Murphy's Multiverse

Tag: Marvel Animation

  • 10 Seasons and a Movie of Mutant Mayhem? — ‘X-MEN ’97’ Visionaries Lay Out Ambitious Long-Term Expansion Plan as Brad Winderbaum Sets Target to Run Parallel with Live-Action Reboot

    10 Seasons and a Movie of Mutant Mayhem? — ‘X-MEN ’97’ Visionaries Lay Out Ambitious Long-Term Expansion Plan as Brad Winderbaum Sets Target to Run Parallel with Live-Action Reboot

    The animated corner of the mutant landscape isn’t slowing down for anyone. In an exclusive interview with The Direct, original series director and X-Men ’97 producer Larry Houston unmasked the ideal long-term trajectory for the hit Disney+ animated series, confirming that Marvel Studios is operating under a historically massive multi-year expansion plan.

    While the show has already secured a multi-season commitment—with Season 3 locked for a 2027 release window and Season 4 already mapping out its foundational animatics—creative executives are actively aiming far beyond a standard revival.

    According to fellow series producer Eric Lewald, Marvel Studios Head of Streaming, Television, and Animation Brad Winderbaum is aggressively pushing to carry X-Men ’97 all the way to a monumental 10-season run.

    For Larry Houston, who would like to see the series last into a fifth or sixth season, the desire to secure a lengthy runway isn’t just about capitalizing on massive streaming metrics; it’s a necessary structural pivot due to modern distribution formats. Houston noted that the original 1992 Fox Kids series enjoyed 13 episodes per season, allowing characterizations and complex environments room to breathe.

    A scene from Marvel’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    Conversely, today’s Disney+ streaming model forces a highly compressed narrative funnel of eight to ten episodes.

    However, that compressed structure is heavily offset by a literal goldmine of unadapted comic books. “There’s been 24, 25 more years of other stories that I never touched, that this current X-Men ’97 production is exploring,” Houston shared, emphasizing that five to six seasons is the absolute minimum baseline required to properly flesh out these modern eras. Winderbaum and Lewald are aiming even higher, viewing the franchise as a permanent flagship anchor: “Brad’s bursting up and down and you know he wants to do 10… With 60 years of comics and all these characters… there’s really no limit.”

    The announcement of a potential decade-long animated roadmap has left casual fans wondering if X-Men ’97 will eventually crash into Kevin Feige’s upcoming, highly anticipated live-action X-Men theatrical reboot.

    A scene from Marvel’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    Addressing the overlap directly at the Tribeca Film Festival, Winderbaum assured audiences that Marvel Animation and the live-action studio pipeline can comfortably operate simultaneously without stepping on each other’s toes. Winderbaum explicitly pointed to Sony’s multi-layered Spider-Man strategy as the definitive operational blueprint:

    “Yeah, I think the two things can definitely run simultaneously. Look how many Spider-Man things there are. There’s ‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,’ the ‘Spider-Verse’ movies, the live-action movies… X-Men could definitely do the same thing.”

    By keeping the animated universe structurally insulated, X-Men ’97 can freely adapt massive, continuity-heavy comic epics like the Age of Apocalypse or deep Weapon X character studies without being restricted by live-action universe requirements, actor scheduling conflicts, or massive practical production budgets.

  • ‘X-Men ’97’: Morph and Logan’s Tragic Dynamic Sets a Heartbreaking Tone in “Sex, Lies and DVDs”

    ‘X-Men ’97’: Morph and Logan’s Tragic Dynamic Sets a Heartbreaking Tone in “Sex, Lies and DVDs”

    “Sex, Lies and DVDs” deftly explored how Logan’s blinding self-loathing transformed him into a literal and figurative monster in his desperate quest to regain his status as the best he is at what he does. However, the collateral damage of that transformation doesn’t land harder on anyone than Morph.

    Throughout the episode, Morph operates flawlessly as the team’s emotional anchor, navigating the cockpit, absorbing immense mental trauma, and physically shifting into figures like Cyclops solely to keep Logan’s fracturing mind tethered to his humanity.

    The deep tragedy of Episode 5 lies in the total asymmetry of their dynamic. During the original 1992 animated series, Logan famously risked everything and defied the rest of the X-Men team to drag a corrupted, brainwashed Morph out of Mister Sinister’s shadow. Now, the Season 2 creative team smartly turned the tables with a devastating, toxic twist. Logan actively weaponizes that history of loyalty, exploiting Morph’s protection to lead Team X straight into a biological slaughterhouse.

