X-Men ’97 Season 1 ended, proving that the new series is equally as good as the old one. This isn’t really all that surprising, considering that it contains plenty of elements that were adapted or carried over from the original X-Men: The Animated Series from 1992. This also includes time travel, as seen throughout the season, as well as its finale. Time travel continues to play a crucial role in shaping the mutant team’s adventures. However, the apparent rules of time travel are as wild and complex as ever, and we’re here to explain just how time travel works in X-Men ’97.
Well, the time travel trope isn’t a novelty in any kind of fiction. It’s actually a well-established element of many sci-fi narratives, but also other genres, where time travel happens when the protagonist has either hit a dead end in their adventure or has already given up on fixing a particular problem through conventional means and methods. We’ve seen this happen in plenty of Marvel’s works and adaptations, starting with Avengers: Endgame, but also X-Men: Days of Future Past and many comic books.
While many works of fiction try to keep the slate as clean as possible and not overcomplicate things, X-Men doesn’t seem to pull its punches when it comes to the weirdest temporal retcons born of convenience. For example, nobody questions Skynet’s logic behind sending a killer robot against Sarah Connor because the premise is simple: the machine kills the boy’s mother, and she doesn’t give birth to a post-Judgment-Day rebellion leader, thus eliminating any threat the boy might have against its claim to the future.
But that’s not the case with X-Men; the time travel element in these stories doesn’t seem to follow any discernible rule or pattern. For example, X-Men: Days of Future Past deals with time travel in a somewhat linear manner, believing that by stopping Raven from killing Nixon, they could stop the Sentinel program and ultimately prevent the grim events that took place at the beginning of the movie from ever becoming a reality.
But X-Men ’97 somewhat ignores this linearity. For example, Dr. Sinister infects Madelyne Pryor and Scott Summers’ son, Nathan, with the Techno-Organic Virus before the infant is taken to the future by Bishop in hopes of finding a cure for the infection. He’s eventually not cured, but being a powerful mutant himself, Nathan is capable of stopping the further cyber-conversion of his body caused by the TO virus.
Nathan later becomes known as Cable, who uses time-traveling technology to go back in ancient history and try to kill Apocalypse. However, he fails to do so and ends up infecting the ancient mutant with the very same TO virus that enhances En Sabah Nur’s abilities. Apocalypse then purposefully manipulates Dr. Sinister to create the virus and infect Nathan/Cable, ensuring that the latter would go back in time to deliver the virus to Apocalypse’s former self so that he would gain the powers he currently possesses.
So, he basically made a time loop that would perpetually spin and help Apocalypse transfer the virus throughout history to ensure his own empowerment. This is an issue on its own because it doesn’t answer the question of who had infected whom with the TO virus and who was the first of the two mutants to carry the pathogen. Additionally, Marvel introduced a rule across all of its IPs, stating that you can’t actually change the past or the future; you can only create divergent timelines.
Thus, if anyone were to try and stop the Genosha Genocide from happening, they wouldn’t be able to prevent the horrific events. They would simply create an alternate timeline in which the event was averted. If a time traveler such as Cable were to do that, he could either stay in the new timeline where the Genoshan Genocide never took place or return to his own timeline to find that nothing has changed — thus eliminating the supposed linearity of time and time travel.
This is particularly true when we consider the season finale of X-Men ’97, in which Cyclops and Jean go to 3960 CE, where they encounter a young Nathan, while Rogue, Magneto, and Xavier are transported to Ancient Egypt in 3000 BCE, where they meet En Sabah Nur — the young version of Apocalypse who still hasn’t adapted the TO virus. And there’s also a mid-credit scene in which Apocalypse finds one of Gambit’s playing cards in present-day Genosha.
Given that you can’t change the future’s past, Bishop might’ve come to the past to change the X-Men’s future from becoming similar to his, but he didn’t change his past and always returns to his original timeline. This means that Apocalypse holding Gambit’s card is the original timeline of the series, as well as Ancient Egypt. Additionally, Jean and Scott’s travel to 3960 CE are alternate timelines created as a consequence of time displacement: the burgeoning timelines that Time Variance Authority is in charge of pruning.
However, this doesn’t imply that time travel in X-Men ’97 is a mere narrative trick to cover up lazy writing. It’s actually a vital element of the show that adds depth, excitement, and complexity to the series and its narrative by introducing us to the future versions of characters, resurrected heroes, and new threats. As we’ve seen from these examples, it can get a bit messy.