X-Men ’97’s New Characters and Mutants, Explained

Spoiler Warning for X-Men ’97X-Men ’97 Season 1 had an epic finale, one that saw the X-Men defeat the Sentinel-human hybrid Bastion. The episode ended on a major cliffhanger as the team was presumed dead by the rest of the world but was, in fact, lost across time. Fans saw the team split into two distinct timelines, one in 3,000 B.C. and another in 3960 A.D. These two different timelines introduced two very important characters to the X-Men history as the two timeline storylines will likely be locked in.

There is also the present-day storyline; with the X-Men now gone, a new team will need to rise up in their place, and X-Men ’97 certainly teased many different mutants that could make up the new team. Here is who those two big reveals were in the X-Men ’97 Season 1 finale, the mutants who could make up the X-Men in Season 2, and what this tells us as we wait for Season 2 of one of the best superhero shows on television.

X-Men ’97

4.5/5

Release Date

March 20, 2024

Cast

Jennifer Hale , Chris Potter , Ray Chase , George Buza , Catherine Disher , JP Karliak

Seasons

1

Studio

Marvel Studios

En Sabah Nur, aka Apocalypse, Looks to Be the Primary Villain of Season 2

The big character reveal and the setup for X-Men ’97 big bad for Season 2 is none other than Apocalypse. A villain in X-Men: The Animated Series and one of the biggest villains in the franchise, X-Men ’97 looks to delve into the character like never before. Created by writer Louise Simonson and artist Jackson Guice, the character was introduced as a cameo in X-Factor #5 before getting a full appearance in X-Factor #6 in July 1986. He is one of the first mutants and one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe.

While X-Men: The Animated Series featured Apocalypse as a major villain, X-Men ’97 looks to delve into his past like the animated series never could as Rogue, Nightcrawler, Professor X, Magneto, and Beast find themselves in 3,000 B.C. in Egypt. Apocalypse’s true name was not revealed in the comics until 1993, and his origin from Ancient Egypt was not until 1994, well into the series run. This is why none of the characters recognize his name when it is said to them, as it was not established in the original series. X-Men ’97 can now bring in elements from the Apocalypse backstory that the original series didn’t have access to, recontextualizing the character. Apocalypse’s status as the first mutant and his transformation into one of the greatest X-Men villains seen through the eyes of the team will certainly be an interesting development.

Apocalypse’s impact is felt in the past, present, and future timelines. The mid-credit scene of him finding Gambit’s card, hinting at him reviving the character after his heroic death as one of his loyal Horsemen, will likely play a significant role in Season 2 and draw him into conflict with a new X-Men team while the X-Men in the past and future deal with the villain at different points. Speaking of the future, that brings us to the next big reveal.

Mother Askani Is Rachel Summers, Cable’s Half-Sister

While half of the X-Men are stranded in the past, Cyclops and Jean Grey arrive in the far distant future, 3096, to be exact. They are soon found by a mysterious woman named Mother Askani, leading a clan named the Askani. To Cyclops and Jean’s surprise, they meet a young Nathan Summers, their son Cable, and realize this was the period he was raised in. If reuniting Cyclops, Jean, and Cable together wasn’t enough of a family reunion, the older Mother Asanki is also part of the strange Summers family bloodline. She is the older version of Rachel Summers, Cyclops, and Jean Grey’s child from an alternate timeline and Cable’s half-sister.

Rachel Summers was created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne and originated in The Uncanny X-Men #141 in January 1981, or as most people know, the first part of the comic storyline “Days of Future Past.” Rachel is the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey from the timeline where Sentinels hunt mutants to the brink of extinction and is the one who transports Kitty Pryde’s mind back in time to stop the assignation of Robert Kelly.

While Rachel Summers was not present during the X-Men: The Animated Series adaptation of “Days of Future Past,” she did appear in a non-speaking cameo in the Season 4 finale “Beyond Good and Evil.” She also appeared in another non-speaking cameo in X-Men ’97 during a montage of the future mutants have to look forward to when Basition’s Prime Sentinel program becomes active. Seeing her now in another alternate dystopia shows that while the X-Men saved mutants from Basistion’s horrible future, they opened the door for Apocalypse.

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In the original X-Men comics, Rachel Summers found her way from the “Days of Future Past” reality to the present-day X-Men continuity before traveling far into the future, where she discovers a future ruled by Apocalypse with an iron fist. She finds the Askari tribe and eventually comes into possession of her half-brother Nathan Summers, caring for him as he is supposed to be the one to kill Apocalypse. They attempt to save Nathan from the techno-organic virus by cloning him, but the clone baby is kidnapped by Apocalypse and raised as the villain Stryfe. X-Men ’97 appears to have adapted part of this storyline as Bishop brought baby Nathan Summers into the future and was raised by the Askani tribe.

It looks like X-Men ’97 Season 2 will adapt the 1994 miniseries The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, which saw Rachel Summers bring Cyclops and Jean’s consciousness into the future to raise Nathan, including teaching him how to use his mutant abilities but never revealing their true identity to him as their parents and using surrogate names, creating a causal time loop where Cyclops and Jean Grey did get to raise their son but he never fully knew until years later after first meeting them.

10 years pass for them, and when Rachel dies, they are sent back to their present-day bodies after mere seconds but mentally 10 years older. The major change appears to be that instead of transporting them mentally to the future, they are physically brought forward. Still, it is unclear if Mother Askani/Rachel Summers did it or if it was another time traveler.

