X-Men '97 ending explained: Series cements itself as the best X-Men adaptation ever

The loving detail poured into every frame, every line, is stuffed more than Beast's bath drain after a shower, demanding endless rewatches. That's especially true of the season 1 finale, which sets up an already-confirmed second season with the kind of story arcs that will have fans old and new screaming louder than Banshee on a rollercoaster.

It's a lot to take in, though, so that's where we come in.

*Warning: Spoilers for X-Men '97 ahead*

X-Men '97 ending explained

The ending begins with Magneto and Charles bonding over beer in a time when the X-Men were but a glint in Xavier's eye. Discussing the mutant issue, the pair essentially come out to each other in the kind of scene that will fuel fanfiction for months, if not years, from this point on.

Already though, their conflicting ideologies when it comes to mutants and their place in society is causing friction between them both.

"In my experience, minds are far harder to bend than metal," says Magneto, only to then discover that Charles was trying to do exactly that to him. Because they're not in the past at all. They're in the present that immediately follows the previous episode. Magneto had just pulled the adamantium metal out of Wolverine's skeleton, so Charles is fighting back from within his old friend's mind.

If Magneto doesn't undo the planet-wide EMP that's wiped out power for all of humanity, Xavier says he will have no choice but to make him do it in a move that risks shattering both their minds.

Whether Magneto was indeed "right" or not, (spoiler, he was), that doesn't stop Charles from "psychically penetrating" his bestie against his wishes. Make of that very specific phrasing what you will.

As power returns to earth, extremely satisfying Marvel cameos pop up, including Iron Man, Captain America, Daredevil and Doctor Strange mid-surgery. Now this is how you do a cameo. The wider MCU, please take note.

Meanwhile, Forge, Storm, and other X-Men who Bastion bested try appealing to his humanity. But Operation Tolerance is about to skip to the final phase. Cue even more cameos of other heroes reacting to Bastion's plan, including Black Panther, Cloak and Dagger, Omega Red's Soviet Super-Soldiers and the Canadian X-Men counterpart, Alpha Flight, complete with Psylocke of all people. The real Psylocke! Not just Morph cosplaying.

Bastion plans to murder Cable as an example to the other mutants, betraying Mister Sinister in the process by killing off his new lapdog, but then, suddenly, the neural scrambler designed to stop Bastion somehow reassembles itself.

Storm chuckles then, a warm hearty chuckle, which means it's about to go down for Bastion… And it does, because Jean Grey suddenly rises from the watery depths with the immortal words, "I am Phoenix". But this isn't just a nostalgic re-run of her ascension from the original series.

With a giant psionic claw, Jean Phoenix grabs Bastion and forces the scrambler over his receding hairline, thereby releasing every human-turned-sentinel around the world who was under his grasp.

Oh, Jean thinks she can single-handedly stop Bastion and Mister Sinister too? "All I do is think," says the world's preeminent psychic, and with that, she then pulls out all of the mutant DNA Mister Sinister has stolen for himself over the years, leaving him a pathetic, dried out husk.

Morph gets a jab in at Sinister's new look, which means the world for both him and fans who watched the shapeshifter suffer so much at the good doctor's hands back in the '90s show.

But that's not all. By giving Jean this moment, one where she finally defeats the man who plagued her family all these years, it proves what fans of the comics have known all along. That Jean is an omega level powerhouse, one of the strongest mutants on the entire planet, who's now worlds away from the woman who fainted every time the breeze shifted back in the original '90s cartoon.

Sure, the Phoenix Force did play a part in this, pulling Jean back so she could protect her "son", but the entire new series already established her strength, with or without cosmic backup in everything from her pinball Prime Sentinel fight to the effortless psychometry she used to explore Bastion's past.

Yet Bastion himself isn't down for the count just yet. In a move that would make the MCU's Rocket Raccoon proud, he rips Cable's metal arm out of his shoulder and beats him with it before transforming its (Legacy Virus) infected metal into a coat of armour that gives him more strength than ever — plus some Archangel-style wings which pre-shadow the finale's post credits scene. (More on that shortly)

With that, Bastion zooms off into space with plans to take Magneto's new HQ, Asteroid M, and smash it down to earth, creating a dinosaur-style extinction event for humans and mutants alike.

Meanwhile, Cyclops checks on a still unconscious Wolverine, telling him that he's gotta be the best at what he does, which is heal, apparently, and not slice people up like shish kebab, as we've previously been led to believe. "Don't you dare break her heart," says Scott, knowing full well that Jean would be devastated if Logan died because, bear with us if you don't read the comics, this would break up the throuple once and for all.

Charles and Magneto are unconscious too, but using their combined strength and (platonic?) love for each other, they begin to break free, which is just as well, because if Magneto loses his mind completely, so will Xavier.

With so many of their heavy-hitters stranded on earth or out for the count, the remaining X-Men are apprehensive about Bastion's arrival to say the least, but as Rogue points out with a sweet homage to Gambit, "The odds are always in the X-Men's favour."

Remy's clearly on Rogue's mind, because when the man who killed him shows up, Rogue screams, "His name is Gambit, remember it!" before beating the living daylights out of Bastion. Raging punches and even a Hulk-style thunder clap aren't enough to stop him though, but just as she's about to join Remy in Cajun heaven, Sunspot shows up with reinforcements.

The battle hasn't gone unnoticed on earth where President Kelly and other world leaders decide to initiate the "Magneto Protocols," which essentially means a bunch of rockets will hit Asteroid M at its core and knock it out of the sky. Captain America doesn't think it's a good idea, but as this show already reminded us a few episodes earlier, the big boy scout is absolutely useless when it comes to mutant affairs.

While Charles and Magneto cosy up some more in their shared psychic space — "I have you Magnus, I’ll always have you" — the remaining team members fight Bastion off as long as they can.