    Logan’s willingness to let his friends pay the ultimate price just so he can “get his groove back” shatters the pure wartime brotherhood they once shared. It leaves Morph anchoring a tragic realization: the heroic Logan who once saved their soul has been entirely consumed by the very feral animal the Weapon X program designed him to be.

  • ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2, Episode 5: How Logan Got His Groove Back

    ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2, Episode 5: How Logan Got His Groove Back

    Given his dark past, stoic demeanor and deep self-loathing, Logan has often been referred to as a brooding loner. Season 2, Episode 5 of X-Men ’97, “Sex, Lies and DVDs”, leans into that, allowing the best there is at what he does brood…with the Brood.

    Picking up directly after the Episode 4 post-credit scene that saw Captain America and Black Widow deliver information on Weapon X to Logan, “Sex, Lies and DVDs” stands as a brilliant bottle episode that’s both surprising in its premise while carrying a heavy emotional load.

    Presented to both the audience and the episode’s supporting cast as an opportunity for Logan to prevent Dr. Cornelius from further experiments in the Weapon X program, the episode suddenly and shockingly flips the genre switch, becoming a survivor horror piece, riffing hard on masterpieces such as Alien and The Thing with Marvel’s parasitic, apex predators, the Brood, hunting Logan, Morph and Team X.

    When Team X’s plane crashes somewhere in the wilderness–and the first member of the team is killed–the episode’s tone begins to subtly shift, hinting at what’s to come ahead of the reveal that Cornelius was using the Brood to help weaponize soldiers. Though it’s subtextual, the episode reveals that, as in the comics, the Brood have been on Earth for some time, leaving open the possibility that the bottle episode could eventually be tied back to the season’s main antagonist, Apocalypse, as was the case in the comics. Whether the creatives ultimately travel that road or not, “Sex, Lies and DVDs” does plenty to stand on its own as one of the series best.

    While he might be many fans favorite heroes, Episode 5 paints a less than flattering picture of Wolverine, revealing the monster within while turning him into a monster…and in both cases, he’s a problem for his friends, mostly because he doesn’t really have any. Ultimately, Logan’s betrayal of his friends costs many of them their lives and until Morph–who is used smartly throughout the episode–forces him to reckon with his actions, it seems as though he’s just fine with the cost of him getting his groove back.

    “Sex, Lies and DVDs” is exactly the type of episode a series like X-Men ’97 must allow time for. Though it’s a bottle episode, it also works to resolve one of Season 1’s biggest issues (Wolverine being stripped of his Adamantium) while challenging Logan to be better, something that he’ll almost certainly have to do as Season 2 moves on and the team continues to be faced with overwhelming, apocalyptic threats.

  • ‘X-Men ’97’: How Rama-Tut’s Timeline Breach Connects to Gambit’s Past and an Episode from the Original Series

    The cosmic architecture of X-Men ’97 Season 2 just pulled off an immaculate, long-game continuity play. While general audiences were reeling from the structural tragedy of En Sabah Nur’s transformation into Apocalypse, fans of the original series were hooked on the precise moment Rama-Tut boarded his Sphinx-ship to flee the ancient Nile Delta.

    That single, frantic chronological exit doesn’t just clear the stage for the rest of the season—it acts as the direct, canonical origin point for a memorable episode original 1992 animated series: Season 2, Episode 6, “X-ternally Yours.”

    The Chronological Collision

    The answer how a time-traveling variant of Kang the Conqueror connects straight back to Gambit’s murky past in the Louisiana bayou, might well be found in the physical energy discharged during his frantic escape.

    When Rama-Tut activates his Celestial-fused hyper-drive to escape Apocalypse’s localized gravity weapon, the spatial monitors inside his ship display, it’s possible that the massive chronological wake doesn’t just shoot him forward into the future; it changes Candra from an average human into the X-Ternal.

    First introduced in the OG series, Candra is an immortal who demands a systematic tithe from ordinary mortals in exchange for immense wealth and arcane power. X-Men ’97 may have just brilliantly retconned the character by establishing that Candra is actually utilizing the residual, leaking chronal energy left behind by Rama-Tut’s ancient ship to sustain her immortality until her original appearance in the 1990s. She isn’t a mystical goddess; she is a cosmic opportunist feeding on the temporal radiation bleeding out of the Egyptian rift.

