The minute that a pregnant Jean Grey appeared in X-Men ’97, comic fans quickly started to side-eye. While I myself love the Jean/Scott/Logan throuple, her pregnancy is more important than just who ended up being her endgame. It brings in a character that others know from popular comic stories: Nathan.
Nathan Summers, better known as Cable, is the son of Madelyne Pryor and Scott Summers. Many fans jumped to Cable the minute another Jean Grey showed up at the door of Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters, remembering back when Madelyne Pryor joined the team as a “Jean reborn” when she was, actually, just a clone of her?
The difference between X-Men ’97 and the comic is that if this is actually Madelyne Pryor, who married Scott Summers and is having a baby with him, it is not known to Scott. In the comics, he does know that Madelyne and Jean are two different women despite being tricked briefly by Mastermind into thinking they’re one and the same.
Within X-Men ’97, Scott fully believes that his wife is Jean Grey and Jean Grey doesn’t seem to suspect anything different herself. So when another Jean showed up at the door, it was confusing for everyone at the school. But if this baby really is Nathan Summers, what should we expect from him and his X-Men legacy?
The X-Men have their hands full
Nathan has quite the origin story. His mother Madelyne eventually loses herself and dies when she discovers the plan for her son and Cable is the stepson of Jean Grey, the woman his mother was cloned from. There are a lot of things about his upbringing that make him a force to be reckoned with including the Techno-Organic Virus that sends Nathan into the future.
Where fans probably know Nathan from though is Deadpool 2. To be fair, they never name him as Nathan Summers but he is Cable. The comic Cable goes back and forth, returning to the past to see his family again and he does meet with his sister, Rachel Summers. Whether we’re going to see any of that in X-Men ’97, we don’t know. But it is interesting to bring a baby into the mix when two Jean Greys are on the scene.
(Featured image: Disney+)
