X-Men 97
X-Men 97 has ended as it began, an incredible piece of Marvel content in an age where the MCU has tired many of us out. Start to finish, I stand by my earlier statements this is one of the best pieces of Marvel media ever, and easily the most compelling watch since Avengers Endgame, at the very least. And the finale today only reinforces that. Spoilers follow.
This was the end of the three-part X-Men 97 finale, though most of the season has felt like a continuous whole. In it, the X-Men must come together to stop Bastion from taking over the earth, but in doing so, also reverse Magneto’s total blackout of the entire planet, which was not exactly a viable long-term solution.
Surprisingly, we escape the finale with no confirmed deaths. While last week ended with Logan getting the adamantium ripped out of him by Magento, reflecting a famous comic scene, he’s…Wolverine, he’ll be fine, even though he was out of commission for this episode as a result.
It’s implied Bastion may have died from the human attack on Asteroid M after the X-Men attempted to forgive and recruit him, but as ever, without a body, we just don’t know. Sinister gets his stolen mutant DNA ripped out of him by a Phoenix-channeling Jean Grey but he lives, he’s just ugly now.
X-Men 97
The show could not resist doing another huge round of cameos, some we’ve seen, some we haven’t. I almost lost track, but as the world fell apart we had Captain America, Iron Man, Psylocke and her whole squad, Polaris, Daredevil, Cloak and Dagger, Silver Samurai, Omega Red, Black Panther, Peter and Mary Jane and plenty more show up. But in the end it was the X-Men that need to get the job done, preventing the idiot humans from causing their own extinction by shooting Asteroid M out of the sky. Ultimately it was a revived Magneto who tipped the scales, but moments later, the asteroid is teleported away, thrown through time and splitting off Jean and Scott from the rest of them.
Scott and Jean are a thousand years in the future, a ruined wasteland where they discover Nathan, their son, still as a child. They are 6,000 years away from most of the other X-Men, who instead have been hurled backward to ancient Egypt where they meet a young Apocalypse which uh, clearly that’s not going to end well.
I would say “X-Men 97 needs a season 2!!” here normally, but it’s already coming. Disney announced one ahead of the finale so there’s no need to fret about ratings like this is airing on Netflix or something.
The biggest open question is whether or not X-Men 97 can repeat its magic here. It’s hard enough to do that in second seasons to begin with, but the additional wrinkle here is the firing of Beau DeMayo ahead of the airing of this season, where he was the creator and he wrote most of the episodes, including many of the best ones. We still do not know why he was fired, but given the circumstances, where this happened literally weeks before the show aired, it sounds serious and like he’s not likely to be hired back.
In any case, season 1 of X-Men 97 stands as an amazing piece of superhero media. Even if it doesn’t reach these heights again, it was a phenomenal watch, and easily my favorite show this year so far.
Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