    The Legacy of the Tithe

    This directly sets up the entire cyclical blood-feud explored in “X-Ternally Yours.” To keep the chronal energy stabilized and maintain their respective domains, Candra forced a strict, generational pact between New Orleans’ two rival underworld factions:

    • The Thieves Guild: Heavily tied to Gambit and hBella Donna’s family.
    • The Assassins Guild: The ruthless, hyper-lethal counterparts of the thieves.

    Every ten years, both guilds are forced to present an offering—The Tithe—to remain under Candra’s protection and to retain the powers given to them by her. X-Men ’97 smartly delivers a subtle thematic payoff. It proves that Gambit’s tragic childhood, the criminal wars of the bayou, and the dark bargains of the Thieves Guild were all just microscopic, ripples caused by a single, desperate time-traveler trying to outrun the dawn of Apocalypse.

  • Recap: ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2, Episode 4 Solidifies the Dark Genesis of Apocalypse

    Recap: ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2, Episode 4 Solidifies the Dark Genesis of Apocalypse

    Marvel Animation is not pulling its punches. Following last week’s massive, time-skipping three-episode premiere block, today’s highly anticipated fourth episode—”Rise of Apocalypse: Part II”—delivers a devastating, tragic conclusion to the series’ ancient Egyptian arc.

    The episode formally seals the fate of En Sabah Nur, proving that despite the X-Men’s desperate multiversal intervention, the loop of history remains entirely unbreakable.

    The Fragile Alliance Shatters

    A scene from Marvel’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Disney+. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    Picking up directly from the cliffhanger in 3000 B.C., the episode opens with Magneto utilizing the absolute peak of his magnetic capabilities to shield himself and the time-displaced team from a catastrophic blast. While they survive, so does a highly traumatized En Sabah Nur following the death of his nomadic mentor, Baal.

    In a desperate, final bid to alter the future, Xavier unmasks their identities to Nur, convincing him to form a temporary, uneasy alliance to hunt down the ancient, Celestial temple housing Rama-Tut’s reality-altering technology. However, the philosophical rift between the team’s founders immediately dooms the mission. Xavier attempts to counsel Nur toward passive diplomacy and integration, while a deeply hardened, post-Genosha Magneto reinforces Nur’s raw survivalist rage, accidentally acting as the catalyst for his radicalization.

    The Dawn of the Despot

    A scene from Marvel’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    When the team finally breaches the inner sanctum of the futuristic temple–which is revealed to be Ship–they are intercepted by Rama-Tut (the time-traveling variant of Kang the Conqueror), who telepathically warns Xavier that preventing Nur’s evolution is simply not possible. A massive, multi-tiered brawl erupts, but the X-Men ultimately fail to restrain Nur. Driven by an overwhelming “Survival of the Fittest” ethos, Nur steps directly into the Celestial-tech machinery, permanently merging his biology with the alien infrastructure to formally transform into Apocalypse.

    The Ultimate Sacrifice

    With an omnipotent tyrant unleashed, the city descends into utter chaos. Apocalypse launches a devastating black hole directly above Rama-Tut’s city to erase the timeline’s variables. While Rama-Tut cowardly boards his Sphinx-ship to escape back to the future–but not before a little tease about the future of one of his top people–Magneto steps up to save the innocent population.

    In a staggering, visually breathtaking display of raw power that’s becoming a staple of X-Men ’97‘s animation, Magneto single-handedly repels Apocalypse’s gravity weapon, but the feat leaves him gravely, life-threateningly injured. Recognizing they are outmatched, a battered Magneto takes the blame and uses the temporal energy to send Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Beast hurtling back toward the 1990s. However, before the portal snaps shut, Apocalypse violently intercepts the beam, trapping a horrified Charles Xavier behind in the ancient past to mourn over the loss of his friend…until Bishop time hops to his rescue.

  • The Prophecy of the Eternal Shore — How ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 Tethers En Sabah Nur Directly to Season 1’s Heartbreak

    The Prophecy of the Eternal Shore — How ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 Tethers En Sabah Nur Directly to Season 1’s Heartbreak

    The brilliance of X-Men ’97 lives in its memory. It refuses to treat massive narrative events as isolated, episodic blockbusters. Instead, the Season 2 premiere meticulously connects its time-spanning narrative straight back to the psychological trauma of Genosha and the final, haunting warnings of the Season 1 finale.

