X-Men ’97 wasn’t about superheroes, it was about people
Who are the X-Men for?
The malleability of the mutant metaphor has long been a strength of the Marvel property. As a product of the ’60s, it was popularly understood as the superhuman version of the struggle for civil rights. In the 21st century, fans have adopted it as a queer narrative, identifying with the coming out of mutant characters and the thematic throughline of found family that was present from the comics’ earliest days. In between and beyond, mutants have been easy for any outgroup or minority in society to identify with, a perpetual underdog and a victim of humanity’s terrible impulse to other its own.
In lacking a consistent real-world analogue for its mutants, X-Men stories often find specificity in their antagonists. The best ones are philosophical: Other mutants who believe in mutant supremacy over coexistence (Magneto, sometimes) or in the ruthless math of the Darwinian struggle (Apocalypse, always). Humans who see mutants as a biological gold mine to be stripped for parts (Mr. Sinister) or weaponized (William Stryker). Or other outgroups who find in themselves another possible future for humanity, one where mutants aren’t even in the picture (the Children of the Vault).
Season 1 of the Disney Plus revival series X-Men ’97 is a bit of a grand tour through this existential battleground for Marvel’s mutants, with a dizzying variety of antagonists breezing through to complicate their struggle for acceptance. In its three-part finale, the series settles on one: Bastion, a human-machine hybrid who sees his post-human transformation as a natural response to the extinction-level event that is mutation. An immovable object against the unstoppable force of mutants and their potential to replace “normal” humans as the majority.
Herein lies the specificity of X-Men ’97. “Tolerance is Extinction,” the finale’s title, takes its name from Bastion’s ideological argument: that humanity’s coexistence with, and embrace of, mutantkind will result in its own
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