With nine episodes and a televisual history that spans nearly thirty years, X-Men ’97 finally comes to its slam bang, thank you Stan (Lee, that is) climax that strives to complete the near impossible task the series has set itself. With the kind of stakes and emotion swirling around that Marvel Studios usually reserve for an Avengers movie, a mere thirtysome minute TV program has to bring to a close dozens of plot threads, de-esculate not one, but two world ending threats and pay off one of X-Men comics most infamous cliffhangers – and it has to do it with the reckless, infectious 90s energy that it managed to recreate.
Well, guess what, for the most part the final installment of Tolerance Is Extinction manages to succeed with its usual mix of perfectly balanced character beats, insane action, a shameless amount of cameos and ridiculously high stakes. It’s time to wrap things up in the only way the X-Men can – with heightend mutant levels of melodrama.
Things haven’t seemed this bleak for the X-Men since the last time the world was imperiled – but even during those moments, the beleaguered team of mutants hadn’t had to deal with one of their toughest members having the adamantium ripped off their very bones and put in critical condition. That’s right, thanks to the metal manipulating Magneto, Wolverine may have been put out of action for good and the threat that the villain poses to all life on earth is still very much in effect. However, getting shish kebabed on the end of Wolvie’s claws has left Maggie understandably weakened and so Charles dives right into his brain to commandeer his powers and end the danger.
Well, make that some of the danger. You see, with Magneto’s EMP now disabled, that means that the threat Bastion was posing is now back up and running and the team sent to fight him seem horribly overwhelmed. However, in a last minutes save worthy of Doctor Strange’s portals, a seemingly defeated Jean manages to fight back thanks to the lingering vestiges of a certain bird-shaped cosmic force that allows her to turn back the tide and place the nullifying tech on Bastion which ends the threat of the Prime Sentinels.
Meanwhile, Xavier and Magneto are locked within the astral plane as the Professor seeks to try a rebuilt his former friend’s fractured mind while using the early years of their friendship as a setting, but if the Prof is unsuccessful, there’s a huge chance that both will be lost in the rising tide of oblivion. Of course, for most superheroes, all this world-ending fuckery is the main course, but to the X-Men, it’s still only the entrée and after Bastion escapes from the clutches of Jean Grey, he decides to level up and head over to Asteroid M to crash it into the Earth and end all mankind that way instead. Pays to have a backup, I guess.
To be fair, over its previous nine epidodes, X-Men ’97 had already done enough to rank it as one of the best X-Men projects ever made as it took the beloved 90s cartoon and gave it a modern booster shot which took it into the fucking stratosphere. However, while the final installment of Tolerance Is Extinction finishes things with a stylish flourish, it can’t quite sustain all the plot threads and surprises with the elegance it’s shown in previous episodes. For a start (and I’m fairly sure I’m in the minority in this), I found the use of the random appearance of the Phoenix Force to clean up the initial threat of Bastion and Sinister to be a little overly convenient and felt more like the writers trying to get themselves out of a cul-de-sac with fan service, but hey, we’ve only got around thirty minutes to play with, so I can kind of understand it. Elsewhere, the usage of the Return Of The Jedi style climax that sees numerous action set pieces all Russian Doll-ing inside one another simultaneously is mostly done extremely well, but the addition of a missile strike by the governments of the world to eliminate Asteroid M, coupled with Bastion upgrading into final boss mode is just one extra wrinkle too many and it leads to the episode becoming more exhausting than exhilarating. But still, if all superhero shows ended half this strong, then the genre would be in rare shape.
If I’m going to be X-tra picky (yep, sorry about the pun – won’t happen again), the sidelining of numerous characters throughout the series has been disappointing, but necessary. Both Beast and Morph have been walking, talking dispensers of both exposition and fan service respectively, but not much else. Bishop got ejected from proceedings super early in the season and thanks to his show shopping fate at the end of last episode, Wolverine is down for the count and won’t be getting up for the rest of the season.
Actually, while I’m mostly mentioning this as a flaw, I have to admit, I’m fairly proud of the makers of X-Men ’97 for not doing what most of other X-Men platforms do at the slightest notice and push the Wolverine button and instead have made the focal point of the show the relationship between Cyclops and Jean Grey which is refreshing as Hell.
Anyway, back to the carnage and as not to be outdone by doomsday plots, world devastation and a generous clutch of cameos that even includes Peter Parker and MJ from the 90s Amazing Spider-Man cartoon (so… MJ survived?), the episode takes Bastion and gives him an Anime-style upgrade that sees his final form evolve into a winged dreadnought that seems worryingly resistant to damage. We’ve seen vicious brawls in the past on this show, but it’s good to see that it can still bring the goods when it comes to delivering a bruising final battle in a season full of them. In fact, the modern influence on the classic style of animation goes way beyond what the show was able to show back in the day and the ravaged look of a beaten Bastion, who sports a damaged Terminator visage complete with a bulging eyeball and exposed teeth to really sell the pain.
It ends, as many 90s shows often did, with an absolutely brazen, blatent cliff hanger for another season that sees the survivors hurled through time after saving the earth and seemingly placed in the vicinity of none other than En Sabah Nur, who usually operates under his professional name of Apocalypse. The good news is that X-Men ’97 has already been renewed for a third season, let alone just one more so this means that Marvel Studios’ first official X-Men product is not just a rousing success, but it’s one of the best outings of Marvel’s mobbed mutants that’s ever been made. In fact, while some might think that the show might have been a proving ground for Marvel in order to get them up to speed on this corner of the universe, it’s actually now ended up more like the studio have laid down their own gauntlet for whomever brings this vast world to the MCU proper.
Regardless, roll on X-Men ’98.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 