The Big Picture

X-Men ’97 is a faithful continuation, blending action, melodrama, and Marvel’s brand with high-flying fight scenes.
The series highlights the X-Men’s allegory for prejudice, family unity, and a unique take on superhero stories.
The show escalates stakes dramatically, staying true to the original feel while incorporating MCU cameos and a post-credit tease for Season 2.

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 Season 1]X-Men ‘97 managed to do the impossible. The series was not only a faithful continuation of a 30-year-old classic and a strong entry point for new viewers, but it also managed to give us an inspired take on the Marvel brand, which has been lacking since Avengers: Endgame. The X-Men are a family first and foremost, and seeing them deal with internal struggles and a world that rejects them fills the series with melodrama that is missing in most superhero stories. On top of that, the series has high-flying action that rivals fight scenes from Dragon Ball Super and Jujutsu Kaisen, making it feel unique to other Marvel animated shows.

In this interview with Collider, Supervising Producer and Head Director Jake Castorena explains their approach to Marvel’s mutants and what makes them such a complex intellectual property (IP) compared to their other Marvel and DC counterparts.

X-Men ’97 A band of mutants use their uncanny gifts to protect a world that hates and fears them; they’re challenged like never before, forced to face a dangerous and unexpected new future.Release Date March 20, 2024 Cast Jennifer Hale , Cal Dodd , Chris Potter , Catherine Disher , Adrian Hough , Ray Chase , Lenore Zann Seasons 1 Number of Episodes 10 Streaming Service(s) Disney+

MIKE THOMAS: I know you’ve been doing this for a while now, right? You did Death of Superman, Reign of Superman, Batman vs. the TMNT, which is one of my personal favorites.

JAKE CASTORENA: Oh, thanks, man. It’s one of mine, too!

Fingers crossed that you guys get to do a sequel one day.

CASTORENA: Put that out in the universe because we would love to. The five-year anniversary just passed already, and a lot of the crew were like, “Yo, we, we should team up again!”

The X-Men Represent Something Bigger Than Capes and Cowls

That’d be awesome. I wanted to ask you, what was it like from your past experiences jumping to the Marvel Universe, specifically X-Men, a beloved, property coming back, bringing that show back after 30 years? How did doing X-Men differ from your previous experiences?

CASTORENA: Well, honestly, first and foremost, the IP is just fundamentally different. I consider myself very fortunate and very lucky to have worked on the IPs and the characters that I’ve gotten to work on over the years. But what excites me, what fuels me about X-Men is that it always is and always has been an allegory and always should be an allegory for prejudice.

On the internet, there are two camps. It’s like, “It’s an allegory for civil rights and prejudice,” and some people were like, “Oh, it was created before that.” Bottom line, Stan “The Man” Lee said, people that are fundamentally born different, that’s what it comes down to. They’re fundamentally born different, not by choice. So there it is. And for me just, you know, I’ve been as, you know, doing this as, you know, in my, my tenure as I have, you know, I think we’re on 16 years now, entertainment, and working on comedy and, and action, it’s all fun and, and I enjoy it. But at the end of the day, just for myself as an artist, you know, especially everything that we’ve gone through, especially if you’re of a certain generation who grew up with X-Men [The Animated Series], you’ve gone through everything from 9/11 to COVID.

There’s a lot of shit going on outside of our windows right now. And just as an artist and as a storyteller, one, I feel it’s our responsibility to look around the room and see who’s not being recognized and do what we can to elevate and recognize. Two, as a creative and as a storyteller, I love being on an IP that has something to say if, if it makes sense, you know, that, that has a that isn’t just entertainment for entertainment’s sake, but history will be kind to it, you know, a good legacy to leave a name on for other generations to come [and] to hopefully learn something from it and see themselves in it, you know, that’s what like I enjoy about the X-Men.

It just represents a lot more than just capes and cowls. You know, it’s also the melodrama and the love triangles not to say, you know, DC doesn’t have that too, but there is a way about X-Men, you know, that, that fundamentally sets it different from the Avengers or, or, or anything in DC. They’re a family unit, you know, they have the danger room, you know, they have squabbles but within each other but they always come back together. So yeah, I think that’s what genuinely draws me to the X-Men and what kind of makes it separate from other IPs.

Gambit and the Show’s Escalation of Stakes
Image: Disney+

That’s what made the original series stand out so much all those years ago. Watching this show [X-Men ‘97] and seeing the evolution within this own series by itself, right? Once we get to Genosha and that turn happens, what, was the process, because you directed episode one? You very much reintroduced us [to the series] like, “Hey guys, this is the show you love and remember, and it’s fun” and then things get dark really fast.

