Since Avengers: Endgame ended, Marvel Studios has rapidly expanded the MCU on Disney+. Some (WandaVision and Ms. Marvel, for example) have had a bigger impact on the movies than others, with the animated What If...? feeling largely standalone.
That's a surprise when it expands the Multiverse during a Saga named after it, but the time it takes to produce an animated series means crossovers would always be tricky. Still, a Captain Carter Variant did appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and What If...?'s season 2 finale briefly featured the new-look Multiverse introduced in Loki.
Now, though, X-Men '97 director Emi Yonemura has revealed Marvel Studios considered making X-Men '97 canon to the MCU.
"That has always been something we know was on Kevin Feige’s mind, do we make this part of the MCU? Do we not make this part of the MCU?" she tells Inverse. "It’s actually gone back and forth quite a few times, and I think we did land in a smart place because [X-Men: The Animated Series] was its own thing, and I think that to continue it we needed to be our own thing."
Fellow director Jake Castorena adds "We’re getting the X-Men in this format and we’re doing it justice not just by ourselves, but also other fans as well, and we’re starting to get a resurgence of the X-Men in film again. I love that. And I think it’s great that we can have different things, let them be different."
Is it possible Marvel Studios considered revealing that the X-Men existed on Earth-616 in the 90s, though we're not sure what that would mean for the present day (we'd have also needed an explanation for why they vanished). There's also been speculation among fans that X-Men '97 could be set in the same world as the one shown in The Marvels, and that may be what Yonemura was referring to.
Either way, while we've seen Captain America's shield in X-Men '97's trailers, Castorena is quick to remind fans that the X-Men: The Animated Series revival is still very much its own thing.
"If you try to connect things like that, it may or may not, I dare not say hinder storytelling, but let them do their stories," he explains. "Let us do our stories and let the rest of the world eat it up, man."
X-Men '97 revisits the iconic era of the 1990s as The X-Men, a band of mutants who use their uncanny gifts to protect a world that hates and fears them, are challenged like never before, forced to face a dangerous and unexpected new future.
The first six episodes of X-Men '97 are now streaming on Disney+ with new instalments following weekly.