X-Men '97

The first two episodes of the new Disney+ series X-Men ‘97 were a hit! The show is very well executed and seems to be very well received on the internet. We left off the second episode with Storm leaving the mansion due to the sudden loss of her powers and a duplicate of Jean collapsing in front of the team.

Beast continues to be one of my favorite members of the team. He confirms that the Jean we started the show with is the clone. That is great news considering that I really hate that she started the show wanting to be barefoot and pregnant leaving the team. This obviously causes tension between Clones Jean (who still believes that she's the real one) and Scott.

The relationship dynamics of the X-Men have always been the most interesting part of the team. So being able to watch Jean and Scott, and Jubilee and Rogue is really awesome. Whoever was in charge of choosing the makeup of the team is a freaking genius and they deserve all of the money and praise. This makeup of the team is actually really similar to what Gail Simone’s run of the Uncanny X-Men is going to look like so that just makes me more excited for that.

Using Sinister as the main villain was an absolute stroke of genius. Poor Scott…Jean Grey is forever one of my favorite fictional characters. And she is just amazing in these episodes. She has literally only gotten proper treatment in animation and the scene where the two versions of herself kind of battle it out mentally is truly one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen. Jean is so badass I was really filled with so much joy watching her. And they do in fact name drop Madelyne Pryor which just makes me so happy for so many reasons. The writers absolutely did their research and it makes the show that much better and real. Everything that has happened is very comic book accurate and it gives me hope for how the MCU might handle comic books greatest team.

The fourth episode focuses on Jubilee as it is her 18th birthday, thanks to Mojo she is sucked into a video game. That plot within itself is very 90s as literally every animated show had an episode that did this, Scooby Doo has a whole movie. As the game goes along, it's obvious that Mojo has them trapped but he’s also not the one in control. Jubilee and Roberto are getting help from someone outside the game. Jubilee is being helped by herself, an older, duplicate version of herself. And of course, because it's the X-Men, there is a lesson about the joys of growing up and being a part of the real world in there.

We get glimpses of Storm who is being housed by someone who says he’s a friend of Charles. They are somewhere in the mountains and she is clearly getting some emotional recovery being out in nature and horseback riding. This new friend attempts to reverse what was done to her and hopefully restore her powers but it doesn’t work. For some reason Storm without her powers makes me so sad, it's seriously heartbreaking.

God this show is so good. Seriously this is probably the best thing that the MCU and Disney+ has ever produced. It’s funny, it's emotional, all of the storylines and characterizations are incredibly accurate, and the animation and plotlines are so beautifully 90s. I really hope they give us a dozen more seasons of this show and that they make these seasons longer. I know animation takes a long time but god damn we need more episodes of this.