Movies & TV Subtext and Tragedy Dominate the Latest Episodes of X-Men ’97 Can Morph and Wolverine overtake Magneto and Xavier for the most subtext of the X-friends? By Ben Francisco | Published on July 21, 2026 Image: Marvel Studios Animation Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Marvel Studios Animation “Rise of Apocalypse Part II” The conclusion of this two-parter picks up where episode three left off, right after the attack by Rama-Tut (John de Lancie). Magneto (Matthew Waterson) has managed to protect the X-Men with his magnetism, but En Sabah Nur’s (Adetokumboh M’Cormack) base and army have been destroyed, leaving Nur enraged at the consequences of the X-Men’s betrayal.  The X-Men huddle amidst the wreckage of Nur’s old base. Magneto still hopes to create a better future by steering Nur—a.k.a. the future Apocalypse—toward a nobler path. Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith) warns him against meddling with the timeline, and most of the team shares his skepticism. Only Rogue (Lenore Zann) seems sympathetic, imagining a future where Genosha was never destroyed and Gambit was never lost. Magneto cuts off the debate by disabling Bishop’s timeband, unilaterally stranding the team in ancient Egypt unless they can find the lost temple and use its power to get them home.  Professor X (Ross Marquand) explains to Nur that the X-Men are from the future and shares his dream of mutants and humans living in harmony. Nur remains focused on his philosophy of survival of the fittest but allows Xavier to probe his mind, revealing painful memories of being abandoned by his mother and a lifetime in slavery. It also reveals a constellation that will guide them to the temple they all seek.   Nur and the X-Men trek by camel across the desert. Camping out for a night before they arrive, Rogue has a heart-to-heart with En Sabah Nur, who still sees love as a weakness. Professor X is visited in a telepathic vision by Rama-Tut, who reveals he’s also known as Kang and many other names. He tells Charles the only way for him to prevent Apocalypse from ascending is by allowing Tut to gain the power of the celestial temple instead of Nur. The X-Men enter the temple and split up to find the energy source they seek. The group led by Beast (George Buza) finds a set of controls and realizes that the temple is actually the spacecraft Ship, which they know as a weapon of Apocalypse in their own time. En Sabah Nur, Professor X, and Bishop find engravings showing Nur rising to power, surrounded by the X-Men! Nur realizes it’s a depiction of his own future—and that the X-Men have been trying to stop him from attaining his destiny. Nur handily disables the X-Men and enters the inner shrine of the temple. There, he encounters a god-like Celestial, who calls on Nur to be an avatar of destruction. Image: Marvel Studios Animation Beast brings the X-Men timebands, which he’s restored with technology from Ship. The team again debates the intricacies of time and destiny, and Magneto again ends the conversation unilaterally, sending everyone back to the 1990s except him and Charles, who resists the pull of the time portal by clinging to Magneto’s cape.  Nur emerges from the shrine, now transformed into a fully empowered Apocalypse, and orders Ship to destroy the city. Tut flees, explaining that he’s missed the opportunity to conquer this time period and must seek out another.  Magneto wraps Apocalypse in metal and hurls him into the desert. But since Ship will only obey Apocalypse’s orders, they have no way to stop it from razing the city. Magneto pushes his powers to their limit, using them to redirect the black hole that Ship has created and saving the lives of all the city’s denizens. “Honor me with action, not tears,” Erik tells Charles, as they say farewell in a heartfelt embrace. A weakened Magneto falls to the desert outside the city. Apocalypse returns and warns Xavier that the ones he cares for will be his undoing—and then vaporizes Magneto. A tearful Xavier yells that Apocalypse will always be a monster.  