    Throughout the first three episodes, the writers introduce a brilliant, unifying motif in the Eternal Shore speech. Originally delivered as a booming, grandiose declaration of survival-of-the-fittest dominance by Apocalypse in the classic ’90s animated series, the speech is re-framed here as an ancient, multi-century prophecy.

    We hear it echoed by Mother Askani’s cultists in the far future, whispered by historical records in the present, and muttered by a young, conflicted En Sabah Nur in ancient Egypt. By turning a villain’s boastful monologue into an immutable law of cosmic gravity that spans thousands of years, the show highlights that no matter what the X-Men do to rewrite time, Apocalypse is…inevitable.

    (L-R): Beast (voiced by George Buza), Bishop (voiced by Isaac Robinson-Smith), Rogue (voiced by Lenore Zann), Professor X (voiced by Ross Marquand), Magneto (voiced by Matthew Waterson), and Nightcrawler (voiced by Adrian Hough) in Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    The thematic genius of shifting Charles Xavier and Magneto back to 3000 B.C. is that it forces them to confront the monster before he put on the armor. The En Sabah Nur we meet in Episode 3 isn’t a god; he is an outcast mutant navigating a brutal, unforgiving ancient world that fears and hates him just as much as the world of the 1990s does.

    This creates an agonizing ideological conflict between the stranded X-Men founders. Charles naturally views the young mutant through a lens of empathy and education, believing they can guide him down a path of coexistence and prevent his descent into tyrannical madness. Fresh off the genocide of Genosha, Magneto looks at Nur and sees the absolute, terrifying logical extreme of his own philosophy. He understands exactly how a lifetime of systematic persecution can turn an outcast into a monster that wants to burn the world to ashes.

    The tragedy of the premiere block is that the X-Men’s very attempt to alter the timeline is what ultimately triggers the threat. The intervention of Rama-Tut and the ensuing time-travel chaos shatter the young Egyptian’s faith in ordinary humanity, setting his transformation into motion.

    As the spirit of a defeated, future Apocalypse flees backward into the 1990s to target the remaining mutants at their most vulnerable, X-Men ’97 pulls off a flawless narrative loop. They didn’t just kick off a fun, sci-fi adventure—they proved that the fight for the future isn’t about lasers or giant robots; it’s a permanent, psychological war for the soul of the people we choose to become when the world gives us every reason to break.

  • Time-Jumps and Team-Ups — How the Massive 3-Episode Premiere of ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 Re-Shapes the Timeline

    Time-Jumps and Team-Ups — How the Massive 3-Episode Premiere of ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 Re-Shapes the Timeline

    The long, grueling two-year hiatus is finally over. Marvel Animation officially unleashed a colossal, three-episode premiere block for X-Men ’97 Season 2 on Disney+.

    Picking up immediately from the jaw-dropping, multiversal cliffhangers of the Season 1 finale, the debut episodes—“Days of Past Future”, “A Force to Be Reckoned With”, and “Rise of Apocalypse: Part I”—deliver a relentlessly paced, gorgeously animated masterclass in comic-book soap opera that splits our heroes across the space-time continuum.

    The Future: Paternal Instincts in 3960 A.D.

    Jean Grey (voiced by Jennifer Hale) and Cyclops (voiced by Ray Chase) in Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    The premiere wastes zero time addressing the team’s fractured displacement. In Episode 1, Forge and Bishop hatch a desperate, cross-temporal rescue mission. Forge jumps to a desolate, tech-fused future to retrieve the frontline roster: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Morph, and a bone-clawed Wolverine recovering from Magneto’s brutal adamantium extraction. 

    This future group is hiding out in the camp of Mother Askani, where Scott and Jean have spent months secretly raising their infant son, Nathan.

    The timeline turns into a nightmare when Apocalypse’s modern cyber-hounds track them down. Desperate to harvest Nathan’s pristine techno-organic genetics to use as a permanent physical host, Apocalypse’s prime forces launch a brutal raid, capturing Scott, Jean, and the child. It takes a massive, solar-flare-fueled counter-offensive from Storm—and the emotional revelation to Nathan that Scott and Jean are his actual biological parents—to break their restraints and send a young Cable merging with the base’s sentient “SHIP” computer.

