It’s always a relief to see the X-Men saga continuing in some form, but the return of X-Men ’97 is downright exhilarating. The animated reboot covered a lot of ground in its first season, capping things off with an ambitious finale that scattered the team to the winds. That two years have passed between Season 1 and its upcoming return might make fans’ memories all the fuzzier, even if the conflict for Season 2 couldn’t be clearer. The X-Men have been sent to different eras in history — some stuck in the future, others stranded in the ancient past — but there’s one villain who unites their efforts in every timeline: Apocalypse. X-Men ’97 Season 2 is adapting a handful of storylines that feature the world’s original mutant, forcing the X-Men to launch a kind of temporal pincer movement to put an end to his reign.
Apocalypse is one of the X-Men’s fiercest adversaries, if not their most ruthless, so it’ll take more than a time-travel advantage to stop him from achieving world domination. Fortunately, our heroes might already have the key to their success. It comes in the form of a weird, timey-wimey twist — one that audiences tuning in might need a refresher on ahead of the new season.
There was already plenty of weirdness happening in X-Men ’97 Season 1, particularly where the Summers family was concerned. A good chunk of the season focused on the bombshell reveal that the Jean Grey we knew was actually a clone, created by the evil Mister Sinister in an attempt to genetically engineer a mutant weapon with which to defeat his enemies. His plan does kinda work: Jean’s clone, eventually known as Madelyne Prior, gives birth to a son with her quasi-husband Scott (aka Cyclops). Sinister abducts the baby and immediately gets to work fashioning him into a living weapon, injecting him with a techno-organic virus that rapidly turns flesh and bone into metal. (Sidenote: Most of this is adapted from comic book storylines that began in 1986 when Nathan was first introduced, and then in 1990, when Cable became an adult character.)
The X-Men do rescue baby Nathan and defeat Mister Sinister, but they lack the advanced tech required to cure the virus. The time-traveling mutant Bishop takes him to the distant future, where his ailment can be treated. Madelyne, Scott, and Jean have to say goodbye to the child they technically share — but it’s fortunately not forever. At the end of Season 1, Scott and Jean (and a handful of other X-Men) are pulled even farther into the future, where they meet Nathan as a young teen.
It’s worth remembering that Nathan eventually grows up to be the hardened warrior Cable, a fact that Scott and Jean discover before they’re sent on their time-trekking odyssey. Cable is also destined to defeat Apocalypse: he comes of age in the 40th Century, at the height of Apocalypse’s reign, as the “Askani’son,” which is basically the mutant messiah. He’ll have to go back to the past to try and stop Apocalypse from amassing all his power, but he’ll learn the skills required to become Cable in the future. And, paradoxically, Scott and Jean might have a hand in his evolution, after all.
After discovering that Nathan and Cable were one and the same, the Summers were naturally disappointed that they couldn’t see their son grow up. Of course, the X-Men universe has a funny way of making things happen — it turns out that they do get a chance to raise Nathan; their time together just happens to be jumbled up across space and time. In Season 2 of X-Men ’97, Scott and Jean’s detour to the future will likely be spent setting Nathan on the course to become Cable. If the prophecy is real, he’s the key to stopping the X-Men’s most powerful foe... but even if it isn’t, the team still needs all the help they can get to stop Apocalypse.
