Carrying on the legacy of its predecessor, X-Men ’97 leaves no stone unturned when it comes to adapting and remixing the great X-Men comics of the 1980s and ’90s.
And the final moments of this week’s episode, “Tolerance is Extinction — Part 2,” are no exception. If you’ve seen it, you know, and if you haven’t you should go watch it, because what comes next is one of the strangest swerves Marvel Comics ever tried to take with Wolverine. [Ed.
note: This piece contains spoilers for “Tolerance is Extinction — Part 2,” the penultimate episode of X-Men ’97 season 1.] At the end of “Tolerance is Extinction — Part 2,” Magneto rips the adamantium out of Wolverine’s body, in a moment ripped straight from the pages of 1993’s X-Men #25, and originally inspired by an offhand comment in a Marvel writers’ meeting.
Comics writer Peter David recalled the moment to Comic Book Resources in 2007: What happened was that we were all discussing how we were going to have Magneto’s return be a big deal.
The other writers were bouncing around the notion of a huge Magneto/Wolverine slugfest and I said, thinking out loud, “Boy, y’know, if I’m Magneto, I don’t even bother with Wolverine.