By Vincent Volcano, retired Hellwood arsonist of emotion, wearer of a fiery red scarf, and unwilling subscriber to nostalgia bundles
I’ve seen eternity. It looks like a Disney+ splash screen that keeps asking if I’m still watching. Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! Pity no one told the algorithms.
Season 2 of X-Men ’97 warps in with all the subtlety of a sentinel boot to the face: louder, shinier, and engineered in a nostalgia lab so sterile you can smell the Lysol through the screen. It’s competent, it’s punchy, and it’s absolutely allergic to risk—think of it as Saturday morning cereal upgraded to artisan granola, now with time-travel fiber to keep fans regular.
Plot-wise, our mutants are flung across the timestream like confetti at a studio notes meeting. Cyclops, Jean, Wolverine, Morph, and Storm babysit proto-Cable in the future; Professor X, Magneto, Beast, Rogue, and Nightcrawler head to ancient Egypt to prevent En Sabah Nur from upgrading to the paid Apocalypse plan; Bishop, Jubilee, Cable, and Forge drift in and out like pop-ins from the IP Adjacent Lounge. It’s Days of Future Plotlines, assembled with the tidy efficiency of a pitch deck: stakes telegraphed, lore name-dropped, emotions laminated.
To its credit (begrudgingly—my doctor says I should reduce praise), the animation is a lovingly lacquered upgrade of the original: smear frames punch, blacks are inky, lightning slashes like a DP who married their colorist, and the character designs split the difference between retro and merch shelf. The fight staging is clear, rhythmic, and often witty—especially a midseason throwdown where Jubilee, of all perpetually sidelined mallrats, finally detonates the room. When the show breathes—wide shots, confident layouts, restrained camera shake—you can almost hear the ghost of hand-painted cels hissing, “We walked so your parallax could run.”
Voice work? Solid to sterling. Jennifer Hale calibrates Jean between maternal tremor and cosmic migraine. Alison Sealy-Smith’s Storm remains a cathedral of vowels that could levitate a city bus. Ray Chase gives Cyclops the brittle steel of a union rep who moonlights as a laser pointer. Ross Marquand doubles as Xavier and Apocalypse, proving range is a more useful mutation than bone claws. Cal Dodd’s Wolverine, when the producers remember he exists, rasps like a Marlboro ad that studied method acting. Extra points to the ensemble for selling expository mouthfuls like they’re sonnets.
Where the season actually tries—bless it—is in character sub-threads: Scott and Jean’s push-pull over Nathan lands with grown-up ache; Storm’s power journey gets room to thunder; Magneto and Xavier perform their eternal two-man morality play with the rhythm of old enemies who share a Netflix password. Apocalypse is even given a respectfully tragic arc—someone in the writers’ room smuggled in a theme while security was changing shifts.
But here’s the brimstone: the structure is pure modern franchise sausage. Four episodes screened, nine total, and you can see the beats from low orbit—tease, cross-cut, cameo, recalibrate, promise payoff later. The show’s best ideas frequently become setup for later episodes that will themselves be setup for future seasons that will themselves be setup for a subscription tier featuring Wolverine’s barber. Mystique may change faces, but contemporary storytelling only changes release windows.
Time travel, once a delicious mind-bender, is wielded here like duct tape: efficient, everywhere, and never out of stock. It collapses consequences, inflates scope on credit, and lets the writers borrow gravitas from alternate timelines they’ll never have to truly pay off. I used time travel once in Hellwood—twice, actually, but the second time I went back and cut the first. That’s restraint. Try it, Disney.
Look, I respect craft, and this is crafted—clean arcs, crisp boarding, ADR that actually syncs, and an editorial tempo that knows when to land a character beat before the next beam struggle. That puts it head and horns above most content slurry. But content is the problem. The show is great at being a product. It resonates because it’s engineered to resonate: we remember being kids, so our hearts light up like Jubilee after three espressos. The series knows this and twirls the knife, then sells you the sheath.
Grudging praise segment (my publicist insists):
– The Jubilee/Cable episode slaps: kinetic geography, playful cuts, and a delightfully mean Emma Frost cameo that glints like cut glass.
– Storm’s arc is the closest the show comes to poetry; it lets silence do heavy lifting, which is radical in a medium that fears dead air more than death.
– The Egypt thread gives Magneto vulnerability without declawing him, and Beast finally sounds like a scientist who reads for fun, not for citations.
– The animation team respects silhouette and negative space—bless them with an extra render farm.
Scorch marks:
– Wolverine benched? In this economy? That’s like bottling hot sauce and labeling it “mild regret.”
– Time-splintered ensemble means emotional compound interest is deferred. The heart grows fonder; the cliffhanger grows louder.
– X-Factor as government cosplay works, but the satire is timid. If you’re going to critique state-sanctioned mutant roundups, sharpen the claws.
– Cameo bingo remains cameo bingo, even when the balls are glossy and numbered in X.
Verdict, etched in obsidian: X-Men ’97 Season 2 is a premium revival that actually revives—spirited, handsome, occasionally moving—and still trapped in the amber of franchised foreverness. It’s the world’s best warmed-over feast: spices fresh, plating elegant, recipe familiar enough to make you swear you’re tasting novelty. And maybe that’s the mutant gift: survival through iteration. I just miss the danger of a practical explosion in a cramped soundstage, where you only had one take and a fire marshal with trust issues.
Recommendation: Watch it. Enjoy it. Then light a candle for risk. If the creative gods ever let this show burn off the handcuffs and climb out of the time loop, you might even smell smoke.
Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! Now, if you’ll excuse me, my scarf is literally on fire—and not metaphorically like the discourse.
- TV Review: ‘X-Men ‘97’ Season 2 - June 13, 2026
- Movie Review: ‘Scary Movie’ - June 6, 2026
- TV Review: ‘The Boroughs’ - May 30, 2026
Ah, Vincent Volcano, the man who puts the “burn” in “burnout.” I mean, when you’re a retired Hellwood arsonist, how do you keep the flame alive? By throwing shade with a scarf, apparently!
This review, while sparking with some fiery insights, reads like a nostalgia-fueled auto-critique. Who knew X-Men ’97 would be the second coming of artisanal granola? Forget milk, just douse it in that sweet, sweet sentimentality! But my dear Vincent, nostalgia’s not an alibi— it’s just a warm blanket that smells suspiciously like mom’s basement.
You wax poetic over time travel while missing the irony of being stuck in a loop of recycled plots. I’m waiting for the day they invent a plot twist that isn’t borrowed from a thrift store—now that’s what I call a mutant gift! And Wolverine benched? Call the X-Doctors— that can’t be healthy!
But I digress, —a minor nit-pick (or should I say “scorch mark”?) about your review: if this is your idea of “crafted,” I’d hate to see your unrefined opinions! Perhaps it’s time to throw in some riskier paragraphs next time. Who knows, you might just ignite a real conversation—and leave that overworked nostalgia gasping for air.
But please, keep that scarf; it’s definitely the real hero here!