Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Season 1 of X-Men ‘97. If you haven’t caught up yet, check out our review of the finale.
Who would have guessed that X-Men ‘97 would be one of 2024’s biggest surprises? At a time when Marvel Studios is still working out some bugs over on the live-action side, their best project in years has turned out to be a revival of a widely-beloved ‘90s show. Now that the Season 1 finale is out, Marvel fans the world over are excited to speculate on the myriad of directions the show could go in Season 2. We’ve gone into our theories already (hint: Apocalypse fans will be very happy!), but for today, we’re looking not at what the future holds for X-Men ‘97, but more what the show’s success may mean for the future of Marvel Studios Animation.
Formed in 2021, Marvel Studios Animation (shortened to Marvel Animation in its logo) only has a handful of projects under their belt, but X-Men ‘97 proves that this subdivision may be the most exciting team currently working under the Marvel Studios banner. Between the strong critical and audience response to the show’s quality as well as all of the crossover cameos from other Marvel properties in the last few episodes, there’s perhaps never been a better time for Marvel to get back into the business of building a brand new animated universe. How so? Let’s take a look.
The Previous Marvel Animated Universe
Before we get into how X-Men ‘97 might herald a new Marvel animated universe, we’d be remiss not to mention that the original X-Men: The Animated Series was already part of an animated universe, one that it still appears to be in based on some cameos in 97’s finale. We’ll get to that in a sec, but let’s start with how X-Men: TAS was connected to a bunch of other shows, even if those connections weren’t as solid as the modern MCU. X-Men: TAS was most famously attached to Spider-Man: The Animated Series, and that latter series featured a two-part crossover in its second season episodes “The Mutant Agenda” and “Mutants’ Revenge.” There were various other small crossovers over the years that connected the continuity of these shows to other ‘90s animated series, such as Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, and even the (sadly not very good) Iron Man series.
Now, the continuity between all of these shows is spotty at best, and that’s not even getting into Spider-Man: Unlimited, the Silver Surfer show or Avengers: United They Stand because we’d be here all day. But X-Men ‘97 has kept up this tradition with plenty of cameos from other Marvel characters. These include the Spider-Man: TAS versions of Peter Parker and Mary Jane, various heroes like Daredevil, Cloak & Dagger and Alpha Flight seen fending off Bastion’s Prime Sentinels, or villains like Doctor Doom and Baron Zemo showing up as members of Operation Zero Tolerance. What’s great about how the show implements these cameos is that they tend to be for just a few seconds at a time, suggesting a bigger world without bogging down the story at hand to do so. As well, seeing other Marvel heroes reacting to the world-shattering stakes of the X-Men’s battle against Bastion helps sell how important the events are supposed to be.
The Right Amount of Connectivity
Of course, it’s important to keep the universe connections minimal and maintain focus on the primary characters of the story being told. After all, part of what’s made a lot of folks fatigued with the MCU is the sense that there’s so much intricate connectivity that the individual projects are overshadowed by the omnipresent specter of “the universe” at large. But the discipline that the team behind X-Men ’97 have shown in hinting at the wider world while also delivering some of the best soap opera storytelling we’ve seen from a comic book adaptation in quite some time gives reason to be hopeful. We’ll see how future seasons of X-Men ‘97 and any other related shows will pan out, but they’re already on a far better foot than the last attempt at a Marvel animated universe.
That attempt would be the universe shared between Avengers Assemble, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Hulk and the Agents of SMASH, which was not exactly Marvel’s finest hour. Not only did the first two shows replace Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and Spectacular Spider-Man, commonly considered two of the best Marvel cartoons to ever air, but they also ejected a lot of fan-favorite characters and concepts out of a misguided attempt to enforce brand synergy. Aside from minor appearances from the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom being a recurring villain in the first season of Avengers Assemble, X-Men and Fantastic Four characters were almost uniformly jettisoned from these shows. Instead, they promoted characters from concurrent or upcoming MCU projects, which isn’t wrong in and of itself, but the way this was executed left a bad taste in many fans’ mouths.
Characters would arbitrarily change designs or personalities to match whatever was happening in the films, but without any in-universe explanation. Look at how the Guardians of the Galaxy in Avengers Assemble Season 1 were based on their comic versions, while in Season 2 they just become the movie characters without any reason why. Ultron also changed from a design and persona resembling his comic counterpart in Season 2 into a carbon copy of his MCU incarnation in Season 3, again, with no reason given. There was also a heavy push for Inhumans characters with nary a hint at the X-Men, which was a corporate mandate based on the live-action rights situation at the time. The fact that these shows are now considered deservedly banished relics while X-Men ‘97 is receiving a rave response is the final comeuppance for a strategy of connectivity valued above quality.
Third Time’s the Charm?
Neither of the previous Marvel animated universes really hit the sweet spot. The 90s shows were up and down in terms of quality (see the gap between Season 1 and 2 of the Fantastic Four show for an example), and the continuity didn’t always line up even when crossovers happened. The 2010s shows were too bogged down with shoddy storytelling and trying to promote MCU projects. X-Men ‘97 is only concerned with being the best continuation of X-Men: TAS that it can be, and it succeeds at this goal with flying colors. That it also manages to throw in some fun cameos of other beloved Marvel characters is simply a bonus. That’s what crossover continuity should be: seasoning, but never the main course.
Whether Marvel decides to use X-Men ‘97 as a springboard for more revivals of the shows it’s already connected to (sign me up Fantastic Four ‘97!), or as a template for a brand new slate of interconnected cartoons, they would be smart to not let this opportunity pass them by. Perhaps the upcoming Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man show could be its genesis point? Many of Marvel’s stalwart properties have been hungry for quality adaptations in animation for far too long, and the goodwill generated by X-Men ‘97’s first season likely ensures that fans will be willing to at least try out whatever comes next.
At the end of the day, what matters most is strong storytelling, and X-Men ‘97 has that part more than covered. It never shortchanges itself to highlight that it’s part of a bigger world. If we can get animated shows of similar quality for Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and others, and they can co-exist in the same reality without tripping over each other? Then perhaps we could see a renaissance of Marvel animation to match the rush the MCU gave in its heyday.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/x-men-97-proves-its-time-for-a-new-marvel-animated-universe