X-Men ’97 – Season 2: Apocalypse Now! (And Then!)
By John Kirk
Rating: A-
Saturday morning cartoons were almost always great. Why? Because they told simple and effective stories within a limited time and set the audience up for a continuation the very next week. It was comics come to life, the ultimate comfort food.
Maybe it’s just a Generation X thing (Heh … see what I did there?), but Season Two of X-Men ’97 makes it worth the wait.
Back in the ‘90’s the X-Men comic storylines started to get a little obscure. The comic titles X-Factor and X-Force were spun off and there was a proliferation of Mutant storylines, trying to exploit the success of the X-Men main comic in the 80s.
It was TV that brought a degree of clarity to the X-Men with its Saturday morning cartoon style storytelling. Simple, straightforward and damn fulfilling.
Season One of the renewed series that premiered in 2024 seamlessly took off from that 1997 departure point and continued the story without interruption. It was a major salute to the work of those animators and cast. You can read our interview with Lenore Zann upon Season One’s release and see what she thought about that.
Season Two continues in the same vein.
The story: the first episode recalls that the X-Men scattered into two different time periods. The first, the 40th century, had En Sabah Nur, a.k.a. Apocalypse (Ross Marquand), with Cyclops and Jean Grey (Ray Chase and Jennifer Hale) discovering their son, Nathan. The latter was destined to be the warrior who put down Apocalypse’s reign of terror in the 40th century. (The second time period, btw, was ancient Egypt, circa 3000 BCE).
Apocalypse is the common factor in this season. As he is an immortal, time means nothing to him. To bring him down in any time period allows for variety in the cast performances as well as different perspectives on the story. It’s very comic-style in its storytelling, the better to appeal to that audience.
Of course, with any television or film adaptation, there are bound to be liberties taken with the characters and storylines. For instance, the Apocalypse storylines were never this contained. Also, the characters of Sunspot and the White Queen didn’t manifest their secondary mutations until later than this time frame.
But the story is well-contained and solid. It’s comprehensible to new fans and referential for diehards.
Even in the ‘90s, this cartoon had a variety of story inconsistencies that bugged hardline comic readers. However, now it has gained the heady status of nostalgia that makes it almost legendary to the older audiences who can now afford the subscription rates of Disney+. It’s aimed at them and despite the story variations, it remains a pleasant memory that allows those same fan-critics to forgo nitpicking and just enjoy the show.
It’s a truncated view of Apocalypse. X-Men ’97 – Season Two manages to squeeze about 13 years of development and backstory for this character into the series, but it is actually well-structured and concise.
This villain was a powerful adversary in the comics and he had a lot of mystery that kept readers reading. A creation of Louise Simonson and Jackson Guice, it’s legendary artist Walt Simonson’s depiction that always comes to mind for me. But Apocalypse wasn’t the most powerful adversary the X-Men ever faced, despite this show’s claim. Still, he is probably one of the most memorable and this will stand out in the nostalgic minds of fans.
I’m also proud to say that there is a lot of Canadian talent on this show. Cal Dodd, Lenore Zann, Alison Sealy-Smith, George Buza, Adrian Hough, Jennifer Hale, and Chris Potter all swell the ranks of voice actors from the True North, Strong and Free.
In the end, it’s winner of a show that can be proudly added to the roster of Marvel Animation. Not only does it bring a great deal of nostalgic Saturday morning fun but it also gives a greater understanding of the X-Men comic storylines of that time… with a few variations.
X-Men ’97 – Season Two. Directed by Emmett Yonemura. Voice cast: Ross Marquand, Matthew Waterson, Ray Chase, Jennifer Hale, Alison Sealy-Smith, Cal Dodd, Lenore Zann, George Buza, Gates McFadden. X-Men ’97 is streaming on Disney Plus.