ONTD Original - Ranking All X-Men 97 Episodes!
Greetings and Salutations, my fellow jackals! I have just binged all 10 episodes of X-Men 97 over the last few hours to provide my, admittedly biased and entirely subjective, ranking of all 10 episodes of X-Men 97. For context, I have watched each and every episode of this series at least 3 times, never skipping the intro, because why skip over greatness? I've likely watched every episode of the 92 series at least that amount of times as well, presumably more. For additional context, I am an X-Fan of over 30 years, so I have a very informed opinion of the various beats that the show was going for.
Needless to say, this post will contain various spoilers. So if you haven't watched any, or all, of the episodes yet and you don't want to know anything about what was going on, well, stay out of this post!
#10: Motendo / Lifedeath Part 1
The unfortunate truth is that, when ranking all the episodes of a series, one episode has to end up being at the bottom of the list. This does not mean that the episode is not good. I could rank every one of the Golden Girls housemates, and Dorothy would always be last, but that doesn't mean I don't love Dorothy! And while I won't go as far as saying that I loved this episode, I can definitely say that I still enjoyed it. However, the fact that it is the only episode in the season that has this kind of "split focus" to the episode really hurts it in the end. Moreover, the Motendo portion of the episode is what really solidifies the position in the end. Ultimately, Jubilee's time with digi-Jubilee does allow her to level up her skills in the final battle against Bastion in the finale, but we're actually cheapened in that moment because we only see Jubes use the razzle-dazzle destructo disk from off camera, not even seeing her charge it up. This is the only episode of the series that has a decent portion that feels inconsequential. The latter half, the beginning of Storm's journey, is definitely more solid. Despite that, the fact that it has to share the episode runtime with Motendo ultimately strips it of some oomph.
#9: Fire Made Flesh
Perhaps the most common, and justified, criticism of X-Men 97 as a whole is the way that it rushes through some of the stories, not allowing them the chance to breathe. While this is ultimately understandable, given that the Comic Book medium can devote so much more time to such stories and animation can't do such a thing in the same way, the critique is no less valid. And while many, if not all, of the episodes can fall prey to this fact, no episode is more guilty of it than Fire Made Flesh. They ran through Maddie's entire downfall in an episode! Being able to look at the direction of the show with the full picture, or at least the full season picture, now completely displayed to the audience, one can see why they made the choice that they did. Even so, giving Maddie's story time to breathe would have been much preferred. Strong emotional beats are played out, no doubt, and the episode features Bishop's best moment in the series, but the quickened pace just left more to be desired. Nonetheless, I would rather take an episode that played important character beats, while playing them too fast, instead of an episode that basically felt like it could have been omitted entirely, hence why it places above the previous entry.
#8: Mutant Liberation Begins
Both episodes of the premiere week were enjoyable episodes, no doubt. But one episode was more enjoyable than the other, and, well, it wasn't this one! Magneto's trial worked well in explaining his choices, even if they were ultimately for naught. Scott and "Jean" choosing to trust in Rogue's ability to help deliver their child was touching. Storm's personal saga begins here with heartbreak in a multitude of ways, least of all being the way that she, one who declared herself Mistress of the Elements, was terrified by one of those same elements. The episode went with themes of hope. Hope in the future for baby Nathan. Hope in Magneto's attempts at redemption. Both turned bleak, but, in the moment, they were effective.
#7: Lifedeath Part 2
Storm's amazing. She's likely the greatest female Marvel character of all time, even though she's not my favorite female Marvel character of all time. I love her nonetheless. I am all for Storm getting some strong focus episodes. The problem is that, in this episode, there is so much time that is devoted to Charles and him trying to decide if alien avian-esque dussy is worth throwing everything else away. And since none of that really ends up coming into play at all for the rest of the season after this episode, well, that puts a knock on the episode's ranking as a whole. Ororo fighting the Adversary, almost entirely on her own, dealing with her internalized fears, including her claustrophobia, were all wonderful. And her making her costume out of the Adversary's slain form (confirmed by the EP, by the way) was great! Storm's always had amazing looks, and while I'm partial to the look she sported in episodes 1 and 2, as well as the OG series, I love the outfit she got in the latter half of the season, too! Also undeniable, and working against this episode, is the placement of the episode. Proceeding episode 5 (more on that later), and completely diverging from that narrative, was not a good choice! I don't care that the show wanted to give us "a moment to breathe" or whatever. No, I wanted to wallow in the important stuff! Now is not the time for you to go on your quest, Ororo, I'm sorry!