    The Present: Enter X-Force and X-Factor

    While half the team is trapped in the time stream, Episode 2 shifts its focus back to the 1990s, showcasing how a broken, leaderless world reacts to the apparent demise of the X-Men.

    With the mutant population facing extreme governmental persecution, a heavily altered opening title sequence formally introduces X-Force. Led by a fully grown, battle-hardened Cable, this militant, no-nonsense faction recruits Jubilee and Sunspot to wage an aggressive, preemptive war against the lingering remnants of Apocalypse’s inner circle.

    The tactical friction spikes when Valerie Cooper fields X-Factor—a clean-cut, government-sanctioned mutant task force deployed to round up mutant runaways. A highly coordinated ambush leads to Jubilee’s brief capture, forcing a high-octane rescue sequence that sees a newly returned Polaris turn heel to blow the government compound wide open.

    The Past: The Dawn of Egypt in 3000 B.C.

    (L-R): Beast (voiced by George Buza), Bishop (voiced by Isaac Robinson-Smith), Rogue (voiced by Lenore Zann), Professor X (voiced by Ross Marquand), Magneto (voiced by Matthew Waterson), and Nightcrawler (voiced by Adrian Hough) in Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    The premiere block wraps with Episode 3, bringing audiences directly to the ancient Nile Delta where Professor Charles Xavier, Magneto, Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Beast have been marooned.

    Attempting to blend into the ancient landscape, the marooned icons cross paths with a younger, uncorrupted version of the mythic mutant En Sabah Nur long before his evolution into the blue-lipped despot. Bishop arrives via Forge’s time machine with explicit structural instructions to prevent his ascension entirely. However, the rescue plan is thrown into absolute disarray by an unexpected cosmic traveler: Rama-Tut (a legendary, time-traveling variant of Kang the Conqueror) arriving via his high-tech Sphinx ship to assert ultimate domain over Egypt, setting up an explosive, multi-generational war for the soul of the timeline.

  • Stabilizing the Timeline — ‘X-Men ’97’ Producer Reassures Fans of a Much Faster Turnaround for Season 3

    Stabilizing the Timeline — ‘X-Men ’97’ Producer Reassures Fans of a Much Faster Turnaround for Season 3

    The grueling waiting game for mutant supremacy is finally coming to an end. With X-Men ’97 Season 2 officially locked to kick off its highly anticipated 9-episode run on Disney+ next Wednesday, July 1, 2026, fans have spent over two years worrying about how long they might have to wait for subsequent installments.

    According to a report published by Deadline, those fears can officially be put to rest. Legendary series producer Larry Houston has confirmed that the painful, multi-year production delay that plagued the gap between the first two seasons was an isolated fluke, promising a much faster, regular release rhythm for Season 3 and Season 4 moving forward.

    (L-R): Beast (voiced by George Buza), Bishop (voiced by Isaac Robinson-Smith), Rogue (voiced by Lenore Zann), Professor X (voiced by Ross Marquand), Magneto (voiced by Matthew Waterson), and Nightcrawler (voiced by Adrian Hough) in Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    The two-year gap between the critically adored 2024 premiere season and this summer’s sophomore outing was heavily disrupted by backstage overhauls—most notably the abrupt, high-profile firing of former head writer Beau DeMayo just days before the series initially debuted. Because Marvel Animation had to actively restructure its creative pipeline, production on Season 2 faced significant logistical bottlenecks. Speaking on the streamlined adjustments behind the scenes, Houston provided a yet another highly reassuring update to the community.

    “Luckily, the production problems won’t occur again,” Houston shared with Deadline. “There was a huge gap of time between [season] one and two. They’ve learned their lessons, so with [seasons] three and four, that won’t happen again. That was a one-off.”

    En Sabah Nur (voiced by Cal Dodd) in Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    Previously, Houston explained that under the watch of Marvel’s streaming skipper, Brad Winderbaum, fans would only have to wait “a year now between seasons, not two-and-a-quarter years,” promising that “It’s gonna be a year until the next one and a year until the next one [after that]. They are on schedule now.” Winderbaum has long expressed his belief that fans would respond well to Marvel Television and Marvel Animation series hitting D+ “on an annual cadence.”

