By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Recently, the X-Men ‘97 Season 2 trailer premiered at New York City Comic-Con. It mostly focused on Apocalypse as the new Big Bad and hinted at a timey-wimey story in which our merry mutants would need to fight this powerful villain across past, present, and future. But there’s something else hidden in plain sight in this trailer: based on the presence of evil mutants like Sabertooth, Omega Red, and Lady Deathstrike, this season is going to have more of a focus on Wolverine.
Arguably, one of the more refreshing things about the first season of X-Men ‘97 is that it didn’t focus (like virtually all franchise movies and TV shows) on Wolverine, which gave time for other characters like Storm, Magneto, and Charles Xavier to shine. The Season 2 trailer includes a moment where Wolverine announces “I’m back” while beckoning a foe to come fight. While this is presented as nothing more than a crowd-pleasing quip, the sheer number of villains in the trailer from Wolverine’s rogue’s gallery implies his story’s back in a big way and that this season will feature more stories featuring everybody’s fan-favorite X-Man.
A Cut Above the Rest
In the X-Men comics, Sabertooth is Wolverine’s greatest foe, but their antagonist relationship was only gestured to in X-Men: The Animated Series. For example, Wolverine warns Xavier about the dangers of keeping Sabertooth in the mansion but refuses to spill the details on why he thinks the other mutant is so scary. We later find out a bit more about their shared Weapon X history, but it’s a safe bet that X-Men ‘97 will elaborate more on their mutually antagonistic history while also building on Sabertooth’s previously established alliance with Apocalypse
The Russian Captain America
X-Men: The Animated Series faithfully adapted Omega Red’s comic book storyline, portraying the villain as the Soviet Union’s own energy-sucking answer to American supersoldier Captain America. In the earlier show, we see that Omega Red is an old enemy of Wolverine, and they fought in a battle where Maverick and Sabertooth helped Logan defeat this Russian foe.
Before his blink-and-you-miss-it glimpse of him near the end of X-Men ’97 Season 1, we last saw Omega Red sinking into the Pacific Ocean in a submarine he tried to use against America. Therefore, the second season of X-Men ‘97 is likely to reveal how he survived and whether his grudges against both the United States and Wolverine are intact.
Death Looks Like a Lady
Of these villains, Lady Deathstrike had the fewest appearances in X-Men: The Animated Series, where she (like her comics counterpart) wanted revenge against Wolverine for the death of her father, a higher-up at Weapon X. She covered her skeleton in adamantium and joined with some robotic Reavers in order to get revenge on her foe, but after she ran afoul of an alien prisoner, she had to be saved by the X-Men. She decided to leave Wolverine alone because he had saved her life; this might explain why she seems like more friend than foe in the X-Men ‘97 Season 2 trailer, but only time will tell.
There you have it, folks: while everyone has been paying attention to Apocalypse as the newest Big Bad, the more interesting thing about X-Men ‘97 Season 2 is that it is bringing in three iconic villains that haven’t made any major appearances since X-Men: The Animated Series. All of these foes have close ties to Wolverine, which means you can expect to see plenty of Logan slicing and dicing his way through each episode. Here’s hoping that the extended focus on the most popular X-Man doesn’t keep the show from further exploring less popular characters; otherwise, this hit new show may hurt itself in a way that no healing factor can possibly mend.
