Geekville Radio #346: Examining the X-Men ’97 Trailer

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The first trailer for X-Men ’97, which is set to air on Disney+ this year

Disney announced X-Men ’97 a few years back. As the name implies, it takes place in 1997 and is a direct sequel to X-Men: The Animated Series, which ran on Fox in the mid-1990s.

Not only does it reunite the cast and characters from the original show, but it is also done in the same animation style as well. There are no 3D renderings or obvious CGI to be found. We took a deep dive into this trailer to see what we could find. As always, we reserve the right to cry and complain if our predictions are wrong.

Setting the Stage

Older fans may remember that cartoons and other animated shows were a fixture on Saturday mornings for decades. X-Men: The Animated Series was just such a show and it aired on FOX from 1992-1997. The series finale ended with Professor Charles Xavier leaving Earth behind to be with his beloved Lilandra in outer space. His exile, like in the comics a decade earlier, caused Magneto to change his evil ways and effectively take his place as The X-Men’s mentor.

**The trailer opens with a nod to the series finale which was broadcast long before HDTV or streaming services were even things.**

**Xavier, who was mortally wounded during the finale, says goodbye to his students.**

**The X-Men and Magneto watch Xavier take of into space, likely believing they will never see him again.**

**Now in glorious High Definition, we see Xavier’s casket being lowered into the ground, presumably to further the charade of his death.**

**A recovered Sentinel arm! Somebody must be rebuilding the Sentinels!**

**Two people, possibly Callisto and Leech, hiding from searchlights**

**Magneto stands before the Unite Nations.**

**Magneto’s castle on Genosha now has a statue of Xavier.**

**Our heroes reunited on the Blackbird. Notice Morph on the left and Storm on the right sporting her 80s mohawk look. Yes, Storm had a mohawk in the 80s…**

**(L to R) Gambit, Wolverine, Rogue, Jubilee, and Morph enter a dance club. Maybe they’ll encounter Baron Zemo in here too?**

**Jean and Scott kiss and embrace, possibly upon learning of Jean’s pregnancy.**

**Alas, The X-Men once again have to deal with Sentinels…**

**Gambit rides on Wolverine’s back after charging his claws with kinetic energy!**

**Cyclops and the rest of the team in the obligatory team action pose!**

**The team, including the aforementioned pregnant Jean, get Xavier’s book tossed to them by none other than…**

**MAGNETO! Who will now serve as the headmaster for Xavier’s school.**

So what does all this mean?

This is of course a mere teaser so there is very little to go on from the new scenes. But given that we knew Magneto would appear in his 1990’s hero look, we knew that there would be some level of adaption of the story from the mid-1980s that saw Magneto go from the X-Men’s greatest enemy to their new mentor in Xavier’s absence.

**Magneto sporting his 1980’s hero look in an image shown at conventions.**

The scene where Magneto stands before the U.N. is likely a nod to the 1985 story “Trial of Magneto” where he is put on trial for his past crimes as a supervillain.

**Uncanny X-Men #200 saw the Trial of Magneto… The FIRST one…**

As for Xavier’s “death” it will be interesting to see how the world will react. A lot of the animated series took from Chris Claremont’s run in the comics that used mutants as a comparison for civil rights. Assuming the story goes the way it did in the comics, Xavier is not actually dead and does return to Earth. Could the news leak that Xavier’s death was actually a fraud? If so that could cause many people to feel betrayed or lied to, which would more trouble for mutant kind.

We also got a visual confirmation that Storm will be sporting a look more like her 1980s comic incarnation. Around the time she lost her powers she adopted a more punk-rock look and sported a mohawk hairstyle. She reverted back to a full head of hair and adopted the while/silver costume later used in the animated series. What we see here looks to be an amalgam of both looks, as she seems to be keeping the regular suit she’d been using.

**Storm in her “punk rock mohawk” look from the 1980s**

That’s what we noticed in this first trailer. It will be interesting to see if this will be a completely original story or if there will be more X-Men comics adapted in this new season. Will there be X-Men ’98? X-Men ’99? Could we see Age Of Apocalypse? Secret Wars? Onslaught? The possibilities are endless!