#6: To Me, My X-Men
This was one of the harder episodes to rank, ultimately. The series premiere. The show that would either prove that our excitement was justified or send us sulking over to Harry's Hideaway. In the end, this episode had one thing that it needed to do, and it did exactly what it needed to do! It showed us that this series understood who these characters were, and that the show, like the audience who was likely most excited for it, was going to grow up a little bit. Showcasing characters that were short changed in the previous series, and other forms of media, was nothing short of brilliant. Acknowledging Storm as an omega level threat and then giving her the chance to show just what that meant was glorious. In the end, I still had issues with some of the animation and the relative stiffness of the animation, although I will say that, by the end of the series, those concerns were gone. I get that, in the premiere, they were just starting their craft. Despite that, I can't unsee what was there.
#5: Tolerence Is Extinction Part 1
The first part of the finale, and it was perfectly fine. It gave us some good action scenes, particularly for Kurt. Definitely up there with his first action scene in X2 as a character. There was once a version of me that would have delighted in all of the Summers family melodrama, but that part of me is long gone and I was instead bored out of my mind by all of it instead of enthralled by any of it. Sometimes, in multi-part epics, there are just episodes that are slower to start. This was one of them. I might have ultimately put it behind the premiere, if it wasn't for those animation critiques that I lobbed against the premiere. In the end, that was what decided which episode ranked where.
#4: Tolerance is Extinction Part 3
I don't think that I've ever had a finale that completely went against every possible expectation that I had for it in the way that this finale did. I'm still not sure if I actually like that all the things that I was thinking were going to happen were basically thrown off the table or, at least, put on hold, but I truly respect the show for being willing to go the route that it did. They showed me that they can take me just about anywhere and I'm willing to follow them. There was also so much in terms of wonderful stuff here! Cameos galore! And not just from some of the expected characters. Was I expecting Cloak and Dagger? I was not. Was I happy to see them? You bet your ass I was! Also, this episode had as close to the ideal number of lines from a certain overexposed Canuck as possible (hint: said character had one line, so you can imagine how many lines I want in any given episode). It was also likely the most queer coded episode of the entire season. Charles and Erik sure did get close and say a lot of stuff. Plus, Morph's confession of their feelings. Speaking of Morph, this episode once again leans into that critique of blazing through stuff. Morph's worst enemy is Sinister. In most of the intros, it was consistent with showing a moment where Morph was tormented by Sinister. In the end, Morph does get the final word against Sinister, but it's just to show him that Jean basically made Sinister look like he had looked into the idol of Mara? That's it? Morph deserved more onus in Sinister's downfall. In fact, given that Morph can shift into characters and take their powers, Morph probably should have morphed into Cyclops, made some quip about it, and then blasted Sinister with optic blasts that Sinister was established as being averse to. What's done is done, and, I'll be honest, I don't really care that much about Morph (because the show didn't really care that much about Morph), but I still want justice for them. Amazing, great action scenes. Oh, and I did I mention that one character was basically totally benched? Yaaaas!
#3: Tolerance is Extinction Part 2
Selfishly, one of the best ending shots to anything that I've ever seen in my life. DO IT AGAIN, SILVER DADDY! MAKE HIM SUFFER!!!! Ahem. The thing that works best for me in X-Men is the way that it can dance around the plotty stuff and the character based stuff so effortlessly. The big action plot stuff is glorious, but it's the character beats that keep us enthralled. And this episode had plenty of character stuff. Rogue and Roberto turning heel, however nullified that ended up being in the end, was emotionally riveting. Scott standing up to Charles on multiple occasions, including blasting his surrogate daddy for his bio-boy and his wife/maybe not wife because we don't know when they got switched. Even Bastion crying over fuzzy slippered mom, showing his base humanity despite being "the future incarnate" (trademarked). Storm's triumphant return could have been framed much better. I firmly believe that she should have been completely unrevealed and just had the weather hinting at everything that was happening until a bolt of lightning came down and then Jubes looked up to see her and then ran into her ample chest, instead of them showing Storm and Forge on top of the building before the power display, but here we are. Still, undoubtedly the best part of the 3 part finale for me.
