Beau DeMayo is responsible for the current storyline we’re experiencing in Marvel’s X-Men ’97, and while he parted ways with Disney right before the show aired and has been radio silent since, he is now talking about the series, particularly season 1, episode 5, “Remember It.”
**Spoilers for X-Men ’97 lie ahead.**
DeMayo did not promote the series and hasn’t spoken about it since the news broke that he was no longer working with Disney. So, breaking that silence to talk about “Remember It” is a very big deal. But after watching the episode, it makes perfect sense why this was the moment he chose to say something.
In “Remember It,” the team is divided between those who went to Genosha with Magneto and those who are staying behind and filming an interview at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. After a party in Genosha when the mutants are feeling carefree and safe in this world specifically designed for them, the Sentinels come and threaten that peace. Gambit uses his power to protect as many people as he can and ultimately sacrifices himself to save Rogue, Nightcrawler, and more, leaving us gasping.
For DeMayo, he posted a lengthy X post (that did not talk about his departure from the show or the reasoning behind it) that explained how “Remember It” was an integral part of his pitch to Disney back in November of 2020.
To me, my X-Men.
DeMayo’s post is an emotional journey, one that mirrors the pain that many of us have felt and that was always his intention with the series. Millennials grew up with this show, and DeMayo talked about how his pitch was to mirror the pain we’ve been through. ” The idea being to have the X-Men mirror the journey that any of us who grew up on the original show have experienced since being kids in the ’90s,” he wrote. “The world was a seemingly safer place for us, where a character like Storm would comment on how skin-based racism was ‘quaint’ in one Man’s Worth. For the most part, to our young minds, the world was a simple place of right and wrong, where questions about identity and social justice had relatively clear cut answers.”
DeMayo’s post goes on to talk about our collective trauma after 9/11, how he connected his own feelings of being “othered” by society for his sexuality and race, and used the characters of the X-Men as a guide for others to understand that pain (as they have always been a symbol for).
But his post goes on to connect directly with Gambit’s arc in the series and brings nuance to it that makes our heartbreak feel even heavier. “Yes, it looked like Gambit’s story was going a specific direction. The crop top was chosen to make you love him. Him pulling off his shirt was intentional. There’s a reason he told Rogue any fool would suffer her hand in a dance, even if it ended up not being him suffering. But if events like 9/11, Tulsa, Charlottesville, or Pulse Nightclub teach us anything, it’s that too many stories are often cut far too short. I partied at Pulse. It was my club. I have so many great memories of its awesome white lounge. It was, like Genosha, a safe space for me and everyone like me to dance and laugh and be free. I thought about this a lot when crafting this season and this episode, and how the gay community in Orlando rose to heal from that event.”
You can read DeMayo’s full post here:
I hope, as we all wish there were with real life tragedies, that there is some magical button to rewind and fix this, and maybe that’s the point of the series. Maybe there will be and we will get to live in that happiness we can’t be afforded in our own lives. Or maybe X-Men ’97 will use the pain we feel over the loss of mutants we love and teach its audience how our own world works.
DeMayo’s perspective on the show and what Gambit’s sacrifice represents brings an entirely new meaning to “Remember It.”
(featured image: Disney+)
