X-Men 97 Season 2 Review
X-Men 97 is an American animated television series created for Disney+ based on the Marvel Comics superhero team the X-Men. Season One premiered on 20 March 2024 followed by a second season, which was released on 1 July 2026.
This revival of X-Men: The Animated Series (1992–1997) continues the story of the X-Men from where the previous season ended, with the destruction of Genosha and the disappearance of asteroid M and now a scattered team must confront challenges in the past, present, and future…
The Good
It’s the X-men… for one thing, the nostalgia, this show takes me back to the 90s… Those familiar with the comic versions of the X-men will also get interesting nods to some of the darker story arcs and alternate storylines of characters that never quite made the mainstream….
Apparently, the writers looked at Season 1 and thought, You know what this needs?… More Apocalypse. Surprisingly, that works, you get to experience Apocalypse across 3 timelines, thousands of years apart, from the past in 3,000 B.C, to the present and the future in 3960 A.D and the mythology is surprisingly coherent, although convoluted.
The show understands nuance and that not every moment should be a fight; sometimes characters need to stew with the consequences of their actions, giving it a superhero series with family drama, along with the betrayal and challenges found within those.
The animation style remains wonderfully retro, polishedz and the fight sequences are striking and the visually popping, but not trying to be another Pixar-esque.
The Bad
While part of the show’s strength is in how it juggles a whole lot of Marvel lore, it can feel comically bloated at times and tracking characters across three timelines can get exhausting and confusing.
Although season two is ambitiously bigger, it’s not as emotionally dense as the first one, and you just watch things happen like oh… we really killing off this character now, and it barely registers.
There are things only those familiar with the comic lore would fully understand, the rest would miss out on the significance of certain characters and their relationships and the show doesn’t explain itself.
The Ugly
The show knows where the emotional buttons are and they press them for all their worth, favourite characters get sacrificed and others fight across opposing sides of the battlefield, as alliances get betrayed.
The core theme of X-Men has been as an allegory for oppression and discrimination and Season 2 re-emphasises this prejudice, hatred, and the relentless cycle of violence that follows mutants into every era.
Final Thoughts
Season 2 of X-Men 97 is an ambitious attempt to outdo season one, and while it achieves this in certain aspects, it sometimes falters under the weight of its ambition, chasing its own hype instead of setting it.
Are you a fan of the X-Men? Is this revival something you would watch?
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