[0:00] If you could travel back in time and
[0:01] kill Baby Apocalypse, would you? I'm
[0:02] Gina, and I did your homework for X-Men
[0:05] 97. Everything you need to know going
[0:06] into season 2, I'll be talking about it,
[0:08] breaking it down in chronological order.
[0:10] I'll recap season 1 and tell you the
[0:12] stuff I think will be most important to
[0:13] know from the original animated series
[0:15] that might pop back up in season 2. That
[0:17] original series ran for five seasons and
[0:19] 76 episodes total. It ended with an
[0:21] episode titled Graduation Day. In that
[0:23] episode, rabbit anti-mutant dickbag and
[0:25] co-creator of the Sentinel program,
[0:27] Henry Guyrick, shoots Charles Xavier
[0:29] with an energy disruptor device that
[0:30] causes his psychic abilities to spiral
[0:32] out of control, overwhelming him. He
[0:34] slips into a coma. Mutants on Janosha
[0:36] want to go to war over the assassination
[0:38] attempt, and they want Magneto to lead
[0:39] them in the uprisings. Unable to help
[0:41] Charles using Earth science, the X-Men
[0:43] and Moira McTager decide that their best
[0:45] hope is to contact Landra, Empress of
[0:47] the Alien Shi empire, and someone who
[0:49] shares a deep connection with Charles.
[0:51] In the 11th hour, Magneto turns away
[0:53] from his rebellion and helps the X-Men
[0:54] contact Landre, who takes Charles away
[0:56] with her to the sher. No one knows if
[0:58] Charles will ever be able to return to
[0:59] Earth. So, he says goodbye to his X-Men.
[1:01] X-Men 97 season 1, episode 1, To My
[1:04] X-Men, opens with Charles still gone,
[1:06] and the world thinking that he's dead,
[1:08] killed by Guyrich in that assassination
[1:10] attempt. Because of this, there's more
[1:11] sympathy for mutants. It's only been a
[1:13] few months since the events of the
[1:14] original finale. Roberto Dcasta,
[1:16] Sunspot, is kidnapped by the Friends of
[1:18] Humanity, who use a power dampening
[1:20] collar that we saw a bunch in the
[1:21] original series. The X-Men rescue him
[1:23] and bring him back to the X-Mansion. The
[1:25] X-Men interrogate Guy in prison and
[1:27] learn that Bolivar Tras, the designer of
[1:28] the Sentinels, is outfitting the Friends
[1:30] of Humanity with Sentinel Tech. During
[1:32] this interrogation, a very pregnant
[1:33] woman, who everyone thinks is Gan Gray,
[1:35] probes Gyrich's mind and has a
[1:37] terrifying vision of doom and
[1:38] destruction to come. The X-Men locate
[1:40] Tras and take out the Sentinels. Tras is
[1:42] taken away by government officials,
[1:43] headed up by Dr. Val Cooper, UN liaison
[1:46] to the X-Men. Back at the X-mansion,
[1:47] Magneto shows up and reveals that
[1:49] Charles left everything to him in his
[1:51] will, including the school. In episode
[1:53] 2, mutant liberation begins. The UN puts
[1:55] Magneto on trial. The trial is attacked
[1:57] by the Friends of Humanity and the
[1:58] Executioner, a human outfitted by
[2:00] Sentinel Tech and Advanced Weapons. He
[2:02] fires a blast at Magneto, which is
[2:04] intercepted by Storm. She loses her
[2:06] powers and leaves the X-Mansion. Magneto
[2:08] saves the lives of the UN tribunal, who
[2:10] pardon him. They also say they'll start
[2:11] taking steps to admit Janosha into the
[2:13] UN. The woman everyone thinks is Gan
[2:15] gives birth to baby Nathan, but back at
[2:17] the exion, a woman who also claims to be
[2:19] Gene shows up. Episode three, Fire Made
[2:21] Flesh. It turns out the pregnant Gene is
[2:24] actually a Gene clone created by Mr.
[2:25] Sinister, who'd kidnap the real Gene.
