Spoilers follow for X-Men ’97 season one, including the finale, “Tolerance Is Extinction, Part 3.” Over its first ten episodes, X-Men ’97 validated our nostalgia , broke our hearts by killing off beloved bayou boy Gambit, and gave us many opportunities to nod sagely and say “Well, Magneto’s right.” This is a series about mutants and mutant issues, about the ideological divide between Charles Xavier’s optimistic insistence on love and acceptance and Holocaust survivor Magneto’s understandable need for vengeance, and X-Men ’97 honors its predecessor series and the comics that inspired them by engaging with that conflict from various angles.
One of the best ways it does this — the one that made me laugh with the chaotic glee of tyrannical video-game mogul Mojo and the devilish mirth of owl-shaped demon the Adversary — is by telling the Avengers they ain’t shit. Marvel Studios’ acquiring rights to the X-Men when Disney bought 20th Century Fox, along with the ongoing deal between Marvel and Sony to share Spider-Man, has functionally made fan service easier — it allowed Spider-Man: No Way Home to feature cameos from the previous actors who had played Peter Parker outside of the MCU, and Ms. Marvel to end with the retcon reveal that Kamala Khan is a mutant, a characterization only lightly explored in The Marvels .
The goal here was that all the characters who mingle in Marvel Comics and whom fans love seeing together on the page could unite onscreen in .