Apocalypse walks away, and Bishop reappears to bring a bereaved Professor X back to the 1990s. “Weapon X, Lies, and DVDs” Image: Marvel Studios Animation In a first for this season, the opening credits feature the “full” current X-Men team, with a whopping ten members. This is a bottle episode focusing exclusively on Morph and Wolverine, presumably before they know that Bishop has returned with the others, so the credits offer an interesting clue to the season’s direction. For the first time, Forge gets his own title card, confirming his full integration to the team. Magneto is notably absent, which is not surprising after his dire fate in the prior episode. Jubilee also doesn’t get her usual title card—presumably because she’s still with team X-Force, which could lead to some interesting tensions down the road. The story itself opens on Morph (J.P. Karliak) piloting a helicopter with a team that Wolverine (Cal Dodd) has assembled: Sabretooth (Darin De Paul), Maverick (Crispin Freeman), Kane (Ben Pronsky), and Yuriko, a.k.a. Lady Deathstrike (Erika Ishii). All were subjected to the experiments of the Weapon X program in the past, and all—as Morph wryly notes—have complicated histories with Logan. Wolverine has learned that Dr. Cornelius (Todd Haberkorn) has renewed the program’s unethical experiments; this motley team’s mission is to shut it down for good. A flock of mutated birds makes the helicopter crash, leaving Kane dead. The survivors are attacked by a polar bear—infected in the same way as the birds were. In the ensuing battle, the others see that Wolverine has lost his adamantium, astonished that such a thing is even possible. The group explores the facility, which is strewn with corpses. They find Dr. Cornelius and question him—but then he transforms into an insect-like form! Other giant flying insects attack—and the group speculates that they’re of alien origin. Image: Marvel Studios Animation Suspicions rise in the group about who could have been infected by the alien bugs, though Morph notes that Cornelius and the other scientists may have intentionally experimented with injections of alien DNA. The team splits up, with Maverick and Wolverine allegedly going in search of a vehicle, while the others go to reboot the generators so they can get out. Yuriko, Morph, and Sabretooth find a cache of DVDs, their labels a veritable basket of Easter eggs for fans, including names such as Aurora, Fantomex, Winter Soldier, and X-23. On one of the DVDs, Dr. Cornelius explains that their subjects have been difficult to control, because their traumatic memories always eventually resurfaced. The scientists discovered a Brood alien, an insect-like species with a hive mind. They attempted to use the Brood’s cranial fluids to purge their subjects’ memories, hoping for complete obedience—but the resulting hybrids have proved both untamable and unable to survive the adamantium process.  The three escape another Brood attack and seek out their two remaining teammates. They track them down not to a vehicle bay as Wolverine had claimed, but to the lab where Logan was first laced with adamantium. A Brood-Wolverine hybrid attacks, along with dozens of other Brood. In the battle, Maverick is killed and a hibernating Omega Red (Darin De Paul) is released from his suspension pod. Lady Deathstrike, Morph, and Sabretooth wall themselves off for a brief respite from the battle. They argue about what to do, and note that Wolverine has been deceiving them: his true purpose was always to regain the adamantium reinforcement for his bones and claws. Morph realizes that the Brood can’t survive the adamantium process but Wolverine can—so they hatch a scheme to lure him into the adamantium chamber and purge him of Brood influence. Morph poses as Cyclops to goad the Brood-erine into the chamber, but Sabretooth spoils the plan with an ambush. Morph pleads with the feral Wolverine, reminding him of their friendship. But it’s only when Morph transforms into Jean that Wolverine pauses for a moment, giving Lady Deathstrike an opening to knock him into the adamantium chamber.  Image: Marvel Studios Animation Omega Red assaults Morph and Yuriko, ready to use the Brood to conquer the planet. But then Wolverine emerges from the chamber, cleansed of the Brood infection and again sporting his shiny, indestructible adamantium claws. He repels Omega Red and helps the remaining crew to escape. As the team flies away, the Weapon X research facility explodes below them. On the flight home, Wolverine explains that he’s not like Morph; all he is is an animal with claws. Morph asks, “Doesn’t that make you sad? It makes me sad, Logan.” Commentary Image: Marvel Studios Animation With these two episodes, the showrunners seem to be closely hewing to the structure that was so successful in the first season: a few episodes of build-up, a big midpoint confrontation culminating in an unexpected death, and then a bottle episode focusing on a key popular character. In the first season, the midpoint climax was the Sentinel attack on Genosha, leading to Gambit’s death; this time it’s the rise of Apocalypse, and Magneto is