The following story contains spoilers for the X-Men '97 Season 1 finale, "Tolerance is Extinction - Part 3"
IF THERE'S ONE thing consistent about the X-Men, it's that those darn mutants never get much of a chance to just relax. After finally defeating Bastion (Theo James) and his army of Prime Sentinels in the X-Men '97 season finale "Tolerance is Extinction - Part 3," they were [deep breath now] shot into various points of the past and future aboard Asteroid M as it exploded, hit by missiles fired by the U.S. government after Magneto re-directed it into outer space, saving humanity. Quite a mouthful! And quite the character development for our pal Magnus.
It leaves us with our heroes presumed dead, but, really, in both the distant past and distant future. Half of the group is in the year 3960 A.D., where they meet Mother Askani and a young version of Nathan Summers (aka our other friend, Cable), while the other half has been thrust back to 3000 B.C., where they meet a young version of En Sabah Nur—better known as the powerful and diabolical villain Apocalypse.
But wait, there's more! Just like the MCU movies and shows before it, X-Men '97 had a bit to tease in the credits of its first season finale. In the present, we see just the outlines of Apocalypse as he walks through Genosha, still in wreckage after the attacks that Bastion ordered earlier in the season. "So much pain, my children, so much death," he says, as we see him pick up one of the playing cards that belonged to Gambit.
We cut to black, and are left waiting for X-Men '97 Season 2. But as we all know, X-Men '97 is pulling from lots and lots of different influences. So there's a bit we can dive into about all of this Apocalypse and Gambit fun.
Who is En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse?
En Sabah Nur is the born name of one of the first mutants, chronologically, in the Marvel Universe timeline—also known as Apocalypse.
Created by writer Louise Simonson and artist Jackson Guice in the 1986 X-Factor comic, Apocalypse has since become one of the most powerful villains in the Marvel universe and a frequent nemesis of the X-Men.
In 1995 and 1996, the "Age of Apocalypse" event ran over all X-Men related books in the Marvel Comics catalogue. This storyline is essentially an alternate universe where Legion/David Haller (the son of Professor X) goes back in time to kill Magneto, but instead, accidentally kills Professor X. As a ripple effect result, Apocalypse winds up conquering earth and controlling everything, changing the entire universe. This run helped boost the villain's popularity extensively.
X-Men: The Animated Series also featured Apocalypse as a villain, and when we last saw him there the mutants banished him to the Astral Plane after defeating him. There, he took the body of the mutant Fabian Cortez. That being said, we know The Animated Series is canon to '97, and we certainly saw Apocalypse's body and not Fabian's. So fair to say he figured out a way to get back into his normal form.
You may also remember that there was a live-action X-Men film in 2016 called X-Men: Apocalypse. That film featured Oscar Isaac as the titular villain, but it failed to capture the passion of critics or fans, earning only a 47% from critics and 65% from fans on Rotten Tomatoes.
In its set-up alone—with half of the disappeared mutants finding a young Apocalypse in 3000 BC and present-day Apocalypse plotting on Earth—X-Men '97 is already making its version of Apocalypse a formidable, frightening, and strong threat.
Is Gambit going to come back to life in X-Men '97 Season 2?
The post-credits scene for X-Men '97 finds Apocalypse picking up one of Gambit's burnt playing cards, strongly implying that he's going to bring the powerful Cajun back to life to join his world-conquering cause.
This has roots in the X-Men comics. Apocalypse has led several versions of the Horsemen of Apocalypse villain team, in which he's joined by four other mutants as the Horsemen of War, Famine, Pestillence, and Death; these are loosely based on the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
In Peter Milligan's run on the X-Men, Gambit willingly took up the mantle as Apocalypse's Horseman of Death, believing that the villain was actually a good thing for Mutant-kind. At that point in the comics, there were no mutants (thanks to Wanda Maximoff's actions at the end of House of M), and so Gambit believed he could bring them back in that role.
Clearly, things will play out just a little differently in X-Men '97, but that's just a hint of the way things could start to go.