    With the backstage turbulence firmly in the rearview mirror, Marvel Studios Animation has quietly attempted to achieve a highly efficient workflow under new series writer Matthew Chauncey (What If…?). Rather than waiting for the public to digest the upcoming season, the studio is already deep in active visual production on Season 3. Simultaneously, narrative architecture and early storyboarding for a newly confirmed Season 4 are already moving down the assembly line in parallel. By treating the ongoing narrative as a continuous, flowing pipeline, Marvel is aiming to establish a highly dependable, yearly release schedule for its premier animated franchise.

    Storm (voiced by Alison Sealy-Smith) in Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    In the meantime, the 9-episode Season 2 begins on Wednesday, July 1, 2026, with a massive three-episode premiere block tracking the team scattered across the ancient past, present, and a distant future. Early critical feedback out of the Tribeca Festival has already handed the season a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

    Source: Deadline

  • ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 Episode Titles Tease Weapon X, Danger and the Return of a Major Character

    ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 Episode Titles Tease Weapon X, Danger and the Return of a Major Character

    His name is Gambit and he told you to remember it…and it sounds like he’ll be back to haunt the X-Men in the final two episodes of X-Men ’97 Season 2.

    X user @hexfacilitycom has spilled the details on the release dates, episode titles and brief synopses for the new batch of episodes and they indicate that the former X-Man, who sacrificed himself in the attack on Genosha, will indeed return as a Horseman of Apocalypse in Episode 8, “Dead Man’s Hand.”

    https://x.com/i/status/2068348750548848812

    The episode, which is scheduled to stream on August 5th, will see “the X-Men confront a ghost from their past.” And it seems that episode sets up the season finale in which the team’s “past comes back to haunt them.” The finale is almost certainly a reference to the fallout of time travel shenanigans in the first four episodes.

    Checkout the episode titles and release dates for Season 2:

    Days of Past Future (July 1)
    A Force to be Reckoned With (July 1)
    Rise of Apocalypse: Part 1 (July 1)
    Rise of Apocalypse: Part 2 (July 8)
    Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs (July 15)
    Danger.Exe (July 22)
    Strange Land, Savage Heart (July 29)
    The Dead Man’s Hand (August 5)
    Survival of the Fittest (August 12)

  • Review: ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2

    Review: ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2

    If Season 1 of X-Men ’97, Marvel Animation’s revival of X-Men: The Animated Series revived the heart of the beloved classic cartoon, Season 2 reanimates its soul…at least that’s what it seems like through the first four episodes of the sophomore season.

    While Season 1 provided a nostalgic trip to the 90s, full of feel-good releases of dopamine and serotonin, Season 2 delivers a far more intoxicating rush, releasing a surging cocktail of chemicals for those who loved not only the original show but the true vastness of the X-Men’s comic book lore.

    (L-R): Beast (voiced by George Buza), Bishop (voiced by Isaac Robinson-Smith), Rogue (voiced by Lenore Zann), Professor X (voiced by Ross Marquand), Magneto (voiced by Matthew Waterson), and Nightcrawler (voiced by Adrian Hough) in Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    The first four episodes manage to address the Season 1 cliffhanger with multitudinous references to the original series while also priming the audience for something entirely new. And so, the first four episodes of Season 2 work as a fulcrum between the return to the emotional center of Season 1 and the very intentional shift in the purpose of the new episodes, which seems to be to remind audiences of the incredible depth and breadth of the X-Men mythology.

    Whether in the comics, live-action or animation, the mutant have never needed to interact with the rest of the Marvel universe. As fun as the crossovers can be, the mutants have their own interesting heros and villains capable of leading some of The House of Ideas greatest stories and Season 2 makes it clear that Cable and Apocalypse are chief among them.

    Jean Grey (voiced by Jennifer Hale) and Cyclops (voiced by Ray Chase) in Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97 Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel. © 2026 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

    Full of the timey-wimey shenanigans that have long been a staple of their stories, Season 2 of X-Men ’97 fully embraces the full weirdness of the X-Men’s time travel adventures. By taking on En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse in the past, present and future, the sophomore season holds the potential of seeing each team dealing with the fallout of the others’ actions across time…and it also clearly seems to set the stage for an impending schism not only between Charles and Magneto but also between core members of the team.

    Though it’s just four episodes, X-Men ’97 feels like a fresh spin on a classic X-Men tale. The animation remains top tier and the action sequences continue to be inventive and show that there are plenty of ways to continue to let these mutants evolve on screen.