[2:27] The Gene clone under Sinister's control
[2:29] turns into the Goblin Queen and fights
[2:31] the X-Men using her psychic powers to
[2:33] force each of them to experience some of
[2:35] their deepest fears. The real Gene
[2:36] battles clone Gene on the astral plane
[2:38] and helps break her free of Sinister's
[2:40] control. Unfortunately, he's already
[2:41] taken baby Nathan and dipped him in
[2:43] green goo, exposing him to a
[2:44] technoorganic virus. The only way for it
[2:46] to be possibly cured or contained is to
[2:48] send Nathan into the future with Bishop
[2:50] to find future forge. Before they send
[2:52] him off, clone Gene leaves baby Nathan a
[2:54] psychic message to help him remember
[2:55] that he's loved. Bishop takes Nathan,
[2:57] presumably back to the future, which is
[2:59] Bishop's present time. Clone Gene leaves
[3:01] the ex-mansion, giving herself the name
[3:03] Meline Prior before she goes. In a bar,
[3:05] Storm is approached by a young forge who
[3:07] offers to help her. Episode 4,
[3:09] Motendo/Life Death Part One. In the
[3:11] first half, Motendo, it's Jubile's 18th
[3:13] birthday, and she just wants to play
[3:15] video games. She and Sunspot get sucked
[3:16] into a Motendo by Mojo, an
[3:18] interdimensional producer. They have to
[3:20] play their way through, and if they die
[3:21] in the game, they die in real life. A
[3:23] digital replica of Jubilee named Absa is
[3:25] already in the game. Jubilee and Sunspot
[3:27] work with Absa to defeat Mojo and escape
[3:29] the game. In the second half of the
[3:30] episode, Life Death Part One, Storm and
[3:33] Forge work on a solution to her lack of
[3:34] powers, and things are getting a little
[3:36] romantic. That is until he reveals that
[3:38] he was the one who helped build the
[3:39] early designs for the power dampening
[3:41] collars that were then used to make the
[3:43] gun that led to Storm's powers going
[3:45] away. Forge's mutant power is that he
[3:46] can basically invent anything he can
[3:48] picture in his mind. After Storm gets
[3:50] rightfully pissed at Forge, the
[3:51] adversary shows up in the form of a
[3:53] giant terrifying demon owl with Storm's
[3:55] own voice and bites Forge, poisoning him
[3:57] and feeding on Storm's misery. Episode
[3:59] 5, Remember It, is the most brutal and
[4:01] heartbreaking episode of the season. The
[4:03] UN formerly admits Janosha, which has
[4:05] been renovated and upgraded into a kind
[4:06] of paradise vacation spot for mutants. A
[4:09] lot of familiar mutants are here now,
[4:10] including the Morlocks, and some are on
[4:12] the Janosian interim council, like
[4:13] Nightcrawler, Emma Frost, and Maline
[4:15] Prior. The council wants Magneto to rule
[4:17] Janosha, and he agrees, but only if
[4:19] Rogue agrees to be his queen and serve
[4:21] with him. There's a lot of messy
[4:22] romantic entanglements in this episode.
[4:24] Gene discovers that Scott has been
[4:25] having a kind of mental affair with
[4:27] Meline. He claims to love both of them.
[4:28] Rogue tells Gambit about her
[4:30] relationship with Magneto, which started
[4:31] when they realized that his
[4:32] electromagnetic powers protect him from
[4:34] her touch-based draining powers. Rogue
[4:36] seemingly chooses Magneto, telling
[4:38] Gambit that since they can't touch each
[4:39] other, they'd never work out. But after
[4:41] doing a sexy flying dance with Magneto,
[4:43] she also rejects him, which sadly Gambit
[4:45] never finds out because in the midst of
[4:46] a huge celebration party, all hell
[4:48] breaks loose. Cable comes back and tries
[4:50] to stop the upcoming massacre, but he's
[4:52] pulled away. We find out in a later
[4:53] episode that it's because it's a fixed
[4:55] point in time. There's an explosion and
[4:57] then a giant bug-like sentinel attacks
[4:58] and kills a whole bunch of mutants.
[5:01] Gamut dies performing a heroic act.
