X-Men ’97 Needs to Make One Major Change for Season 3 and Beyond, After Season 2 Got It So Wrong

X-Men ’97 Season 2 may be over now, but the discussion about it is certainly not. Marvel fans have been active on social media threads, and after the Season 2 Finale, there’s even more buzz about Season 2 as a whole and what’s to come in X-Men ’97 Season 3. After all, Season 2 of the show set up a much larger arc for the X-Men and their mission; beyond the daily fight for mutant survival (let alone rights), the team found out that one of their greatest foes, Apocalypse, is a threat that actually stretches from the ancient past, all the way into a dystopian future. The fight to stop Apocalypse cost the X-Men a great deal, but left the fans thrilled with the arc that they got.

However, not all the buzz has been positive: X-Men ’97 Season 2 had its fair share of criticism, and some tweaks can certainly be made to the series before Season 3 arrives. We’re interested in making sure that one particular creative error from X-Men ’97 Season 2 doesn’t continue into Season 3.

X-Men ’97 Season 3 Needs to Maintain A Serialized Storyline

The biggest mistake that X-Men ’97 Season 2 made was deviating from the initial course set by its three-episode premiere arc. “Days of Past Future”, “A Force to Be Reckoned With”, and “Rise of Apocalypse” told a story set in Ancient Egypt, the distant future, and the 1990s, showing how different squads of X-Men (and Cable’s newly formed X-Force team) are all trying to fight Apocalypse at different points in his evolution.

They were three separate storylines that ran parallel to one another, without needing to intersect. The first three episodes of Season 2 also covered many key points of X-Men lore from the 1990s-2000s, offering a variety of characters and events while making it all feel like one serialized story with a central thematic throughline. After the first three episodes, Season 2 deviated into some standalone eps (“Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs”, “Danger.exe”, “Strange Land, Savage Heart”) that each expanded upon character and/or seasonal subplots, but sacrificed the momentum and impact of the first three episodes.

The final two episodes of X-Men ’97 Season 2 (“The Dead Man’s Hand” and “Survival of the Fittest”) brought things back to the fight against Apocalypse (in Gambit’s body). But no matter how much fans seemed to enjoy the final showdown, there were a lot of murmurs that they felt rushed, after so much midseason drag. And there’s only one reason why the pace of Season 2 felt so off: because X-Men ’97 is still trying to imitate the show that inspired it.

X-Men ’97 Doesn’t Need To Be X-Men: The Animated Series Anymore

X-Men ’97 began as a direct continuation of X-Men: The Animated Series, which ran from 1993-1997. That original ’90s series got as much love for its kitsch as it did for being a faithful adaptation of X-Men comics. Looking at it now, X-Men: TAS is even more kitschy as a time capsule of ’90s superhero culture. It was also a show notorious for its adherence to mostly standalone episodes, many of them feeling like detours from larger seasonal events.

After the first season’s impact, and the seriousness and more adult tone, it should be clear to all that X-Men ’97 has stepped out of the shadow of X-Men: The Animated Series and, like its protagonists, has evolved into something greater. As such, the series shouldn’t be constrained by the original series: keep episodes focused on the main seasonal story, and make any side-quests or character-focused episodes feed directly into the main arc.

X-Men ’97 needs to embrace being its own, serialized show. X-Men: TAS avaraged around 20 episodes in its first four seasons; X-Men ’97 has given us 10 and 9 episodes per season (respectively). One of those two series has a lot more room for playtime and filler; the other does not. Plan and pace Season 3 accordingly.

X-Men ’97 is streaming on Disney+.