#2: Bright Eyes
The episode that I looked forward to the most out of the entire series. Obviously not my favorite episode of the series, because it's taking the silver and not the gold, but given that I had no idea what to expect when episode 5 happened, I desperately wanted to see the fallout to that episode. Instead, I had to wait an extra week because of foolish narrative choices. But then, finally, gloriously, my patience was rewarded. And there is no denying that it was rewarded in spades, pun not intended. Kurt's eulogy to Remy was beautiful. Rogue's pain was palpable. The children of Raven (minus their bigot brother) bonding was special, along with Rogue seeing that her team would be there to support her, or at least thinking that it would happen that way. It... didn't really. And Rogue on the rampage? Complete with animation that came straight out of the Capcom Versus Series? Was it likely that an episode was going to surpass the greatness of the next episode on this list? Hardly. But it was undoubtedly a worthy follow up.
#1: Remember It
I'm just going to reiterate this from the stuff before the cut: I've watched every episode of the 92 series multiple times. I've watched Pryde of the X-Men several times (amazing animation, really). I've seen every X-Men centric episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. I've watched every episode of X-Men Evolution, and the X-Men anime. I've seen many episodes of Wolverine and the X-Men. Remember It is the. single. greatest. animated. X-Men. episode. ever. I can't claim that it's the single greatest animated episode of a Marvel property, because people speak highly of Spectacular Spider-Man and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and I've never seen the first and only seen about a quarter of the second.
When I talked about Tolerance is Extinction Part 3, I talked about how the show basically went against everything that I expected and I wasn't sure if I liked that or not. I stand by that opinion within the context of that episode. With Remember It? I didn't know what the hell to expect. I mean, I had some idea of what to expect, sure. Mutants always get screwed over in the end. And there would be people who would die, yeah, but... none of the people in the intro, for sure, right? Okay, that might be true depending on how Season 2 goes. Still, officially, Remy LeBeau is dead. They killed Gambit. We thought they killed Magneto. And there was so much turmoil for Rogue. Before the series started, Beau DeMayo said that, in his estimation, Cyclops and Storm were the "main" characters of Season 1. I'm going to call fie on that statement, because I don't think any character was more important to the show than Rogue. And it worked. It worked so much. Plus, this episode re-introduced Kurt to the cast. And while Rogue was the star of the season, Kurt was the emotional anchor from the moment he showed up. He's supposed to be that in the comics, too, but I never bought into it myself. Here? I undoubtedly do.
For a few moments, we were all living in a happy nation. In the end, we were left with one unforgettable name. Gambit. We would always remember it. And this episode will always be the best episode of Season 1 of X-Men 97.
SOURCE: Me, my eyes, my mind and my fingers
Needless to say, this post will contain various spoilers. So if you haven't watched any, or all, of the episodes yet and you don't want to know anything about what was going on, well, stay out of this post!
#10: Motendo / Lifedeath Part 1
The unfortunate truth is that, when ranking all the episodes of a series, one episode has to end up being at the bottom of the list. This does not mean that the episode is not good. I could rank every one of the Golden Girls housemates, and Dorothy would always be last, but that doesn't mean I don't love Dorothy! And while I won't go as far as saying that I loved this episode, I can definitely say that I still enjoyed it. However, the fact that it is the only episode in the season that has this kind of "split focus" to the episode really hurts it in the end. Moreover, the Motendo portion of the episode is what really solidifies the position in the end. Ultimately, Jubilee's time with digi-Jubilee does allow her to level up her skills in the final battle against Bastion in the finale, but we're actually cheapened in that moment because we only see Jubes use the razzle-dazzle destructo disk from off camera, not even seeing her charge it up. This is the only episode of the series that has a decent portion that feels inconsequential. The latter half, the beginning of Storm's journey, is definitely more solid. Despite that, the fact that it has to share the episode runtime with Motendo ultimately strips it of some oomph.
#9: Fire Made Flesh
Perhaps the most common, and justified, criticism of X-Men 97 as a whole is the way that it rushes through some of the stories, not allowing them the chance to breathe. While this is ultimately understandable, given that the Comic Book medium can devote so much more time to such stories and animation can't do such a thing in the same way, the critique is no less valid. And while many, if not all, of the episodes can fall prey to this fact, no episode is more guilty of it than Fire Made Flesh. They ran through Maddie's entire downfall in an episode! Being able to look at the direction of the show with the full picture, or at least the full season picture, now completely displayed to the audience, one can see why they made the choice that they did. Even so, giving Maddie's story time to breathe would have been much preferred. Strong emotional beats are played out, no doubt, and the episode features Bishop's best moment in the series, but the quickened pace just left more to be desired. Nonetheless, I would rather take an episode that played important character beats, while playing them too fast, instead of an episode that basically felt like it could have been omitted entirely, hence why it places above the previous entry.