the one who died unexpectedly. Magneto’s death did not hit me quite as hard as Gambit’s last season, and part of me felt like the show was trying to catch lightning in a bottle a second time and not quite succeeding. There’s some epic animation for Magneto’s rescue of the city, but for me, the most effective parts of the tragic turn were Xavier’s reactions. The relationship between Magneto and Charles has always been rife with subtext, but this show has been going all-in on it to the point where it becomes the text itself. Charles clinging to Magneto’s cape, their emotional embrace, and Charles’s flowing tears are all powerful images conveying the depth of their connection. The version of Professor X in this particular show has always been quite gentle and benevolent, so when he yells at Apocalypse that his mother was right to abandon him, you know he must be hurting.  Just before he dies, Magneto’s helmet cracks, and Charles is able to communicate with him telepathically. This seems like it might be a set-up for introducing Onslaught, a psionic villain created by the melding of the subconscious emotions of both Professor X and Magneto. I have trouble imagining Onslaught fitting into this season, which has been firmly Apocalypse-centered, but the writers are likely also planting seeds for the third season and beyond. Image: Marvel Studios Animation En Sabah Nur’s transformation into Apocalypse was interesting, and leaves me wondering how this misadventure in the past will affect things in the 1990s. It seems likely the X-Men have made Apocalypse even more dangerous, which would be interesting. The others continually fail to listen to Bishop’s warnings about the time stream, even though he’s by far the most experienced time traveller in the group. I foresee many “Bishop Was Right,” T-shirts and memes in the near future. John de Lancie’s performance as Rama-Tut was reminiscent of his role as Q in Star Trek: the Next Generation, which worked well given that both are coy tricksters with power outside normal human understanding. I had hoped for a more direct confrontation between the X-Men and the Kang variant, but I can see how the story didn’t allow space for that. Last season, the midpoint climax was followed by a stand-alone episode focused on Storm; this season, we get one focused on Wolverine, with his bestie Morph tagging along. I was glad they included Morph amidst this motley crew of soldiers and assassins; they added some much-needed levity, and it also gave us the chance to spotlight their friendship with Wolverine for the first time.  The subtext between Morph and Wolverine bursts into the text perhaps even more than Xavier and Magneto’s, with Sabretooth and Yuriko both chiding Morph for their excessive devotion to Logan. Karliak’s voice acting as Morph is impressive in its nuance, portraying their deep feelings for Logan while also conveying a kind of queer resilience. There were times I felt almost uncomfortable with the episode’s depiction of a queer unrequited crush, which partly speaks to its effectiveness—and it certainly is period-accurate for the 1990s.  The last scene of the episode was by far the most powerful. It’s a bold move having Morph express the sadness that Wolverine can’t. So often, Wolverine’s gruffness is presented as a strength, but the closing dialogue reveals the ways that it can also be a weakness: an inability to explore or express emotions, which Morph is able to do with ease, revealing a different kind of strength and resilience.   I was a bit surprised that Wolverine regained his adamantium so quickly, but it makes sense given the fast clip of this series. Image: Marvel Studios Animation I continued to enjoy the cameos and fan service in these episodes, particularly getting to see the Celestials and Rama-Tut taking on his Kang form. But there were also moments where they seemed excessive, especially Morph’s transformations into nearly the entire Alpha Flight line-up over the course of one episode. It seems like Morph’s shapeshifting is mostly being used as fodder for trailers. In the first few episodes, I appreciated that they divided up the team, allowing us to focus on a few characters at a time. But we’re now more than halfway through the season and have yet to see the full team reunited in the 1990s. I’m looking forward to finally getting that payoff with the next episode and hope the rest of the season will offer us a satisfying crescendo to a big confrontation with Apocalypse.[end-mark] The post Subtext and Tragedy Dominate the Latest Episodes of <i>X-Men ’97</i> appeared first on Reactor.