Nightcrawler bamfs, Cyclops hits Bastion with a Marvel VS Capcom-sized optic blast, and Jubilee defies all expectations — "What will you do, child? Slay me like the Fourth of July?" — by shoving a mouthful of plasma fireworks into Bastion's face. For fans of the '90s X-Men series, watching Jubes hurt Bastion more than anyone else has up to this point is another redemptive moment where everyone's favourite mall rat finally gets the respect she's long deserved.

The ground team arrives in a sentinel that's been rejigged by Beast and Forge, crushing Bastion under foot. Throwing a machine at a technopath is kind of like throwing Wolverine, a man full of metal, at Magneto, the Master of Magnetism, but it's iconic nonetheless.

Realising they can't win through brute force, Cyclops asks the team to stand down though so they can try and reason with Bastion instead. Because that always works.

"I massacre you freaks and you’re recruiting me?" Bastion replies. But before the fight can continue, the missiles sent from earth arrive and blow up the asteroid's core. Scott tells Bastion to grab on as Jean scoops up the team with her telekinetic shield, but he just laughs him off and is presumably destroyed in the blast.

Shout out to Morph holding on for dear life with Mister Fantastic's stretchy arms.

In a throwback to Jean's final moments on the shuttle before Phoenix entered her three decades ago, Cyclops plans to stay behind and destroy the asteroid while everyone else escapes. Beast realises that's dumb because Scott can't manage this alone, but he's smart enough to not challenge Cyclops in that moment and instead suggests they all work together, knowing that even this is quite a stretch.

Scott and Jean appear to Cable on earth then via psychic projection, because this might be their last chance to say goodbye to their (sort of) son. Nathan admits that he was "p****d off" hearing about the X-Men in the future he hails from because he should have been in those stories too, which is when Jean breaks his heart (and ours) by saying, "You were, you really were".

We learn that on the day Cable was born, Nathan's mother said he has his father's eyes. It's true and we know that, because Jean telekinetically holds Scott's optic beam back long enough then to finally reveal those "good" eyes of his to their son before saying goodbye. If only Jean could hold back the tears flooding from ours.

To an operatic version of the X-Men theme that defined the childhoods of an entire generation, the team band together to try and stop Asteroid M from falling to earth. Jean's telekinesis, Storm's hurricane winds and Rogue's bulging guns combined still aren't strong enough though, so Nightcrawler prays for everyone while Morph tells Logan he loves him, but in Jean's form, knowing full well that's what Wolverine wants to hear as he calls out for her in these final moments.

Magneto, the guy who bounces back more than the Phoenix and Wolverine combined, returns to full power then, finally escaping Xavier's mindscape to dramatically utter the line, "Magneto lives!" Oh, and he also stops the asteroid from crashing to earth like it's nothing because truly, there is nothing this man can't pull off.

How the X-Men '97 finale sets up season 2

So the day is saved, right? Contrary to what Rogue said earlier, the odds are not "always in the X-Men's favour", because the show then jumps forward six months after "E-Day", where we learn that the team's fate is now a mystery. Everyone's gone missing, it seems, as well as the asteroid itself.

Forge has made a chart of everyone's known location, Days of Future Past-style, which includes other notable mutants including Magik, Colossus, Dust, Exodus, Havok, Iceman, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, just to name a few. But our faves? All missing and presumed dead.

Bishop shows up then from the future, finally, to point out that: "This ain't our first time at 'The X-Men are dead' rodeo". Forge can't find them, but that's because it's a question of "when, not where". Something has pulled the X-Men through time and it's their job to go rescue the team.

That's when we jump to Egypt in 3000BC where Rogue, Nightcrawler, Beast, Xavier and Magneto have wound up. Together, they rescue a mutant who declares their name to be En Sabah Nur aka Apocalypse, a major villain from the comics and the animated show (who was turned into an angry smurf that Oscar Isaac played in the X-Men film also titled Apocalypse).

Scott and Jean, meanwhile, have been pulled into the future, 3960 AD to be precise, where they meet a woman named Mother Askani and their son Cable, who is now a child. This is the future where Nathan was sent to be raised back in episode three, and if this goes anything like it did in the comics, Mother Askani is also their child, a powerful psychic named Rachel Summers.

In fact, Rachel could very well be the one who brought Scott and Jean into the future, as she did in 1994's comic book mini series The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. A bonus no-Prize goes to anyone who realised that Star Trek legend Gates McFadden (of Next Generation and Picard fame) voices Mother Askani here.

But actually, it seems more likely that Apocalypse could somehow be responsible for these timey-wimey shenanigans, because he's in the past, he's in this future, and during a surprise post-credits scene, he also pops up in the present too.

Amidst the rubble of Genosha, Apocalypse finds one of Gambit's tattered playing cards which he must have thrown before he was killed back in episode 5. "So much pain, my children," says Apocalypse. "So much death…"

And there we have it kids. Gambit is coming back, but not as his loveable self. The Ragin' Cajun will be a lot more 'Ragin' in season 2 because this line reveals Apocalypse's plan to bring Gambit back as one of his four horsemen, as per the comics.

There, Gambit was transformed by Apocalypse into a darker being named Death, who he turned against the X-Men. But 'Death' couldn't quite bring himself to kill his former teammates because of his love for Rogue. Aw shucks, shuga.

But where is Morph? And Storm? And where is Wolverine, now without his trademark adamantium? Most importantly of all, how will the team reunite and how will they overcome all this trauma?

In the words of Beast, "Oh dear". But in the words of a longtime fan who's thrilled to see the X-Men better than they've ever been on screen before, "Oh yay!" doesn't even begin to cover it.

X-Men '97 is available to stream on Disney Plus. Sign up to Disney Plus from £4.99 a month.

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