captain America and Iron Man during its version of “Fatal Attractions.” But the Avengers were just as absent during X-Men ’97 Season 1’s Genosha arc, meaning the exact same betrayal has taken place. The Avengers have literally ignored an actual genocide, proving themselves fickle friends for the mutant race. Surprisingly, though, the show itself doesn’t address this. It feels completely ignorant of the problem.
According to Wolverine, it’s been over 50 years since he crossed paths with Captain America. That means the X-Men and the Avengers coexist, and yet they’ve literally avoided each other. What cosmic threats have come close to destroying the whole world? What supervillains have come within a hair’s breadth of conquering everything? And how close have the X-Men and the Avengers come to being defeated, and yet never received backup that could have changed everything?
The cameos are cool. But the lack of complexity is striking; as good as X-Men ’97 is, the show has a habit of rushing through things and avoiding emotional complexity, and we’d really expect to see someone acknowledge the Genoshan elephant in the room during Wolverine’s meeting with Cap and Black Widow. All this subtly undermines the shared universe the animated series is going to such great effort to establish, and the cameos need to be handled a lot more carefully.
The first four episodes of X-Men ’97 are streaming now on Disney+, and new episodes will be released weekly. Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
