The season 1 finale of X-Men ’97 ends with the team saving Earth from the human-Sentinel hybrid Bastion AND from getting crushed by Asteroid M. Unfortunately, they’ve been missing for six months and are presumed dead.
But the X-Men are still alive and are actually scattered across the timestream. Rogue, Nightcrawler, Beast, Professor X, and Magneto find themselves in Ancient Egypt, around 3000 BC. Meanwhile, Cyclops and Jean Grey are stranded in the year 3960 A.D, thousands of years into the future.
The show doesn’t give us an explanation for why the X-Men are in two completely different time periods, but in the end that’s not all that important for the writers. What matters is setting the characters up for the next big story arc for season 2: the return of Apocalypse.
First, a Quick Recap of What Happens in Tolerance Is Extinction
The season 1 finale Tolerance Is Extinction is a three-part epic.
Driven by grief and rage over Bastion’s genocide against the mutants of Genosha, Magneto uses his magnetic powers to unleash a global EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) to disable Bastion’s Prime Sentinels. The entire world is plunged into darkness as the EMP shuts off Earth’s electromagnetic field, exposing the planet to lethal solar radiation along with crippling electrical grids around the globe. The Earth at most, has 12 hours before all life is eradicated.
It’s a declaration of war against humanity, and President Robert Kelly responds in kind. He activates the Magneto Protocols by launching missiles at Asteroid M, Magneto’s orbital space station, to destroy it.
To reverse the effects of Magneto’s EMP attack, Professor X does something drastic. He launches an all-out psychic assault on Magneto that forces him to repair the Earth’s magnetosphere, violating his old friend’s mind in the process. It works, but Xavier’s mental assault shatters Magneto’s psyche, leaving him lost inside his own mind.
Then things get worse. One, Bastion is fighting the X-Men while they try to save Earth. Two, the missiles hit Asteroid M and destroy its gravitational core. Now the entire space station is falling toward Earth. Beast tries to find a solution, yet unfortunately for all of mankind, Magneto is the solution. With his ability to control magnetic fields, he’s the only one with power to stop it. But Magneto is barely coherent, and isn’t capable of doing anything.
So Xavier rebuilds Magneto’s mind from the ground up, at the risk of damaging his own mind. It works and Magneto succeeds in pulling Asteroid M away from Earth. Mankind is saved, Bastion is dead and the X-Men mysteriously disappear.
Why Are the X-Men Scattered Across Time?
All we know is that one set of X-Men are stuck in ancient Egypt, another set are in the future while Wolverine, Storm and Morph’s fates are unknown. In the present day, Forge and Bishop are trying to find a way to bring the X-Men back to the 1990s.
But why are the X-Men lost in the timestream in the first place? How did something like that even happen?
The show doesn’t offer a clear explanation for those questions. One theory is that a combination of different factors may have disrupted the timestream.
The explosion of the asteroid’s gravitational core, combined with the use of Magneto’s powers plus Jean’s powers getting a temporary boost from the Phoenix Force, possibly created the rupture. The events of Tolerance is Extinction could have triggered some kind of temporal shockwave strong enough to throw the X-Men through time.
Why they end up in two different periods is something the show is leaving unresolved for season 2 to answer.
This Isn’t the First Time the Timeline Has Been Under Strain
X-Men ’97, and the original 1990s animated series before it, has hinted that the timestream in this universe is fragile.
The original X-Men: The Animated Series introduced Cable as a soldier from a dystopian future, sent back to the present to prevent the catastrophe from happening. It gave us Bishop, a time-traveler who crossed into the past to prevent the assassination of Robert Kelly.
These stories shared a common theme: the present is being altered by forces from the future, and the timeline is not stable. It responds to what people do.
X-Men ’97 inherits all of that. A present-day Cable is sent forward in time by his own parents in hopes of finding a cure for his deadly techno-organic virus. He returns as an adult in a desperate but ultimately failed attempt to prevent the Genosha massacre and save his mother Madelyne Pryor.
All that time-traveling and trying to alter the past to change the future was bound to take its toll sooner or later.
All Roads Lead to Apocalypse
Right now, the only thing the writers want you to care about is that Apocalypse is back and not even the X-Men can avoid him.
The team sent to Ancient Egypt meets En Sabah Nur before he transforms into the villainous Apocalypse they’re familiar with. The future that Cyclops and Jean find themselves in is already under Apocalypse’s rule with Clan Askani acting as the resistance.
And then there’s the Apocalypse in the present-day. The post-credits scene from the season 1 finale shows him standing in the wreckage of Genosha. He reaches down to pull one of Gambit’s playing cards from the debris. Apocalypse turns it over in his hands as he says “So much pain, my children. So much…death.”
Gambit died during the Genosha massacre. In the comics, Apocalypse has the power to resurrect the dead and has used it to create his Four Horsemen. X-Men ’97 is dropping some major hints that Gambit will suffer a similar fate at some point in the series.
It’s clear that a good chunk of Season 2 will be devoted to stopping Apocalypse in some capacity. The team in Ancient Egypt will most likely try to prevent En Sabah Nur from becoming Apocalypse. Cyclops and Jean are probably going to join Clan Askani in their mission to end Apocalypse’s reign of terror.
We might never get a clear answer for why the X-Men are lost in time, but hopefully X-Men ’97 will answer an even more pressing question. Who’s going to stop Apocalypse in the present timeline?
Season 2 of X-Men ’97 will premiere July 1, 2026 on Disney+.
