Warning: This review contains full spoilers for X-Men ’97 Season 2, Episode 9!
At this point, it’s officially safe to say that X-Men ’97 Season 2 doesn’t live up to the standard set by the first. The highs are just as high, as we saw in the stellar first half. But the whole thing fails to come together in a cohesive package. These final two episodes have really lost the plot where Apocalypse (Ross Marquand) is concerned, resulting in a finale that hits some of the right notes yet ultimately still fails to bring the season home.
It’s tough to make sense of the handling of the Apocalypse storyline post-Episode 4. The character was such a driving force of the first four episodes, but he faded into the background after that point. Not that every installment needed Apocalypse as its focal point, but the series has really started to suffer from the lack of attention paid to the character in recent weeks. So much about his motivations and actions is unclear. That entire backstory regarding his love affair with Candra was treated as an afterthought in Episode 8.
So it is that when Apocalypse finally resurfaces to confront Professor Xavier (Marquand) and the X-Men in the finale, that reunion falls a little flat. All the momentum Season 2 built up around Apocalypse in those first four episodes has faded.
When we finally see the reborn Apocalypse square off against the X-Men here, it’s a very brief and anticlimactic battle between good and evil. No sooner does Apocalypse get to stretch his new Cajun-y legs than the power-boosted Rogue (Lenore Zann) shows up to save the day. This is the payoff to the entire season? Compared to the epic spectacle that was the “Beyond Good and Evil” storyline from the original series, this feels pretty bland and small potatoes in comparison. It’s just bizarre that Apocalypse’s grand, millennia-spanning master plan boiled down to stealing Gambit’s (A. J. LoCascio) body and hassling the X-Men for a few minutes.
It’s really in the build-up to that final showdown where “Survival of the Fittest” actually shines. There we get an actual epic throwdown between the reunited X-Men on one side and the combined forces of X-Force and X-Factor on the other. The action flows hot and heavy here, but the real joy is in how this conflict pays off on a season’s worth of buildup for characters like Cable (Chris Potter) and Polaris (Carolina Ravassa). Their conflicted loyalties add a nice, extra touch of tragedy to the entire battle. At a time when human/mutant relations have really soured, it’s a terrible thing to see the X-Men and their ilk fighting amongst themselves. Awesome in that Staurday morning cartoon way, but terrible.
I’ll also say that, as much as I was underwhelmed by Rogue becoming the deus ex machina that quickly resolves the Apocalypse conflict, this episode does tug at the heartstrings when it comes to the Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough) twist. We’re at first left to assume that Rogue and Remy will be torn apart once more, only to realize that Kurt sacrificed himself for the sake of his beloved sister. The writers of this series clearly love this character deeply, and his last and greatest sacrifice feels like a fitting end to his deeply emotional journey. Assuming it is the end, anyway. Based on how the Celestials operate, I would think that they’re less interested in acquiring one little death than they are a replacement for Apocalypse in his role as cosmic gardener.
Ultimately, I find myself wishing that Season 2 retained the 10-episode structure of the first, which could have allowed this episode to focus on the X-Men vs. X-Force & X-Factor conflict and the finale to better flesh out the Apocalypse side of things. Former head writer Beau DeMayo has offered some insight into what the original plans for Episode 10 involved, though, to be frank, it sounds like that would have compounded the problem rather than addressed it. Perhaps it’s best that the series simply wipe its hands of Apocalypse and try to start fresh in Season 3. The post-credits scene certainly gives us some idea of what’s coming, but that’s a topic for another article.
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