PSA: X-Men ’97 Season 2 is finally here!!!
When X-Men ’97 Season 1 came out, it really had a huge impact on me – not just because of the nostalgia, the pristine animation, or the breakneck pacing. It was the emotional weight that came with it. My daughter actually bawled for days and continues to bawl whenever we watch that Gambit scene.
Having had the privilege to watch the first few episodes of X-Men ’97 Season 2 via early Disney+ press screeners (the first three of which are now officially streaming, by the way – get on it!), I am thrilled to report that the series shows absolutely no signs of a sophomore slump. If anything, it doubles down on what makes the X-Men resonate across generations: the complex, messy, and fiercely beautiful concept of family.
Photo from Disney+
X-Men ’97 Season 2 starts where we left off in Season 1, with the X-Men thrown into completely different historical and futuristic eras, but it isn’t confusing in any way. Rather than frantically cutting between timelines within a single half-hour, the creators brilliantly dedicate specific episodes to single eras. Narratively, this structural choice could easily make the team feel fragmented, but instead, the physical distance between the members only highlights how tightly bound they are by their shared history.
For decades, the X-Men have been the gold standard of the “found family” trope, a collection of outcasts, orphans, and survivors who chose to build a home together because the world refused to give them one. In these opening episodes, even when separated by thousands of years, the driving motivation remains entirely human: get back to each other.
While the overarching plot thrives on found family, the early episodes beautifully contrast this with the heavy, often painful realities of biological legacy. This tension calls back to one of the most profound lines (and my absolute favorite one!) from Season 1, spoken by Kurt Wagner to his mother, Mystique, “Blood is blood. Family is a choice.” We see characters forced to confront what they owe to their bloodlines versus what they choose to give to the people who actually stand by them.
Photo from Disney+
The biological family dynamic is pushed to its absolute limits right out of the gate in the premiere episode, Days of Past Future. Marooned in a desolate tomorrow, Scott Summers and Jean Grey are forced into an accelerated, high-stakes crash course in parenting their adult son, Nathan, while hiding their true identities from him as he battles the techno-organic virus. Watching Scott and Jean struggle with whether they are raising a son or simply preparing him to become a battle-hardened soldier is heartbreaking and captures that exact flavor of tragic sci-fi drama that the original animated series pioneered.
X-Men ’97 Season 2’s opening salvos prove that the show’s creators understand a fundamental truth about mutantkind: the cosmic battles, time travel, and optic blasts are just window dressing. The real story is about a group of people who choose to love one another through the end of the world.
By grounding the massive sci-fi scale of the comic books in Kurt’s timeless reminder that “family is a choice”, X-Men ’97 Season 2 hits the ground running with an emotional resonance that will leave you completely breathless. My daughter and I can’t wait to watch the rest!