[5:03] Magneto also seemingly dies, although we
[5:05] find out in a later episode that he's
[5:06] still alive. Episode 6, Life Death Part
[5:09] Two, takes place at the same time as the
[5:11] previous episode. Charles is still with
[5:12] the Shar in Space. Empress Alandre
[5:14] announces that she and Charles are going
[5:15] to be married, but Charles has a vision
[5:17] of what's going on on Janosha, and he
[5:18] can't go through with it. Meanwhile, the
[5:20] adversary taunts Storm as its poison
[5:21] makes its way through Forge's system.
[5:23] Storm finds a cactus plant to cure him
[5:24] and defeats the adversary, which gets
[5:26] rid of the mental block that was keeping
[5:28] her powers suppressed. Storm turns on
[5:29] the TV and learns of the Janosha attack.
[5:31] This is also the episode where we learn
[5:32] that Tras is in league with Sinister.
[5:34] Episode 7, Bright Eyes. Instead of going
[5:36] to Gamut's funeral, Rogue goes on a
[5:38] tear, breaking into a military facility
[5:40] and demanding to know where Guyrick and
[5:41] Tras are. Captain America tells her
[5:43] about the existence of an organization
[5:44] called OZT, which we find out in the
[5:46] next episode stands for Operation Zero
[5:48] Tolerance. Bastion, the big bad of the
[5:50] season, kills Guyrich. The X-Men find
[5:52] Tras and Rogue drops him off a roof, but
[5:54] instead of dying, he transforms into a
[5:56] human sentinel hybrid called a Prime
[5:58] Sentinel. He's very hard to fight, but
[6:00] Cable shows up and tosses an
[6:01] electromagnetic cluster grenade at him,
[6:03] taking him out for the time being. Scott
[6:04] realizes that Cable is actually Nathan
[6:06] all grown up. Sinister has been working
[6:08] for Bastion, who has Magneto held
[6:09] prisoner in some very skimpy clothes.
[6:11] While all this is going down, Roberto
[6:13] tells his mom that he's a mutant. She
[6:14] apparently already knew this, but she
[6:16] says they need to keep it a secret
[6:17] because her shareholders are squirmy
[6:18] about anything involving mutants.
[6:20] Episode 8. Tolerance is extinction part
[6:22] one. Cable explains that in his
[6:24] timeline, Bastion used the fallout from
[6:25] Janosha to get backing for his prime
[6:27] sentinel project. Then he upgraded
[6:29] humans to the human sentinel hybrids and
[6:31] used mutants as slave labor to provide a
[6:33] utopia for the humans. The Prime
[6:35] Sentinels were created using Sinister's
[6:37] technoorganic virus, the one he infected
[6:39] baby Nathan with. A whole bunch of
[6:40] people signed up to be turned into these
[6:42] things, and they don't even have a
[6:43] memory of having had the procedure done
[6:44] until they're activated. Gene and Scott
[6:46] go to Bastion's childhood home. They
[6:48] discover that his father was infected by
[6:50] Sentinel tech from the future. And when
[6:51] his mother had Bastion, he had the
[6:53] ability to communicate with the
[6:54] machines, including Master Mold. He's
[6:56] basically the descendant of every
[6:58] Sentinel. He orchestrated Janosha,
[6:59] knowing that that much tragedy would
[7:01] overwhelm humans, and they'd eventually
[7:03] feel apathy about it all. A bunch of
[7:05] Prime Sentinels get activated and start
[7:07] attacking the X-Men, including Bastion's
[7:08] mom, Sunspot's Butler, and reporter
[7:10] Trish Tilby, who spent a few episodes
[7:12] flirting with Beast. Dr. Cooper, who it
[7:14] turns out was a member of the OZT group,
[7:16] sets Magneto free and he uses his power
[7:18] to basically EMP the whole Earth,
[7:20] shutting down the Prime Sentinels.