An All-New X-Men Team in X-Men ’97

Back in the present, as the X-Men are presumed dead, it shows Forge has a board of mutants, done in the style of the classic “Days of Future Past” cover with mutant profile photos lined up with banners over them, as an indication of making a new X-Men team. All the X-Men on board Asteroid M are labeled as missing/presumed dead, along with the character Angel, last seen on Genosha. Given the tease of Apocalypse turning Gambit into one of his new Horsemen, Angel will likely make an appearance and return, either under the villain’s control again or looking to stop him.

Jubilee, Sunspot, and Cable are all listed as AWOL since they were not on board Asteroid M but are presumably no longer active mutants. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, still mutants and the children of Magneto in this timeline, are listed as “off-world,” suggesting they might be part of this universe Avengers team alongside Captain America and Iron Man, who were also seen in the season finale.

There are also many mutants on the board with no banner, hinting they might make up Forge’s new X-Men team for the upcoming season. These include Colossus and his sister Magik, both of whom appeared in X-Men: The Animated Series and as forms Morph took during X-Men ’97. There was also Iceman, who was established as a founding member of the X-Men. Emma Frost, who survived Genosha, is listed on the board alongside the villain Exodus, who was last seen on Genosha, so it is safe to assume he lived. Dust, a mutant who has the ability to turn her body into sand, originated in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, is also on the board, and she was teased in a newspaper in the first episode of X-Men ’97.

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There is also Havok, the brother of Cyclops, whose family lineage was never revealed in X-Men: The Animated Series and could pay off in this series. With how much emphasis was put on the Summers family with Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Cable in X-Men ’97 and the tease of Rachel Summers, Cyclops and his long-lost brother will likely reunite. This is further supported by the fact that the third Summers brother, Gabriel Summers/Vulcan, was shown in Episode 6 of X-Men ’97 as a member of the Shi’ar Royal Guard. The Summers family is at the center of the X-Men franchise, so it makes sense for X-Men ’97 to delve more into it.

The biggest character, though, might be Kitty Pryde, who most fans know as Shadowcat. Kitty Pryde was one of the most famous X-Men characters to never appear in X-Men: The Animated Series due to her being the original planned star of the failed Pryde of the X-Men pilot. Jubilee took her spot on the series as the young audience surrogate, and a running joke among fans was that Kitty Pryde was never included because she was cursed. Her inclusion here, wearing the blue uniform she donned as a member of Excalibur, and the long-awaited arrival of Kitty Pryde into the world of X-Men: The Animated Series might finally be upon us.

The series could also be building to a New Mutants/X-Force type team. In the comics, when Cable became the new leader of the New Mutants, he reforged the team of younger heroes into a paramilitary group known as X-Force. Given that the only remaining X-Men are Cable and two young characters, Jubilee and Sunspot, combined with Forge and Bishop, X-Force might be the new team forged to battle Apocalypse.

How Does This Impact X-Men ’97 Season 2

Apocalypse, Rachel Summers, and a new team of X-Men, while the main team is stranded across time, shows X-Men ’97 Season 2 will have plenty of stories to tell and could go in several directions. Much like X-Men ’97 adapted many storylines the original animated series never got around to, like 1984’s “Lifedeath” and 1989’s “Inferno” or comics made during the series, or after, like 1992’s “X-Cutioner’s Song,” 1997’s “Operation: Zero Tolerance” or 2001’s “E is for Extinction,” Season 2 looks to do the same.

Cable and Apocalypse, two characters heavily connected in the comics, are the characters whose storylines seem to be teased. As mentioned previously, 1994’s The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix will certainly be part of it, which could mean the character of Stryfe would appear as an antagonist. There is also the 1995 epic crossover “Age of Apocalypse,” which showed a world where Apocalypse had conquered the planet, a complete reversal of the post-apocalyptic future of Sentinels and humans in “Days of Future Past.” It appears now that following Bastion’s defeat, the X-Men might have saved the world from one terrible future, but only for it to be replaced with another.

A new X-Men team might assemble in the present day to fight Apocalypse, with the events having an impact on Cyclops and Jean Grey’s future timeline. Doing an “Age of Apocalypse” season-long storyline following a “Days of Future Past” one was actually the original plan for the short-lived Wolverine and the X-Men, but the series was canceled after one season following Disney buying Marvel. It appears X-Men ’97 will get the chance to do that type of story.

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Meanwhile, the origin of Apocalypse in the past might open up X-Men ’97 to the wider Marvel Universe and the MCU multiverse. Apocalypse origins are closely tied with the Celestials and Kang the Conqueror. Kang, when he was acting as a Pharoh in Egypt, known as Rama-Tut, knew that the young En Sabah Nur would become a powerful mutant and looked to destroy him. En Saban Nur escapes Kang’s forces and discovers ancient Celestial technology to make himself more powerful, adopting the name Apocalypse. Immortus, another variant of Kang the Conqueror and Rama-Tut, previously appeared in X-Men: The Animated Series.

Given that Marvel Studios had big plans for Kang the Conqueror to be their big multiversal villain before firing Jonathan Majors in 2023, there is a good chance that when X-Men ’97 first two seasons were being developed, they wanted to explore Apocalypse’s relationship with the ultimate villain, of the Multiverse Saga. While it is unlikely that X-Men ’97 and the main MCU timeline will interact, there have been plenty of MCU-inspired influences on the series already, from Beast mentioning “absolutely points in time” established in What If…? to the magic now resembling those seen in the Doctor Strange films, a time traveler like Immortus or Kang might have worked into X-Men ’97 to build up the character before his planned role in the now scrapped Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.

Was Kang responsible for bringing the X-Men across time to deal with Apocalypse? Was it Rachel Summers in the future? Who will the new X-Men be in the present timeline to defend the world? We will need to wait until X-Men ’97 Season 2 premieres. For now, the first season of X-Men ’97 is streaming on Disney+.