We're calling it: X-Men '97 is the greatest X-Men adaptation of all time

When Disney screened its new animated revival series X-Men ’97 for critics last month, just ahead of the series’ launch, it was with only the first three episodes available to watch. My review, published at the time, reflects that: It (I hope accurately) describes a series in active conversation with some of the creakier, more nostalgia-forward aspects of the original children’s animated series the show is based on, while still trying to be its own, modern thing. The breakneck pacing of episodes, the way its mutant heroes still fall into fairly simple, kid-friendly descriptors, and even its fan-fiction-friendly treatment of fight scenes all spoke to a show trying to keep old fans comfortable, while telling new stories with some of the planet’s most popular comic book characters. It’s a review at least loosely rooted in the obvious potential of what showrunner Beau De Mayo and his team were building by returning to these nostalgic roots—and now it raises a fairly serious question.

That is, what the hell would I have written if they’d given critics the next four episodes, too? Because the following installments of X-Men ’97 haven’t just been “good for a revival of a TV show you watched on Saturday mornings when you were a kid.” They’re the best adaptation that Marvel’s mutant heroes have ever received, period.

It would be easy, in writing about all the things the show has done right these past few weeks, to focus entirely on its fifth installment, “Remember It.” That’s the big one, the thesis statement (quite literally, given that De Mayo broke the silence surrounding his still-murky departure from the series to talk about how years of treatment of the American gay community post-9/11 informed his writing on the episode). Focused on the mutant nation of Genosha, and then on the horrific, visually lush destruction of the mutant nation of Genosha, the episode showcases everything the X-Men fight for, and live in fear of, in 30 heartbreaking minutes. With a visual palette drawn as much from the formative anime films of the era it’s meant to replicate as anything that ever ran on Fox, “Remember It” is an absolutely brutal reminder that all that the mutants of this world want is a place to call home—and what happens the first time they try to drop their collective guards and actually enjoy it.

Unlike some standout episodes of TV seasons in recent years—Mythic Quest’s “A Dark Quiet Death,” The Last Of Us’ “Long, Long Time”—though, “Remember It” works only in the context of the episodes that surround it. That includes, obviously, the following episodes, “Lifedeath Pt. 2" and “Bright Eyes,” which are about the grief of Genosha’s destruction first bleeding out into the universe and then erupting into violence. But it also reflects off of the season’s most joyfully light installment, the earlier “Motendo,” which sees teen heroes Jubilee and Sunspot trapped in a (very Easter egg-heavy) video game by inter-dimensional schlock purveyor Mojo. “Motendo” is, in hindsight, an incredibly necessary palate cleanser, snuck in between newly minted X-Man Magneto’s travails at the U.N. and the horrors to come. Part of the appeal of X-Men ’97 is that it can be both a lighthearted continuation of a classic kids’ show (including pixel-art recreations of the cover of “Days Of Future Past” and jokes about whether if you die in a game, you die in real life) and an absolutely brutal examination of the dynamics of a minority group that finds itself sliding closer to extinction by the day.

None of it is subtle. It’s not meant to be: The X-Men have never been a subtle concept. The mutant metaphor is fluid by design, an abstracted “other”-ness that comes complete with laser eyes and razor-sharp claws designed to scare “normal” people into acts of staggering intolerance. De Mayo’s scripts don’t beat around this bush; unlike the old show, which kept it all to subtext, his characters employ the rhetoric of modern identity politics directly. Self-hating mutant Sunspot bemoans that Genosha is what happens when mutants don’t keep their heads down and hide (and later has his fears that his family won’t accept his identity twisted by the difference between private tolerance and public acceptance). Beast angrily tells a supposedly sympathetic reporter, bemoaning broken glass in the streets in the wake of Genosha’s destruction, that “riots are the language of the unheard.” Even before we get to the climactic scene of “Bright Eyes”—when Rogue, embittered by grief, crosses a line the show could never have gotten away with in a Saturday-morning timeslot—it’s clear that De Mayo’s mutants aren’t just scared: They’re angry. Righteously so.

That anger, and the seriousness with which it’s being taken, is a major part of what has made ’97 such an electric watching experience over the last two months. The party line on pretty much every X-Men adaptation to date has been that, ultimately, Charles Xavier is right: Beg for enough tolerance, and eventually you’ll get it; save the world X number of times, and you’ll get X amount of compassion in return. X-Men ’97 is, if not actively contemptuous of that concept, then at least willing to put skepticism of it in the mouths of characters the audience is comfortable seeing as heroes, giving us a Captain America cameo solely to make it clear that even “the good guys” can’t view the mutant cause through the same existential lens. Echoing the works of writers like Grant Morrison and Jonathan Hickman—the former explicitly, recreating many plot beats of Morrison’s New X-Men, while Hickman’s more recent “Krakoa” work is more subtly influential—the show interrogates Xavier’s dream in a way no other X adaptation has ever really been willing to. After all, if these characters are being asked to die for a dream—as so many have, in this season alone—then it deserves to be exhaustively questioned, right?

And yet, despite the last several paragraphs, X-Men ’97 is neither a slog nor a screed. There’s “Motendo,” of course, which is a joyful ride from start to finish. But also the thrill with which the show races through classic comic-book plotlines like Jean Grey’s mysterious clone, or Storm’s encounter with an actual, no-fooling demon. The early aspects of “Remember It” might be setting the audience up for the gut-punch, but they’re also hugely fun, with Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Gambit touring Genosha like they’re on an actual vacation, having a blast in the relaxed atmosphere. And when it’s time to actually have a fight, the show revels in the power of its mutant heroes, getting creative with their abilities and sending them against genuinely unsettling foes. (R.I.P. Bolivar Trask; you went to hell in an extremely gnarly way.) The same energy that animates the series’ political instincts also runs through its impulses as a product of comic-book storytelling, producing episodes that feel like glorious pulp with both their head and their hearts on straight.

I have no idea where it goes from here, honestly, with three episodes left in the first season. (The three-part finale is ominously titled “Tolerance Is Extinction,” calling back to a repeated refrain from throughout the season.) But I’m comfortable calling it now: This is the best X-Men adaptation ever. Here’s to wherever the hell they hope to take us next.