#8: Mutant Liberation Begins
Both episodes of the premiere week were enjoyable episodes, no doubt. But one episode was more enjoyable than the other, and, well, it wasn't this one! Magneto's trial worked well in explaining his choices, even if they were ultimately for naught. Scott and "Jean" choosing to trust in Rogue's ability to help deliver their child was touching. Storm's personal saga begins here with heartbreak in a multitude of ways, least of all being the way that she, one who declared herself Mistress of the Elements, was terrified by one of those same elements. The episode went with themes of hope. Hope in the future for baby Nathan. Hope in Magneto's attempts at redemption. Both turned bleak, but, in the moment, they were effective.
#7: Lifedeath Part 2
Storm's amazing. She's likely the greatest female Marvel character of all time, even though she's not my favorite female Marvel character of all time. I love her nonetheless. I am all for Storm getting some strong focus episodes. The problem is that, in this episode, there is so much time that is devoted to Charles and him trying to decide if alien avian-esque dussy is worth throwing everything else away. And since none of that really ends up coming into play at all for the rest of the season after this episode, well, that puts a knock on the episode's ranking as a whole. Ororo fighting the Adversary, almost entirely on her own, dealing with her internalized fears, including her claustrophobia, were all wonderful. And her making her costume out of the Adversary's slain form (confirmed by the EP, by the way) was great! Storm's always had amazing looks, and while I'm partial to the look she sported in episodes 1 and 2, as well as the OG series, I love the outfit she got in the latter half of the season, too! Also undeniable, and working against this episode, is the placement of the episode. Proceeding episode 5 (more on that later), and completely diverging from that narrative, was not a good choice! I don't care that the show wanted to give us "a moment to breathe" or whatever. No, I wanted to wallow in the important stuff! Now is not the time for you to go on your quest, Ororo, I'm sorry!
#6: To Me, My X-Men
This was one of the harder episodes to rank, ultimately. The series premiere. The show that would either prove that our excitement was justified or send us sulking over to Harry's Hideaway. In the end, this episode had one thing that it needed to do, and it did exactly what it needed to do! It showed us that this series understood who these characters were, and that the show, like the audience who was likely most excited for it, was going to grow up a little bit. Showcasing characters that were short changed in the previous series, and other forms of media, was nothing short of brilliant. Acknowledging Storm as an omega level threat and then giving her the chance to show just what that meant was glorious. In the end, I still had issues with some of the animation and the relative stiffness of the animation, although I will say that, by the end of the series, those concerns were gone. I get that, in the premiere, they were just starting their craft. Despite that, I can't unsee what was there.
#5: Tolerence Is Extinction Part 1
The first part of the finale, and it was perfectly fine. It gave us some good action scenes, particularly for Kurt. Definitely up there with his first action scene in X2 as a character. There was once a version of me that would have delighted in all of the Summers family melodrama, but that part of me is long gone and I was instead bored out of my mind by all of it instead of enthralled by any of it. Sometimes, in multi-part epics, there are just episodes that are slower to start. This was one of them. I might have ultimately put it behind the premiere, if it wasn't for those animation critiques that I lobbed against the premiere. In the end, that was what decided which episode ranked where.
#4: Tolerance is Extinction Part 3
I don't think that I've ever had a finale that completely went against every possible expectation that I had for it in the way that this finale did. I'm still not sure if I actually like that all the things that I was thinking were going to happen were basically thrown off the table or, at least, put on hold, but I truly respect the show for being willing to go the route that it did. They showed me that they can take me just about anywhere and I'm willing to follow them. There was also so much in terms of wonderful stuff here! Cameos galore! And not just from some of the expected characters. Was I expecting Cloak and Dagger? I was not. Was I happy to see them? You bet your ass I was! Also, this episode had as close to the ideal number of lines from a certain overexposed Canuck as possible (hint: said character had one line, so you can imagine how many lines I want in any given episode). It was also likely the most queer coded episode of the entire season. Charles and Erik sure did get close and say a lot of stuff. Plus, Morph's confession of their feelings. Speaking of Morph, this episode once again leans into that critique of blazing through stuff. Morph's worst enemy is Sinister. In most of the intros, it was consistent with showing a moment where Morph was tormented by Sinister. In the end, Morph does get the final word against Sinister, but it's just to show him that Jean basically made Sinister look like he had looked into the idol of Mara? That's it? Morph deserved more onus in Sinister's downfall. In fact, given that Morph can shift into characters and take their powers, Morph probably should have morphed into Cyclops, made some quip about it, and then blasted Sinister with optic blasts that Sinister was established as being averse to. What's done is done, and, I'll be honest, I don't really care that much about Morph (because the show didn't really care that much about Morph), but I still want justice for them. Amazing, great action scenes. Oh, and I did I mention that one character was basically totally benched? Yaaaas!
