Two weeks on, and us fans of X-Men ’97 are still feeling the shock to the system that was episode five. As the show marches ahead to its three-part season finale, however, it’s high time that closure came into play for all the characters that perished in the attack on Genosha.
Warning: Spoilers for X-Men ’97 ahead!
And by all appearances, episode seven seems to have done just that, with memorial services and death/survival reveals abound. Here’s what appears to be the final list of deaths and survivors in the Wild Sentinel’s rampage.
Deaths
The two major losses were, of course, Gambit and Madelyne Pryor, whose loss appears to be ravaging the remaining X-Men most of all; Rogue is struggling to contain her fury, and Cyclops’ grief for the person he once believed was his wife has triggered many a complicated emotion in him. Nightcrawler’s service for the Cajun mutant boasts some of Beau DeMayo’s most gorgeous dialogue yet.
Sebastian Shaw was also revealed as a high-profile casualty thanks to Jean’s psychic scouring of Genosha’s ground zero, so it’s safe to say the prolific X-Men villain and unlikely member of Genosha’s council was innocent this time around. Callisto was also confirmed to have perished shortly after her fellow Morlocks were caught in the crossfire of Magneto and the Wild Sentinel, thanks to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of a surviving Morlock child mourning the group’s leader specifically.
And last among the body count was Moira MacTaggert and her partner Banshee, the latter of whom we had already watched turn to ashes before our eyes. The death of the human geneticist and longtime X-Men ally, meanwhile, was confirmed by DeMayo on Twitter/X.
Survivors
This is where things get interesting, because after a bloodbath like “Remember It,” you wouldn’t keep anyone around unless they had a major role to play going forward, hence the specific hype we all should have felt when we discovered that Emma Frost emerged as a survivor of the Wild Sentinel’s attack. Saved by her diamond form—which manifested for the first time in this canon—and boasting one of the most mercurial comic histories of any mutant out there, there’s plenty to look forward to on the Emma Frost front.
But not even that reveal blew our minds quite as severely as that of Magneto‘s survival, even if some of us weren’t completely convinced that Erik had sung his last words two weeks ago. Nevertheless, we now know he’s nestled neither safely nor soundly in the clutches of Bastion, the true villain behind the Genoshan genocide, as his prisoner. It’s hard to say what’s in store for the master of magnetism going forward, but it’s going to be one hell of an inevitable reunion with the X-Men when that time comes.
(featured image: Marvel Studios)
