The wait is finally over. X-Men '97 Season 2 is streaming on Disney+ right now, and Marvel Animation isn't taking time to ease us back in. The season opened with a three-episode drop: "Days Of Past Future," "A Force To Be Reckoned With," and "Rise Of Apocalypse - Part I."
The episodes went live at midnight Pacific, and per What's On Disney Plus, the remaining six arrive weekly on Wednesdays. There are nine total episodes this season, with each running around 30 minutes.
- Episodes 1-3 - streaming now
- Episode 4 - July 8th
- Episode 5 - July 15th
- Episode 6 - July 22nd
- Episode 7 - July 29th
- Episode 8 - August 5th
- Episode 9 (finale, "Survival Of The Fittest") - August 12th
Where Season 1 Left The Team
If it's been a while since the Season 1 finale, here's the spoiler-light refresher. The world believes the X-Men died when Asteroid M fell. They didn't. They were scattered across time.
Xavier, Magneto, Rogue, Beast, and Nightcrawler landed in ancient Egypt around 3000 BC, where they crossed paths with a young En Sabah Nur - the boy who grows up to become Apocalypse. Cyclops and Jean were thrown into a dark far future, and Bishop and Forge are stuck in the '90s trying to pull everybody home.
That's the setup Season 2 runs with. The premiere, "Days Of Past Future" (a fun inversion of the classic storyline title), follows the divided team fighting their way back while anti-mutant sentiment grows in a world that thinks its heroes are gone.
New Faces And A Familiar Threat
Back in the '90s, Cable is putting together X-Force, recruiting Jubilee and Sunspot alongside Psylocke and Archangel, while Havok fronts the government-sanctioned X-Factor. Both teams debut in the '97 continuity this week.
The rogues' gallery got deeper too. This season introduces Sabretooth, Lady Deathstrike, Colossus, Exodus, Quentin Quire, and more, with Zehra Fazal taking over as Emma Frost. And Apocalypse isn't riding alone: his Final Horsemen are the Uncanny X-Force versions from the comics - Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death, first assembled by Rick Remender and Jerome Opena back in 2010.
One more villain note for the Marvel-history crowd: the three-part premiere features Rama-Tut, the ancient-Egypt Kang the Conqueror variant, voiced by Star Trek's John de Lancie. There's a LOT of MCU baggage attached to that reveal, and ComicBookMovie.com has the full breakdown of the character's history and what the casting could mean.
The Reviews Are Already In
Season 2 launched with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes from the first wave of critics, who screened the opening four episodes ahead of release. That edges out Season 1's 99% and makes this Marvel's highest-rated animated series. Several reviews singled out this take on Apocalypse as one of the best versions of the villain the franchise has produced.
And there's more good news too! Season 3 is already in production, and Marvel Animation head Brad Winderbaum has said the plan is to have a new season every year going forward. Executive producer Larry Houston put it plainly: the two-year gap between Seasons 1 and 2 "won't happen again."
It's easy to forget what a gamble this show was. Reviving the 1992 animated series three decades later could've been a cheap nostalgia play. Instead, X-Men '97 became the best-reviewed project Marvel has made, and the yearly-release commitment means it's now a pillar of the slate, not a one-off experiment.
So, animation fans: which of the time-lost teams are you most invested in - the Egypt crew face-to-face with a young Apocalypse, or Cyclops and Jean stranded in the far future? Let me know what you think in the comments!
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