#3: Tolerance is Extinction Part 2
Selfishly, one of the best ending shots to anything that I've ever seen in my life. DO IT AGAIN, SILVER DADDY! MAKE HIM SUFFER!!!! Ahem. The thing that works best for me in X-Men is the way that it can dance around the plotty stuff and the character based stuff so effortlessly. The big action plot stuff is glorious, but it's the character beats that keep us enthralled. And this episode had plenty of character stuff. Rogue and Roberto turning heel, however nullified that ended up being in the end, was emotionally riveting. Scott standing up to Charles on multiple occasions, including blasting his surrogate daddy for his bio-boy and his wife/maybe not wife because we don't know when they got switched. Even Bastion crying over fuzzy slippered mom, showing his base humanity despite being "the future incarnate" (trademarked). Storm's triumphant return could have been framed much better. I firmly believe that she should have been completely unrevealed and just had the weather hinting at everything that was happening until a bolt of lightning came down and then Jubes looked up to see her and then ran into her ample chest, instead of them showing Storm and Forge on top of the building before the power display, but here we are. Still, undoubtedly the best part of the 3 part finale for me.
#2: Bright Eyes
The episode that I looked forward to the most out of the entire series. Obviously not my favorite episode of the series, because it's taking the silver and not the gold, but given that I had no idea what to expect when episode 5 happened, I desperately wanted to see the fallout to that episode. Instead, I had to wait an extra week because of foolish narrative choices. But then, finally, gloriously, my patience was rewarded. And there is no denying that it was rewarded in spades, pun not intended. Kurt's eulogy to Remy was beautiful. Rogue's pain was palpable. The children of Raven (minus their bigot brother) bonding was special, along with Rogue seeing that her team would be there to support her, or at least thinking that it would happen that way. It... didn't really. And Rogue on the rampage? Complete with animation that came straight out of the Capcom Versus Series? Was it likely that an episode was going to surpass the greatness of the next episode on this list? Hardly. But it was undoubtedly a worthy follow up.
#1: Remember It
I'm just going to reiterate this from the stuff before the cut: I've watched every episode of the 92 series multiple times. I've watched Pryde of the X-Men several times (amazing animation, really). I've seen every X-Men centric episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. I've watched every episode of X-Men Evolution, and the X-Men anime. I've seen many episodes of Wolverine and the X-Men. Remember It is the. single. greatest. animated. X-Men. episode. ever. I can't claim that it's the single greatest animated episode of a Marvel property, because people speak highly of Spectacular Spider-Man and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and I've never seen the first and only seen about a quarter of the second.
When I talked about Tolerance is Extinction Part 3, I talked about how the show basically went against everything that I expected and I wasn't sure if I liked that or not. I stand by that opinion within the context of that episode. With Remember It? I didn't know what the hell to expect. I mean, I had some idea of what to expect, sure. Mutants always get screwed over in the end. And there would be people who would die, yeah, but... none of the people in the intro, for sure, right? Okay, that might be true depending on how Season 2 goes. Still, officially, Remy LeBeau is dead. They killed Gambit. We thought they killed Magneto. And there was so much turmoil for Rogue. Before the series started, Beau DeMayo said that, in his estimation, Cyclops and Storm were the "main" characters of Season 1. I'm going to call fie on that statement, because I don't think any character was more important to the show than Rogue. And it worked. It worked so much. Plus, this episode re-introduced Kurt to the cast. And while Rogue was the star of the season, Kurt was the emotional anchor from the moment he showed up. He's supposed to be that in the comics, too, but I never bought into it myself. Here? I undoubtedly do.
For a few moments, we were all living in a happy nation. In the end, we were left with one unforgettable name. Gambit. We would always remember it. And this episode will always be the best episode of Season 1 of X-Men 97.
SOURCE: Me, my eyes, my mind and my fingers