CASTORENA: So one that was in the mission statement, and the [show] Bible from Beau DeMayo from day one, it was episode five [“Remember It”] was always gonna be our pivotal turning point in our show introducing real genuine consequences, you know, to our characters such as us, anybody that was around during the original run of X-Men ‘92 to now again, like calling back to, we’ve experienced everything from 9/11 to COVID. We learned about consequences. We learned about real shit, right? So, as we grew up, you know, the show grows up with us. So we always knew that that was gonna be a total moment, but we would never be able to pull that off unless we gain the audience’s trust and let them know we are going to guide them through everything, not just for sake of, but to validate everything with story.

And so that was what I loved about the unique challenge of directing the first episode [“To Me, My X-Men”]. There was so much we had to do essentially what it comes down to is all of the beautiful and wonderful things that we escalated starting with episode two and on, right, all the way to episode 10, that little bit of increase every time, you can’t do that too soon because if you do too many bells and whistles too soon or if you change too much right away, you’re no longer the thing that we are promising, we are, right?

We’re not a reboot; we are a revival, a spiritual successor, so there’s a difference in how we have to approach adapting stuff for newer audiences while staying in the same sandbox that the original show did. And That’s what I appreciated [about] being able to direct on that one. But then also just supervise all of the rest of them. It just helped me learn.

“OK. This is too much, this is too little, too much, too little. We gotta pull this here,” but also being able to step back and help my episodic directors, Emi/Emmett Yonemura and Chase Conley, do the grind, do the daily for the rest of the episodes. Being able to know what I learned and be able to say, “Oh, we can start escalating” or “Oh, that we need to pull that back [and give a more] O.G. feel.” It provided a unique experience. If I could be honest, what’s the meme that they do with the chin? You know, smiling because I’m like, “Yeah, y’all don’t know what’s coming.” [laughs]

The Gigachad smirk?? [laughs]

CASTORENA: Yeah, Yeah [laughs]! But yeah, [I] felt bad a little bit, not bad, but just like, on the show as we used to joke or we still kind of do, but it’s “X-Men: Have you cried today?”

The Larger Marvel Universe and MCU Connections

Yeah, that’s amazing. I did just want to ask a couple quick questions [about] going back to the 90s with this show. Obviously, you put your own spin on it, but was there any type of mandate from Marvel of like, “Hey, we have to try and get some MCU tie-in?” I know we see a glimpse of The Watcher in one episode. We see the Dora Milaje and Black Panther in this finale, right? Was it a concentrated effort to bring the 92 series into the modern day with more MCU flavor to it?

CASTORENA: Honestly, at the end of the day, the only mandate that we got from Marvel was to get it right and to have the theme [laughs]. Get it right and have the theme, you know, oh, only those two things. Those are two big things, but with that, we’re not necessarily be held into what the MCU did because X-Men 92 was the “MCU” before the MCU was even founded. You know, that show is notorious and it’s ingrained in its DNA of introducing a broader scope of much larger universe that our X-Men occupy, right?

So, there was never a mandate to connect it to the MCU. In fact, it kind of needed to stay separate because they do their thing, we have our thing, and it’s cool to have separate sandboxes because the timelines are just different, right? But, there are those things where it’s there are designs of the Dora Milaje in the comics, but it’s inconsistent or whatever. And it’s like, well, we already have, you know, the cooler designs and they’re already well approved. It might upset the audiences but sometimes we use designs to just say, hey, thank you for the designs, tip of the cap, respect for what was being done for characters, and sometimes it leads to a broader thing.

TV, animation, we move like this [quickly] and this show’s breakneck pace when you watch it, is very reflective of how we work on it too. That being said, it’s cool to bring in to, to be able to bring in cameos and not worry about if it’s necessarily affecting the MCU or not worrying about if they’re necessarily affecting us. Like [Beast] showing up at the end of The Marvels like that was news to all of us. That [had us] like, “Oh cool! Right on!” We don’t need to limit ourselves, why not have all of the candy if that makes sense?

Image via Disney+

Yeah, that’s fair. I will say that Mary Jane cameo got me to tear up because I’m like, “Oh god.” I remember that Spider-Man finale. That hit me in the feels.

CASTORENA: And as far as we’re concerned, I’m pretty sure but that, that is MJ. It’s not the clone MJ.

Thank goodness but now you’re gonna have to explain that resolution for me on another day, and how that all turns out. [laughs]

CASTORENA: It happened off-camera! [laughs]

I know you’ve already been hard at work on Season 2. Is there anything you can tell the audience about? Now that we’re deep into spoiler territory?

Image via Disney+

CASTORENA: Yeah. What I can say as far as Season 2, we have a really great post-credit sequence, showcasing a certain non-mutant [Apocolyspe] based on their theory, right? Holding up a torn, burnt playing card. I wonder where that’s gonna go?

We’ll just have to wait and see. [laughs]

CASTORENA: I guess we will. There is comic precedence out there for where it may or may not go, but, you know, I guess we’ll just have to wait for Season 2.

All episodes of X-Men ‘97 are now streaming on Disney+.

Watch on Disney+