With the final half hour of X-Men ’97, “Survival of the Fittest,” streaming today on Disney+, the episode conclusively answers a question fans have been asking since the Season 2 premiere: can this possibly match up to the high bar set by Season 1 of the series? The answer, by the way, is “no.” And as this finale ably illustrated, the problem is in the animated series channeling the worst instincts of ’90s X-Men comics… Endless crossovers, costume changes, deaths and rebirths. It’s all too much, man, and while a back-to-basics approach teased in the end credits scene may be just what the show needs to survive, it’s a disappointing end for a show that previously, thrillingly balanced huge plot swings with epic emotional stakes.
To be 100% clear: I still enjoy this show. I am, and will always be a sucker for the X-Men, so the mere act of seeing, say, Strong Guy (Adrian Hough) and Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith) wailing on each other is a thrill. But seeing things you know does not a TV show make, and this finale exemplifies how “seeing stuff you know” has replaced a lot of character growth and development. It’s not entirely fair to lay out everything that happens in the finale in a row, but the short version is that X-Factor and X-Force team up to invade the X-Corp tower on Genosha to kill Gambit (A.J. LoCascio) who has been taken over by Apocalypse but also freed from Apocalypse and meanwhile Rogue (Lenore Zann), Beast (George Buza) and Nightcrawler (also Hough) go to Apocalypse’s Ship to try and cure Gambit of his Apocalypse infection with Rogue making a deal with Eson (Matthew Waterson) the Celestial to become Super Rogue at the cost of her own life and everybody fights and then Apocalypse comes back and then Rogue turns him into a gem and hands him to Cable and she survives but that’s because Nightcrawler made a deal with Eson to sacrifice his own life in exchange for Rogue. The End.
Whew. It’s all A Lot, and the sort of thing that absolutely would have happened in a ’90s X-Men crossover in the comics, with all teams in the same place, deaths, rebirths, etc. The issue here is that a lot of this doesn’t follow up on the clear story arcs set up in the first half of the season, and instead ends in your classic big fight with basically zero stakes. You know that Rogue is going to have to come in and save the say, so every bit here like Cable blasting his parents Cyclops (Ray Chase) and Jean (Jennifer Hale), or beats like Apocalypse deciding his big plan was to turn the X-Men against Xavier (also Marquand) hold no weight.
There are nods to things set up before, like the Summers family drama set up throughout the season, though those nods don’t add anything really new to the discussion or change the emotional place the characters are in. Similarly, Nightcrawler sacrificing himself for Rogue was, I guess, set up in the episode “Strange Land, Savage Heart,” where he tried to save his evil half-brother. But again, what does this really tell us about Nightcrawler? What does this change about Rogue, other than fans get to see Gambit and Rogue back together, which they like?
Worse still, Apocalypse’s plan is, excuse me, dumb: he wants to become Death and also Gambit so he can really punch Xavier in the nuts? This is the guy who is going to kill billions of people? It’s petty and small, and while there is a connection to be made to how the En Sabah Nur version of Apocalypse earlier in the season was betrayed by Xavier and Magneto (also Waterson), even that younger version had bigger ambitions, and more of an interior life. The show also made a big deal of a connection between Rogue and En Sabah Nur which really didn’t pay off at all except in the most tangential way possible.
Similarly, the death of Magneto is barely a factor in the final battle here, when it was the big, motivating push mid-season, similar to how Gambit’s death in Season 1 energized the show. Instead, from his daughter Polaris (Carolina Ravasa) to Xavier himself, Magneto is a non-factor in this finale. His death is an event that happened, but whereas Season 1 kept hitting the same thematic beats and looping back to emotional events over and over to really drive them home, often these final few episodes of X-Men ’97 (basically everything post Episode 4) seem to be responding to what happened earlier in the episode, not taking a broad, season-long look.
But the bigger issue is that the action — and emotional — scenes don’t hold on beats. Perhaps this is more down to direction than writing, but X-Men ’97 Season 1 played to the pauses, letting us really sit in emotion, or on a more base level thrill to a sick move from one of the team inspired by the pacing of anime versus American, Saturday morning cartoons. Given there are about 32 characters in this finale, those sort of moments are hard to do. But a lot of what could be iconic beats from the cast instead all have the same rhythm, quickly speeding through the action and ending on a video game-esque quip. The level of care given to Season 1, where you could feel the love of the characters oozing out of every frame just doesn’t feel present here.
And that’s what happened with ’90s X-Men crossovers, as well. While the ’80s began the era of crossovers, a lot of those early stories were the teams separate, before they came together for big events like Inferno, which had hell come to New York City and each team played their part in first causing it, then shutting it down. As that continued with events like X-Tinction Agenda and Fatal Attractions, a lot of it was more hooked on non-stop fights, packing too many characters into frame, and are usually best remembered for stunts like hologram covers or ripping out Wolverine’s skeleton than the overall thrust of the plot. As someone who lived through this time and slowly lost interest in X-Men comics due to this non-stop eventizing (obviously the loss of interest didn’t stick), this is not a good aspect of the ’90s to emulate.
Look, there’s a behind-the-scenes aspect of the show that I’m obviously avoiding here because I don’t want to get too deeply into what dismissed showrunner Beau DeMayo did or did not do. I don’t know, and I also am not in the writers room, so have no idea what did or did not change in the series after DeMayo was removed from the series. The people who work there now are the people who work there, and that’s the end of the discussion.
But I do know what I’m seeing on screen is a disappointment, something that feels like a carbon copy of what came before, rather than the goose-bump inducing ride of Season 1; and even most of the first half of this season. It’s the same feeling I got reading the umpteenth annual X-Men crossover from Marvel back in the ’90s, and one that found my attention focusing elsewhere, before I eventually gravitated back towards X-Men again, years later. There are always going to be universal themes found in these characters, and even with the criticism of this finale, it’s still a fun watch. But it doesn’t feel like the necessary one that elevated the drama, elevated the action, and overall filled the show with the love of what makes X-Men great which infused the first season. It’s a hologram cover, not a thrilling plot. Here’s hoping the team can recapture that X-Factor in Season 3.
X-Men ’97 Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
X-Men ’97 Season 2 premieres on Wednesday, July 1 on Disney+ at 3am ET / Midnight PT, with three new episodes on premiere date followed by one episode weekly until the finale.
Here’s the full list of episodes in X-Men ’97 Season 2 with expected premiere dates:
- Wednesday, July 1, 2026: X-Men ’97, Season 2, Episode 1, “Days Of Past Future”
- Wednesday, July 1, 2026: X-Men ’97, Season 2, Episode 2, “A Force To Be Reckoned With”
- Wednesday, July 1, 2026: X-Men ’97, Season 2, Episode 3, “Rise Of Apocalypse – Part I”
- Wednesday, July 8, 2026: X-Men ’97, Season 2, Episode 4, “Rise Of Apocalypse – Part II”
- Wednesday, July 15, 2026: X-Men ’97, Season 2, Episode 5, “Weapon X, Lies, And DVDs”
- Wednesday, July 22, 2026: X-Men ’97, Season 2, Episode 6, “Danger.exe”
- Wednesday, July 29, 2026: X-Men ’97, Season 2, Episode 7, “Strange Land, Savage Heart”
- Wednesday, August 5, 2026: X-Men ’97, Season 2, Episode 8, “The Dead Man’s Hand”
- Wednesday, August 12, 2026: X-Men ’97, Season 2, Episode 9, “Survival Of The Fittest” *Season Finale*
Where To Watch X-Men ’97 Season 2
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