X-Men ’97 ended its first season by blowing the whole board apart. The team was split across different eras, Asteroid M was gone, Apocalypse (Ross Marquand) was looming, and Marvel left fans with the kind of finale that practically demanded a quick follow-up. That’s a big reason these new images matter. Even without a full trailer or exact release date yet, Marvel has finally given fans a real first look at what comes next.
Newly surfaced officially licensed promo art for X-Men ’97 Season 2 via an Amazon listing has revealed the clearest look yet at the next chapter of Marvel Animation’s hit revival. The posters, which appeared through a licensed retail listing, bring back the core team from Season 1 while also confirming the presence of one major new player: Polaris. That’s the detail fans are zeroing in on, and for good reason. As Magneto’s (Matthew Waterson) daughter and one of Marvel’s most popular mutant characters, her arrival could have a huge impact on where the series goes next. The artwork also keeps the spotlight on the main names viewers would expect, including Cyclops (Ray Chase), Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale), Wolverine (Cal Dodd), Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith), and more.
Season 1 ended with part of the team stranded in Ancient Egypt in 3000 B.C., where they encountered a young En Sabah Nur (AKA Apocalypse), while others were sent to a dystopian future in 3960 A.D. Marvel hasn’t released a full plot synopsis for Season 2 yet, but the finale made it pretty obvious that time displacement, Apocalypse, and the fallout from Asteroid M are going to drive the next batch of episodes.
How Good Is ‘X-Men ’97’?
Ross Bonaime‘s review for Collider stated that X-Men ’97 does exactly what a revival should do. It keeps everything that made X-Men: The Animated Series so special, but improves it in ways the original show could not. The result is a continuation that feels respectful, exciting, and surprisingly emotional.
“Since 2000, there have been thirteen X-Men movies, be it prequels, individual character spin-offs, or entire reboots, and none of them have quite been able to capture this team quite like The Animated Series. But X-Men ’97 takes what worked so well in that first series and develops it into one of the greatest X-Men projects so far, quite possibly the best animated series to come from Marvel. It took nearly three decades to return to this world, but X-Men ’97 makes the wait well worth it.”
X-Men ’97 Season 1 is streaming now on Disney+.
via Collider