As we reach the final installment of X-Men ’97’s three-episode premiere, we finally catch up with those last, time-displaced, members of the X-Men. Not that we needed much reminding, but it’s indicative of the sheer scale of this world that it’s taken three whole episodes to squeeze everyone in and we’re still only at the start of the season. Of course, while the previous two episodes delivered such familiar sights as Wolverine popping claws, Jubilee busting moves and Cyclops and Jean making the entire fate of the time stream about them, there’s one classic X-Men trope we’ve yet to see – Professor X and Magneto having one of their devestating fallouts.
Yep, we may have all been swept back to the sands of 3000 BC and dumped in the company of a pre-despot Apocalypse who’s going through his dashing, Omar Sharif phase, but it seems nothing can stop Chuck and Erik when they get into one of their world-changing spats.
After our time spent with the X-Men hurled into the far flung future and the ones still left to pick up the pieces in the 90s, we finally check in with Professor X, Magneto, Rogue, Beast and Nightcrawler to see how they’ve been faring in the Egypt of 3000 BC. We find that hey’ve had quite a different experience to the others as they first found themselves meeting En Sabah Nur long before he became the murderous tyrant known as Apocalypse. Back during this period of his long existence, the first mutant has cast off the shackles of slavery under the cruel rule of time traveling Pharaoh, Rama-Tut and over the past few months, the wary X-Men has tried to guide him down a more peaceful path. Only some are less wary than others, and while the X-Men contingent think is wise not to get too close to this embryonic phase of one of their most hated enemies, Magneto can’t help fully assigning himself as Nur’s mentor and confidant. While Beast tinkers and toils with Rama-Tut’s future tech left over from Nur’s victorious battles in order to make a workable time machine, the master of magnetism tries to mold one of the most dangerous beings to ever exist into a more compassionate type to ensure a better future for all. However, out of the two of them, it’s obviously Charles who watched Back To The Future the closest as he has grave misgivings about making such huge changes to the past in order to influence the future.
However, rankling at Magneto’s influence is Nur’s second in command, Baal, and with Rama-Tut’s defeat going way too slowly for his troops, he hopes to show his leader that his new friends from the future may not be entirely telling him the truth. Once Nur discovers his allies have been repurposing Rama-Tut’s machines behind his back, he reacts in a way highly recognisable to the being he’s destined to become. In trying to prevent the Apocalypse we know, has Magneto merely cemented his creation?
There’s always been something fascinating about the storytelling that X-Men ’97 employs and I’m not entirely certain how they manage to pull it off time and time again. With only thirty minutes to play with and a 90s animated vibe to maintain that demands every character has to constantly seem like a coiled spring even when they’re relaxing, the show somehow still managed to deliver perfectly dropped character beats despite constantly moving at the speed of an incontinent Quicksilver looking for a working toilet at a music festival. It’s frankly amazing to watch, especially as we get to see it in an episode which contains the three heaviest hitters in the X-Men cannon. For a start, we’re back on the Professor X/Magneto merry-go-round once again as these two guys still can’t quite get on the same page, even when trying to save all of history while on the same side. Charles – ever the more careful of the two – fully understands that dicking around with history is ludicrously risky, especially if it comes in the form of a being who chalks up genocide as one of his hobbies; but as Erik has always been the more enthusiastic of the two, he sees En Sabah Nur as clay to mold that could kick-start healthy mutant/human relations over 3000 years earlier. Utterly unconcerned with altering the entirety of recorded history in order to pave the way for homo superior relations, a gung-ho Magneto hopes to eventually travel back to a 90s that is already a utopia for his kind without any thought about whether or not he’d actually still exist.
It’s one of those fascinating, quick-fire character drops that show that even when they’re on the same side, the differences between Charles and Erik’s motives become glaringly obvious. Magneto will always be an all-or-nothing, risk everything kind of guy, even when he’s not trying to make earth’s leaders eat their own furniture, while Charles’ softly-softly approach is arguably way too careful to score instant results. This does mean that Beast, Nightcrawler and Rogue only get to add the occasion aside throughout the episode, but it’s a sacrifice that’s perfectly acceptable when the show is giving us its version of a gargantuan biblical epic, complete with robot guards and time traveling Pharaohs. No doubt some speculation will be made about the use of Kang variant, Rama-Tut – especially after getting purged from the live-action MCU after such a large build-up – but he’s actually the perfect foil for the story thanks to his devotion to conquering and reliance on future technology. It’s the grooming of En Sabah Nur that takes precedence here and while many stories these days are littered with revised origin stories that cast famous villains in an earlier, heroic light, watching a young Apocalypse back in his luxurious-maned Fabian era, fight to free the slaves like Dwayne Johnson playing Moses as the Scorpion King, is admittedly kinda cool.
Of course, it doesn’t take long for everything to go tits up and En Sabah Nur to figure out that his new “friends” have a completely separate agenda to what they’ve been telling him and thus feel violently betrayed. However, after Bishop finally pops up in disguise (a la Lando Calrissian in Return Of The Jedi?) after traveling back from the 90s to rescue them, they manage to escape only after the damage has already been done. You see, it’s time for one of X-Men ’97’s explosive cliffhangers as Rama-Tut has built a machine of huge destructive power (a la Emperor Palpatine in Return Of The Jedi?) and promptly fires it at his clutch of enemies in an attempt to wipe them all out. You have to admire the brazen nature of Marvel by giving us three whole episodes to start the season with and still ending them on a cliffhanger, but that’s life when you’re trying to emulate the momentum of a 90s cartoon.
The triple-threat premiere comes to a close with style after a trio of episodes that’s audaciously covered over 6000 years, delivered dystopian futures, 90s beats and yet another potentially world-ending spat in the friendship of Professor X and Magneto. However, what’s even more impressive is that once we wrap up this absurdly epic storyline next week, we’ll still have five whole episodes to go in the season, so who knows what else is going to happen? Something pretty awesome I’m guessing… but until then the X-Men team is using their Egyptian villian to run a truly impressive pyramid scheme.
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