X-Men ’97 Rushes to the Season Finale in “Survival of the Fittest”

Movies & TV X-Men 97

X-Men ’97 Rushes to the Season Finale in “Survival of the Fittest”

The season suffers from the fast pace but brings home a powerful theme of found family as essential for survival

By Ben Francisco

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Published on August 14, 2026

Image: Marvel Animation

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Image: Marvel Animation

The opening credits features the show’s largest official line-up of X-Men to date, with 14 characters getting title cards. The main change is that Jubilee (Holly Chou) and Sunspot (Gui Agustini) are back in the opening, reflecting their defection from X-Force back to the X-Men last episode. At the end of the credits, instead of Magneto and the Brotherhood, it’s Val Cooper and X-Factor charging against the X-Men.

Picking up where last episode left off, Cable (Chris Potter) tells Val Cooper (Catherine Disher) and Havok (Teddy Sears) that the only way to stop Apocalypse (Ross Marquand) is to kill Gambit (A.J. Locascio) before Apocalypse takes over his body.

Deep underwater, Beast (George Buza), Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough), and Rogue (Lenore Zann) take an X-submarine to investigate the ruins of Ship (Rachel Kimsey), the ancient Celestial vessel that once served as Apocalypse’s base of operations. They successfully reboot Ship, who warns them that entering the Celestial Shrine always requires a price. Despite the warning, Rogue enters the same shrine that gave Apocalypse his power, hoping to attain the means to defeat him and save Gambit.

X-Factor arrives at the X-Corps base in Genosha, and Val Cooper demands that Professor X (Ross Marquand) turn over Gambit. When Xavier refuses, Cable uses his powers to disable the EMP field protecting X-Corps. X-Factor and X-Force attack, along with an army of dozens of human-piloted mech Sentinels.

Inside the Celestial Shrine, Rogue talks to the massive Celestial Eson (Matthew Waterson), who spouts Apocalypse-style precepts about the survival of the fittest and demands that Rogue sacrifice her life for Gambit’s. Rogue accepts the deal and emerges from the Shrine literally shining with power, clad in armor of black and gold.

Back in Genosha, it’s an all-out X-on-X-on-X battle! Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith) commands the wind to knock out dozens of Sentinel mechs, taking care not to harm the human pilots. Archangel and Psylocke (Naoki Mori) ambush Morph (J.P. Karliak) and Wolverine (Cal Dodd). In the air, Jubilee and Havok trade insults and missiles, until both have to crash and eject. The rest of X-Factor takes down Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith) and Polaris (Carolina Ravassa), until a newly awakened Gambit comes to their rescue.

Jean (Jennifer Hale) and Cyclops (Ray Chase) plead with their son Cable to work together as a family to both stop Apocalypse and save Gambit. But Cable insists that Gambit’s one life is not worth the billions of lives that Apocalypse will kill, leading to a battle of the Summers family. Cable knocks out Cyclops’s visor and then blows out an entire floor of the X-Corps building, leaving wreckage and smoke everywhere. In the confusion, Cable finds Gambit and shoots him.

But instead of killing Gambit, Cable’s gunshot releases Apocalypse, who emerges in a new, larger form that combines elements of his and Gambit’s usual looks. Jean explains that she can’t reach Gambit’s mind and Apocalypse seems to have taken over completely. All three teams attack Apocalypse, but he easily deflects them, taking over all their bodies except for Professor X. Xavier’s former students surround him, and Apocalypse tells him that he must finally learn the lesson that “The ones you care for will be your undoing.”

Xavier responds, “No, they are how we survive,” as Rogue arrives, glimmering with power. She frees the other mutants from Apocalypse’s control and uses her Celestial power-up to extract Apocalypse’s conscience from Gambit. She compresses Apocalypse’s essence into a blue gem and gives it to Cable. Gambit revives as his normal self, and the two exchange a tender kiss as the last of Rogue’s Celestial power fades away.

Rogue pulls away from Gambit’s embrace, explaining that a sacrifice was required to save him. Beast has returned alone, holding the Bible that belonged to Nightcrawler.

In a flashback to the Celestial Shrine, we learn that Nightcrawler offered his life in exchange for his sister Rogue’s, having faith that his sacrifice will allow his teammates to thrive.

In a post-credits scene, Val Cooper sees the news that anti-mutant Graydon Creed will be the next president. Another Val Cooper enters, and the first reveals herself to be Mystique (Randall Carpenter)! Mystique shoots Val and again takes her form, poised to take her place.

This and the previous episode, which essentially are a two-part season finale, are the ones that suffered most from the show’s neckbreak pace. As with every episode this season, the animation is gorgeous, and the voice-acting is exceptional. But so many storylines are getting rushed to their conclusions that many don’t get the time they need for a fully satisfying payoff.

Gambit and Rogue’s story in many ways has been the heart of this season’s arc and gets the strongest closing. A.J. Locascio and Lenore Zann offer stellar voice-acting performances as Gambit and Rogue, conveying the depth of both their sadness and their connection. I especially enjoyed Rogue’s conversation with the Celestial Eson. The animation beautifully captured how miniscule a human is compared to a Celestial, and I appreciated Rogue’s dogged insistence on the power of love in response to Apocalypse and Eson’s more cynical worldview.

