‘X-Men ’97’ Will Make the Franchise’s Fans So Happy

While the X-Men’s popularity is unquestionably due to their unique powers, colorful personalities, and persecuted-minority storylines, they’ve also remained superhero mainstays thanks to their endless soap opera dramas, and no screen version has captured that element of their appeal quite as perfectly as X-Men: The Animated Series, a 1992-1997 half-hour TV cartoon that embraced the characters’ wild love-triangle entanglements, paternity revelations, and deaths and resurrections. Over the course of five seasons, the kid-centric show proved a faithful smorgasbord of apocalyptic threats, over-the-top mayhem, and tortured romantic and familial dramas, along the way solidifying the franchise as one of Marvel’s most outlandishly gripping. Far more than the feature films that followed in its wake, it was just about an ideal X-Men adaptation.

Thus, as the MCU plans its inevitable live-action multiplex reboot of the iconic mutants, Disney+ has returned to the proverbial well with X-Men ’97, which premieres March 20, a decades-late continuation of The Animated Series that picks up right where its predecessor left off. Though featuring updated aesthetics, the 10-part follow-up—created by Beau DeMayo, who was fired from the project mere days before its premiere—is largely more of the same, except this time drenched in an unmistakable sheen of x-treme nostalgia. Clearly aimed at thirty- and fortysomethings who grew up with the original rather than newbies, it’s a mixed-bag venture, delivering on its promise of cornball throwback action and adventure, and yet generally resonating as a shallow stunt designed to tap into grown-ups’ fond feelings for an archaic Saturday morning show from their youth.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)

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