Numerous stories meet premature endings

If you’ve seen the episode, you’re still wiping away tears, I know. But if not, be careful: there are spoilers from here on out.

I admit that I didn’t give a damn for ‘X-Men 97’: on paper, it seemed the umpteenth iteration of a late and outdated nostalgia that came to undermine, a little more, the already obsolete genre of superheroes. However, it has turned out to be not only a narrative revolution, but also a reminder of why we love these characters. Without fear of embracing the aesthetics and arguments of pure comics, ‘X-Men 97’ has reached its climax in a fifth episode full of twists and love by the X-Men about which it is inevitable to want to know a little more.

Notice: There are spoilers from here on out., and don’t think that because it’s an animated series they won’t surprise you, because it’s quite the opposite. You are warned.

Every time you say on social media how much you enjoy ‘X-Men 97’, someone comes out to remember that Beau DeMayo, its director, was fired from Marvel after finishing this first season. Luckily, he has broken his silence a Twitter to clarify some points of this fifth episode that he has been passionate about doing (“was the center of my pitch Marvel in November 2020”) and explain why what happens happens, taking as an example the trip that An entire generation of Americans suffered with 9/11.

For the most part, in our young minds, the world was a simple place filled with good and bad, where questions about identity and social justice had relatively clear answers. Then 9/11 happened, and the world turned against itself. Things weren’t so safe anymore. Populist movements began to emerge around the world as an entire nation struggled to confront the collective trauma and brokenness of all demographic groups. The effects continue to be felt today and have been exacerbated by other collective traumas such as COVID or various recessions.

He then goes on to explain the reason for Gambit’s death, so iconic and at the same time so traumatizing especially seeing the direction the character was taking: “There’s a reason he told Pícara that anyone would suffer his hand at a dance, even if it ended up not being him who suffered. But if events like 9/11, Tulsa, Charlottesville or the Pulse nightclub have taught us anything, the thing is many stories are cut too soon”.

I was going to party at Pulse. It was my club. I have many wonderful memories of your amazing white living room. It was, like Genosha, a safe space for me and anyone like me to dance and be free. I thought a lot about this preparing for this season and this episode, and how Orlando’s gay community was able to heal after what happened.

Like many of us who grew up watching the original series, the X-Men have been shaken by the realities of an unsafe, adult world. Life has overwhelmed them. And now, like we did, they have to decide which parts of themselves they will hold on to and which parts they will let go to do what they have asked humanity to do: face an uncertain future they never saw coming.

There are only five episodes left to finish the first season of ‘X-Men 97’, and the path seems as clear as it is painful as its showrunner warns us: “The X-Men will have to decide if this is a moment for social justice or, as Magneto said at his trial, for social healing”. To me, my X-Men!

In Espinof: