With a single bloody episode, X-Men ’97 has entered the ‘Magneto was right’ era

polygon.com:

In the first half of its first season, X-Men ’97 has played it a little safe. That’s not to say things haven’t been rather fun, as the show has put its own spin on the Inferno and Lifedeath storylines, on Magneto inheriting leadership of the X-Men, and on the birth of Nathan Summers — all pillars of X-Men continuity or beloved greatest-hit stories of the 1980s and 1990s.

But in its fifth episode, X-Men ’97 does something X-Men: The Animated Series never could have. What’s more, the show did it emphatically, boldly, and downright thrillingly: a half-hour workshop on what you get when the X-Men brands of soap opera, sci-fi action, and philosophy of the Other come together just right.

You get one of the best spectacles superhero comics can offer.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for “Remember It,” the fifth episode of X-Men ’97.]

This week on X-Men, the X-Men went to Genosha and they watched it fall.

Genosha is an island nation for mutants, first created by Chris Claremont and Rick Leonardi in 1988. If you’ve read any X-Men comics since 2019, Genosha probably sounds a lot like Krakoa, the island nation for mutants introduced in 2019’s House of X/Powers of X series. And writer Beau DeMayo and director Emi Yonemura definitely play with that resonance in “Remember It.”

Their version of Genosha is ruled by a “council” that includes Magneto, Sebastian Shaw, Emma Frost, and Nightcrawler, as a religious advisor. Moira MacTaggert is there too, with Exodus in cameo, as the X-Men attend a “gala” filled with mutant fashion and music — all Krakoan hallmarks.

But the episode’s silent cameos are loaded with post-1990s mutant students like Glob Herman, Pixie, and Nature Girl, and they’re an early warning sign that “Remember It” is merely weaving Krakoan packaging around the island of Genosha. Because while the story of Krakoa (even as it comes to an end) is of a mutant paradise, the story of Genosha is of a mutant genocide.

Claremont and Leonardi’s Genosha began its