Sadly, the first season of X-Men ’97 has come to an end. But the finale sets us up for a great second season with a mid-credits scene. And it’s giving me and the character I love a lot of hope for the future of this series.
Spoilers ahead the entire first season of X-Men ’97.
This season was hard to watch at times. Not because it wasn’t brilliant, but because X-Men ’97 reminds us that, sometimes, people die and they don’t get to come back. In season 1, that person happened to be Gambit and I’ve not yet recovered from what happened in “Remember It.” Through teases (like Beau DeMayo tweeting a Star Trek reference that had many thinking the series was going to time-loop Genosha) and continued references on the show, fans thought that Gambit surely wasn’t dead.
The finale, “Tolerance Is Extinction – Part Three,” ends without Gambit living and breathing. But the mid-credits scene does have me thinking. In it, the X-Men are divided throughout time after Magneto blows up Asteroid M. Split between the past and the future (as far as we know), the team is left fractured with no way to return to each other. At the end of the episode, the X-Men who got thrown back to ancient Egypt find a mutant. That mutant is Apocalypse.
We see Apocalypse picking up dirt in modern day Genosha, talking about the death that occurred there. And when the dirt clears, he is holding a card—a literal playing card, like the ones that Gambit uses.
Will Gambit become the Horseman of Death?
There is a comic-book storyline that is the darkest timeline for Gambit, and it kind of seems like that’s where X-Men ’97 is headed. In the comics, Gambit becomes Apocalypse’s Horseman of Death. The Four Horsemen are mutants who have given themselves over to Apocalypse. Like the story from the Bible, there are four of them: Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. In the comics, Gambit becomes Death because he thinks that Apocalypse could help the mutants, but that he needs to be watched to do so. (Wolverine has also been Death in the past.)
If Gambit returns as Apocalypse’s Death, it means that we will finally have our Gambit back! But as a servant to Apocalypse. So: ouch!
Seeing as Gambit would be resurrected to do Apocalypse’s bidding, that makes this so much worse. And it also means that I’m going to be crying a lot. As I said before, Wolverine was also Death once, and we currently do not now where he is, just that he is healing. It’s possible that Wolverine could be Death as well, with Gambit representing another member of the Four Horsemen.
But, given Wolverine’s rage, he could also become War. Whatever the show decides, seeing Apocalypse pick up Gambit’s card, knowing that he was one of the more powerful mutants to fall in Genosha, is pretty telling.
And given their comics history, it definitely seems like Gambit will return—just not how we want to see him.