[7:22] Charles crashes back down to Earth in a
[7:23] sheer ship. Episode 9, Tolerance is
[7:25] extinction part two. Charles is back in
[7:27] the mansion and Magneto is back in his
[7:29] original outfit, which you know can't
[7:30] mean anything good. If the Earth's
[7:32] magnetic field isn't turned back on by
[7:33] Magneto within 24 hours, it and
[7:36] everything on it will die. Magneto
[7:37] offers the X-Men a home on asteroid M,
[7:39] planning to take off and leave Earth to
[7:41] its fate. and Rogue and Sunspot actually
[7:43] join him. Half of the remaining X-Men go
[7:45] to fight Magneto and try to convince him
[7:47] to save Earth. So Magneto, Rogue, and
[7:49] Sunspot end up fighting Charles,
[7:51] Wolverine Cyclops Nightcrawler and
[7:53] Jubilee. Wolverine stabs Magneto, who
[7:55] then rips the adamantium from Wolverine
[7:57] skeleton. The other half of the X-Men,
[7:59] Storm, Gene, Morph, Beast, and Forge, go
[8:02] and try to neutralize Bastion. Sinister
[8:04] shows up and controls Cable to make him
[8:06] fight Gene. Episode 10, Tolerance's
[8:08] Extinction Part Three, the season 1
[8:09] finale. The X-Men, with the help of the
[8:11] Phoenix Force, still inside Gene, manage
[8:13] to defeat Sinister and Bastion. But the
[8:15] president targets Asteroid M with
[8:16] missiles. And now it's going to crash
[8:18] down into the Earth. The X-Men stay
[8:19] behind and work together to destroy it,
[8:21] which will save humanity, but likely
[8:22] kill all of them. At the last second,
[8:24] they're pulled out of time by some force
[8:26] and sent to two different timelines. 6
[8:28] months later, people don't know what
[8:29] happened to the X-Men or where they are.
[8:31] Bishop shows up to tell Forge that they
[8:33] were pulled through time and that they
[8:34] need to be rescued. In the post-redit
[8:36] scenes, we see rogue nightcrawler beast
[8:37] Charles and Magneto in 3000 BC as they
[8:40] meet and Sabanor, the first mutant who
[8:42] will become Apocalypse. Meanwhile, Scott
[8:44] and Gene meet Mother Escani and young
[8:46] Nathan in 3960 AD. In the present day on
[8:49] Janosha, Apocalypse picks up a Queen of
[8:51] Hearts playing card, Gambit's Queen of
[8:53] Hearts playing card, and says this,
[8:55] >> "So much pain, my children, so much
[9:00] death." hinting at the fact that he may
[9:02] in fact be resurrecting Gambit as his
[9:04] horsemen death. So season 2 is going to
[9:06] open with the X-Men split up between
[9:08] three timelines. Rogue, Nightcrawler,
[9:10] Beast, Charles, and Magneto in the past,
[9:11] Forge, Bishop, Jubilee, and Sunspot in
[9:14] the present. Although Bishop is
[9:15] presumably about to travel through time
[9:17] to join the past group. Then there's
[9:19] Jean, Scott, and according to the
[9:20] trailer, Storm, Wolverine, and Morph in
[9:22] the future with young Nathan. It's
[9:24] pretty clear that season 2 is going to
[9:25] focus on the X-Men dealing with
[9:26] Apocalypse at different points in time.
[9:28] So, I'm going to go through his
[9:29] storylines from the original series very
[9:31] briefly. Apocalypse was first introduced
[9:33] in the animated series in season 1,
[9:35] episode 9, The Cure. In this and the
[9:37] following episode, episode 10, come the
[9:39] Apocalypse. Apocalypse's machine turns
[9:41] Warren Worthington III's angel into his
[9:43] horseman death, Archangel. When mutants
[9:45] become horsemen, they're under
[9:46] Apocalypse's control, but Rogue uses her
[9:48] powers to drain Archangel just enough
[9:50] that it snaps him out of it.
[9:51] Apocalypse's whole thing is that he
[9:53] hates and is disgusted by society and
[9:55] wants to rebuild the world in his own
[9:56] image. With only the strongest humans
[9:58] and mutants left, he turns mutants into
[10:00] his horsemen slaves and uses them to
[10:02] help him try and wipe out humanity.