I also appreciated that Gambit’s return ultimately required a heavy price. Nightcrawler’s sacrifice, skillfully voiced by Adrian Hough, was moving and offered a nice callback to the faith debates of “Strange Land, Savage Heart.” It also reflected his strong connection to his sister Rogue, which has been a recurring theme.

But it didn’t hit as hard as Gambit’s death last season, which flowed organically from the plot while also being realistically and heartbreakingly abrupt. In contrast, Nightcrawler’s sacrifice in this episode felt a bit forced. It wasn’t clear why Eson was demanding a sacrifice, and there was a bit of a clunky shell game, swapping Gambit’s life for Rogue’s and then again for Nightcrawler’s. I also found it oddly and distractingly symmetrical; last season, Nightcrawler took Gambit’s place after he died, and now they’re switching back.

The Summers family storyline also didn’t have the emotional impact I’d hoped for. Cable’s confrontation with Scott and Jean struck the right tone, but we don’t really get to see its implications yet.

My biggest disappointment was how quickly Apocalypse was defeated; Rogue arrives with her Celestial upgrade and pretty much defeats him in a single blow. That’s a pretty fast and easy defeat after an entire season building him up as the big bad.

Looking back over the past nine episodes, the details of Apocalypse’s plan seem amorphous and confusing. In the season premiere, Apocalypse said he was returning to the 1990s to defeat the X-Men at their weakest. My sense is that it’s “Future Apocalypse” that the X-Men have defeated in “Survival of the Fittest,” but that’s a guess based on a single line of dialogue—Archangel saying that Apocalypse’s equipment is far more advanced than any he’d used on him back in episode two. Beyond that, Apocalypse’s time-traveling schemes seem to have had no impact on the plot. In the premiere, an aging Apocalypse was trying to steal the body of a young and powerful Nathan Dayspring, which made sense. But how does it help Apocalypse to revive and possess Gambit’s dead body? It seems like he might intentionally be messing with Rogue given their conversations about love and loss in ancient Egypt, but that’s an oddly personal and convoluted centerpiece for a millenia-long plan for global domination.

My favorite throughline of the season has been the competing philosophies of the different X-teams: the X-Men’s idealistic vision of harmony vs. X-Force’s belief in the necessity of violent force vs. X-Factor’s collaboration with the repressive regime—all with Apocalypse’s extremist Darwinian philosophy hovering in the background. With X-Force and X-Factor teaming up, I’d hoped for more of those themes in this episode, but they got little airtime beyond a few barbs between Psylocke and Wolverine.

The theme they did bring home successfully was Apocalypse’s argument that, essentially, love is a weakness. This question was the centerpiece of the two-part “Rise of Apocalypse,” featuring heavily in En Sabah Nur’s conversation about love with Rogue and in his brutal obliteration of Magneto in front of Charles. At the end of the finale, when Xavier tells Apocalypse that the ones we care for are how we survive, it’s a powerful inverted response to the survival of the fittest, proclaiming that love and caring are part of what makes the X-Men stronger. It brings a heady philosophical debate down to a more human level and evokes the theme of found family that has long been part of the X-Men’s queer-coded ethos. (It’s also a biological fact; for all his talk of evolution, Apocalypse ignores the simple reality that social cooperation is a highly advantageous adaptation for survival!)

The post-credits tease of Mystique is interesting. Since way back in the midpoint of the first season, there has been endless fan speculation that Mystique replaced Val Cooper back in Genosha. (I always thought that was unlikely because Cooper’s behavior for the past season and a half hasn’t seemed quite in-character for Mystique.) The showrunners seem to be directly responding to the speculation, saying, “Well, that wasn’t Mystique before—but it is now!”

With Mystique taking Cooper’s place at the head of X-Factor, and anti-mutant Creed ascending to the presidency, next season may focus on threats that are more grounded than Apocalypse or Bastion. I’m here for that, and I hope it offers the chance to delve more into the “mutant philosophy debates” that are my personal favorite thing in the show. I’m also fully ready for the Mystique-Rogue-Gambit drama, especially in the wake of the loss of Nightcrawler.

And I’m holding out hope for Mystique’s wife Destiny to make her X-Men ’97 debut! She’s a great character with a fascinating power set, and she and Mystique were intended to be queer since their debut in 1978 but weren’t allowed to be explicitly “out” for decades. It would be powerful to bring such an iconic queer couple from X-lore to animated life.

Overall, while some plotlines could have used more time to come full circle, this was a strong season that kept the momentum from the stellar first season going. Episodes two, six, and seven remain my favorites, and each spotlighted characters that often don’t get enough love: Jubilee, Polaris, and Nightcrawler. I hope the show continues that tradition and explores some of the Generation X characters that we met briefly this season—which would also offer the chance to feature the school aspect of the X-Men more. At the same time, I hope they keep the story focused on a tighter core cast, because 14 X-Men feels like too many to do justice to.

The entire internet seems to agree that nine episodes was just not enough this season. I hope some Disney exec is paying attention and green-lights twelve or thirteen episodes for season three. It will give the writers and fans the time and space for the stories to stretch out more, just as this beautiful animated revival deserves.[end-mark]

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