The twilight of the first season of X-Men ’97 has officially begun, with part one of the show’s three part finale “Tolerance Is Extinction” now available to stream on Disney Plus as of this morning.
Over these next three episodes, the X-Men will be going up against their most heinous foe yet in Bastion, the ringleader of Operation Zero Tolerance who seeks to wipe out all mutants so that they don’t replace humans as the dominant species. He’s accomplishing this by… replacing humans with Prime Sentinels as the dominant species so that they can all go exterminate mutants.
Divided, the X-Men fought back against the sudden wave of elite robot soldiers to the best of their ability; Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Cable in the town of Harmony, Pennsylvania; Beast, Wolverine, Morph, and Nightcrawler at the fated X-Mansion, guarding a still-unconscious Rogue; Jubilee and Sunspot falling victim to an arrest in Brazil; and Storm still MIA for the time being.
Salvation came in the form of Magneto, who was released from his restraints by a guilt-ridden Valerie Cooper, and traveled to the North Pole. From here, he sent an electromagnetic pulse across the globe, disabling all the Prime Sentinels and effectively declaring war on humans at the same moment that Charles Xavier crashed back down to Earth.
As this is all happening, Bastion angrily forces Valerie to take Magneto’s place as his prisoner, where she delivered the monologue that was heard across the Marvel fandom. Comparing the events on Genosha (where Valerie was present at the time of the attack) to “déjà vu,” with respect to how humanity always seems to swing back to a mutant-extinction event of some kind, she notes how Magneto always knew that as a truth about humanity before uttering “Magneto was right” (a phrased she furthermore prefaced by saying how unthinkable of a thought it was). Xavier returned to Earth shortly after, and summoned his X-Men.
Indeed, even when mutants had a peaceful home away from the rest of humanity, they still faced persecution, albeit at the hands of a conspiratorial attack from a megalomaniacal android. And unfortunately, self-defense is only a necessity of the aggressor’s making, and Bastion and his Prime Sentinels just poked one of the most dangerous bears in the Marvel Universe.
X-Men ’97 is currently streaming on Disney Plus, with new episodes releasing every Wednesday until the season finale on May 15. A second season is currently in production, while a third is also being developed.