[10:04] There's death, famine, pestilence, and
[10:05] war. And in these two episodes, we see
[10:07] three other mutants transforming into
[10:09] the remaining horsemen. Apocalypse is
[10:10] known as the first mutant, so he's super
[10:12] old, and he maintains his immortality by
[10:14] visiting his Lazarus chamber and
[10:16] hibernating once every hundred years. In
[10:18] season 2, episodes seven and eight time
[10:20] fugitives parts one and two, Apocalypse
[10:22] creates a plague that's supposed to wipe
[10:23] out both humans and mutants. Time
[10:25] traveling Bishop tries to stop the
[10:27] plague, but time traveling Cable needs
[10:28] the plague to happen because his
[10:30] timeline is being rewritten due to the
[10:32] interference. At the last second, Cable
[10:34] has the idea to infect Wolverine with
[10:35] the plague to use the antibodies created
[10:37] by his rapid healing capabilities to
[10:39] develop an antidote. In season 3,
[10:40] episode 9, Obsession, Archangel is
[10:43] obsessed with finding Apocalypse and
[10:44] making him pay for turning him into one
[10:46] of his horsemen. The X-Men appeal to
[10:47] Apocalypse's future tech sentient ship
[10:49] for help, and she seals him in an escape
[10:51] pot and blasts him into space,
[10:53] neutralizing him for the time being. But
[10:55] Archangel is still completely focused on
[10:56] getting his revenge. At the very end of
[10:58] season 4, episode 4, Sanctuary Part Two,
[11:01] Apocalypse rescues villain Fabian
[11:03] Cortez, from an almost destroyed
[11:04] asteroid M, and says he has a use for
[11:06] him. In the season 4 finale arc, Beyond
[11:08] Good and Evil, parts one through four,
[11:10] the end of time, Cable infiltrates
[11:12] Apocalypse's Lazarus Chamber in the
[11:13] future, but Apocalypse steals Cable's
[11:15] time travel tech and goes on a time
[11:17] jaunt. This inadvertently bumps Bishop
[11:19] off course of his own time travel, and
[11:21] he gets stuck in the axis of time, which
[11:23] is looked after by Bender, who turns out
[11:25] to be a disguised immortice. Apocalypse
[11:27] kidnaps all the mutant psychics,
[11:28] including Gene, Charles, and Psylock.
[11:30] Cable tries to travel back in time to
[11:32] destroy Apocalypse's Lazarus chamber
[11:33] before it's even built, but he gets sent
[11:35] to the present instead. But then Cable
[11:37] and the X-Men travel back to Egypt in
[11:39] 1200 BC where they fight the original
[11:41] four horsemen. Cable blows up the
[11:42] chamber which Apocalypse claims he no
[11:44] longer needs as he's now sustained by
[11:46] the Nexus outside of time. His plan is
[11:48] to kill all the psychics at once,
[11:49] releasing a burst of psychic energy that
[11:51] ends all of existence. But Cable and the
[11:53] X-Men manage to stop him. The psychics
[11:55] combine their powers to expel
[11:56] Apocalypse, causing him to cease to
[11:58] exist. But then in season 5, episode 5,
[12:00] the fifth horsemen, Apocalypse, now
[12:02] formless and in a void, uses Fabian
[12:04] Cortez as his vessel to bring himself
[12:06] back into existence. And that was where
[12:08] Apocalypse's story in the original
[12:09] series ended. So in season 2 of X-Men
[12:11] 97, I think we're going to see the X-Men
[12:13] in the past grappling with whether or
[12:15] not they should kill and saber before he
[12:17] becomes Apocalypse. Knowing that Charles
[12:18] and Magneto are both in the past, this
[12:20] should lead to some interesting ethical
[12:22] debates. And meanwhile, the X-Men of the
[12:24] future might have an interesting time if
[12:25] anything done in the past messes with
[12:27] their current existence. And I think
[12:29] it's all leading up to Gambit being
[12:30] resurrected by the end of the season by
[12:32] Apocalypse as the Horseman Death. So,
[12:34] that's everything you need to know
[12:35] before X-Men 97 season 2 comes out. Let
[12:37] me know in the comments where your hype
[12:38] level is for it. Go over to nerd
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