Everything we know about X-Men ’97 season 2

polygon.com:

X-Men ’97 closed out its first season in the glorious, traditional way of its forebear, X-Men: The Animated Series. That is to say, with a wild cliffhanger.

But unlike the last season of The Animated Series, which saw Professor Xavier leaving Earth to (presumably) die of wounds sustained in battle with anti-mutant forces, X-Men ’97 won’t take 27 years to follow up.

Yes! X-Men ’97’s second season was greenlit in back in 2022, and production on it is already largely wrapped, with Marvel Animation spinning up production on a third season as well.

It’s a good time to be a fan of the X-Men in animation!

In a word: Apocalypse. The final episode of season 1 left the X-Men separated across three different time periods following the destruction of Magneto’s floating base, Asteroid M. This doesn’t seem to have been intentional on their part — the time-stranded X-Men seem flummoxed by it, and as Bishop describes it, “something or someone yanked our friends through time.” Being a time traveler himself, Bishop would know.

So the second season of X-Men ’97 looks to be separating itself into three plot lines — at least to start with — set in Egypt’s ancient past, Earth’s far future, and the present day. And if we bring in some X-Men comics knowledge, it’s clear that all of these plots arc back to the villain Apocalypse.

Rogue, Nightcrawler, Beast, Professor X, and Magento seem to be stranded in the ancient past, just in time to interact with the origin story of Apocalypse. The big, blue-faced X-Men villain who believes mutantkind must be put through rigorous “survival of the fittest”-based challenges in order to claim their dominance over humans began his immortal existence as an ancient Egyptian man.

Cyclops and Jean are stranded 2,000 years in the future, in the time of Clan Askani, a group of rebel fighters resisting the (ahem) post-apocalyptic rule of Apocalypse. In the comics, the Askani’s timeline is where baby Cable was sent, in the hopes that the future might hold