Marvel Studios came to New York Comic Con without any movies, but it made up for that with some info on its upcoming TV slate for Disney+.
During its panel focused on TV and animation, the company provided some release windows for its 2026 shows. Wonder Manlands January 27, and after that is Daredevil: Born Again. Season two will air that March, and see Matt Murdock reunite with Krysten Ritter’s hardboiled detective Jessica Jones to save New York from Mayor Fisk’s grip. A trailer for the season isn’t out yet, but those on the show floor have said it features both heroes in action, along with glimpses of Fisk, Bullseye, and Karen.
In the summer, X-Men ’97will return for its second season. The panel featured a look at Apocalypse, who’ll play a big hand in the events of the season, since the heroes will fight him in the present day and meet him as En Sabah Nur in Ancient Egypt. But the fun doesn’t stop there: X-Men’s already renewed for season three, which’ll come at a later date.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Manwill be the big fall Marvel show, and its next season will bring Venom into the fray. (Not surprising, since he was teased in season one.) Daredevil will also return, this time wearing his classic red costume, and Gwen Stacy will show up in some kind of capacity.
Last but not least, Vision Quest, which Marvel’s called the closer to the trilogy comprised of WandaVision and Agatha All Along. Aside from the show’s logo, the panel brought on star Paul Bettany to reveal some story details, namely that the White Vision is struggling to make sense of what his Red counterpart did to him in WandaVision. As a result, he’s seeing digital or robotic characters like Ultron (James Spader), FRIDAY (Orla Brady), and even Dum-E (Henry Lewis) in human forms. Vision and Wanda’s son Tommy, aka Speedball, will also show up, played by Ruaridh Mollica (The Franchise). That show’s got a vague window of 2026, so it may be the last show of the year.
So, to recap: Wonder Man on January 27, Daredevil: Born Again in March, X-Men ’97 in the summer, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man for fall, and Vision Quest probably gets the winter. Gonna be a busy year.
Beau DeMayo continues to talk about Disney on social media. DeMayo, who was reportedly fired from X-Men ’97 due to sexual misconduct, has been doubling down on his tweets about his former employer. Now, he claims he was told to make his animated X-Men series “less gay.”
Rumors began to circulate that Disney told Pixar to make Riley’s character in Inside Out 2 “less gay.” Those online began criticizing the company and questioning why they were catering to people who would ask this of their films. DeMayo claims that X-Men ’97 got the same note. “Heard the same words ‘less gay’ onX-Men ’97 when it came to Magnus and Xavier, as well as marketing,” he wrote on X.
In another post, DeMayo also claimed that Disney forced Magneto to wear briefs in a scene where he is being tied up. According to the former creator, he stated that Magneto was naked until changes needed to be made. “Originally, he was nude and the beat played as dehumanizing torture. It was Marvel’s idea to put him in briefs. The crew and I were so beaten down by that point we just gave each other looks, knowing their note would do the opposite. Such is ignorance … “
Originally, he was nude and the beat played as dehumanizing torture. It was Marvel’s idea to put him in briefs. The crew and I were so beaten down by that point we just gave each other looks, knowing their note would do the opposite. Such is ignorance…
The scene in question, according to DeMayo, was about two men looking at each other with brotherly solidarity. “True, but when they start misinterpreting two males exchanging a look of brotherly solidarity before battle as ‘too gay’ and one execs favorite word ‘creepy,’ there’s an issue.”
True, but when they start misinterpreting two males exchanging a look of brotherly solidarity before battle as “too gay” and one execs favorite word “creepy,” there’s an issue.
DeMayo has been just tweeting things without a response
In August, Disney released a statement about DeMayo’s firing when it was announced that he’d no longer get credit on the second season of the show. “Mr. DeMayo was terminated in March 2023 following an internal investigation. Given the egregious nature of the findings, we severed ties with him immediately, and he has no further affiliation with Marvel.”
Since then, DeMayo has been posting about the company and its MCU plans. He claimed that the original script for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was very different from what we got with Michael Waldron’s take on the story, and now he is connecting X-Men ’97 to the reported Pixar claim.
Disney has yet to say another word about DeMayo’s firing but some rumors do not paint DeMayo in the best light. Whether or not he actually got that note from Disney or this is part of a larger takedown of the company, we can’t say for certain.
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Eiichiro Oda has a big update about Netflix One Piece‘s second season. Mike Colter has hopes Evil could find a new home after its impending finale. Plus, Russell T. Davies teases Doctor Who‘s Sea Devil spinoff. To me, my spoilers!
SOULM8TE
Deadline reports Claudia Doumit (The Boys) has joined the cast of the M3GAN spinoff, SOULM8TE, in a currently undisclosed role.
Ruiner
According to Variety, a film adaptation of Reikon’s cyberpunk twin-stick shooter, Ruiner, is now in development at Universal. Wes Ball (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) is attached to direct.
Freakier Friday
A new Instagram post from Lindsay Lohan confirms filming is about to wrap on Freakier Friday.
Frankie Freako
“After calling a late-night party hotline that promises out-of-this-world fun, uptight yuppie Conor Sweeney must battle the pint-sized forces of evil unleashed through his phone line, led by the maniacal rock n’ roll goblin” of the title in the full trailer for Frankie Freako.
Daredevil: Born Again
During a recent interview with Screen Rant, Charlie Cox teased the arrival of White Tiger, as well as “a couple of other nice little cameos” in the first season of Daredevil: Born Again.
I remember getting those scripts, and the character that I’m thinking about in particular right now, I remember when I read that [story] before I started doing Daredevil in 2014. I always thought that was a really cool storyline and such an interesting character; such an interesting dynamic between the two of them. That was really fun, and I’m really excited about that. And there are a couple of other nice little cameos that come up.
X-Men ’97
During a recent Q&A (via Collider), X-Men ’97 producer Brad Winderbaum confirmed the second season will include “two other X teams.”
There’s many teams, in Marvel, that have the letter “X” that are followed by a hyphen. I would put it to you like this…there’s two other X teams in Season 2.
One Piece
One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda provided an update on the second season of Netflix’s live-action adaptation.
News Coo just delivered something special from Oda-Sensei and it’s filled with excitement and anticipation for Season 2! 🗞️😆 Big reveals are on the horizon, Straw Hats. Brace yourselves for the journey ahead! 🌊🏴☠️ pic.twitter.com/NcywD1sMI3
— ONE PIECE(ワンピース) Netflix (@onepiecenetflix) August 20, 2024
Evil
In conversation with Decider, Mike Colter stated tomorrow’s Evil finale could begin “a new chapter” with “potential to continue” if any prospective streamer or network is interested doing so.
No, we won’t wrap everything up. There will always be more thread to leave unraveled, so there’s some place to go. What I can say about the end…I wouldn’t say a cliffhanger. There will be a new chapter that will be open. All we can say about it is, “I want to see where that goes.” I feel like we leave it in a place where there’s potential to continue on with the storyline. It’s a nice, interesting way to end it, but not end it. I think fans will be like, “That’s fitting. But now I really want to see where the rest of this continues to go.” It’s a perfect ending, I think, for where we are.
The War Between The Land and Sea
Finally, a new Instagram post from Russell T. Davies promising “thrills, deaths, chases, fish, and seven seas of danger” reveals table reads have begun for The War Between The Land and Sea. Can you make out any Doctor Who stars in the photo?
Genre content doesn’t always do well at the Emmys but this year, it’s getting some love. Fallout, What We Do in the Shadows, and X-Men ’97 each got a nomination for the best show in the drama, comedy, and animation categories this year.
Fallout has the steepest competition in the drama category, up against another genre show in Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, plus The Crown, The Gilded Age, The Morning Show, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Slow Horses, and Shōgun. In comedy, What We Do in the Shadows will face off against Abbott Elementary, The Bear, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Hacks, Only Murders in the Building, Palm Royale, and Reservation Dogs. Over in animation, X-Men ’97 is nominated alongside Blue Eye Samurai, Bob’s Burgers, Scavengers Reign, and The Simpsons.
Walton Goggins also got a lead actor nomination for his work in Fallout, which is exciting though winning will be tough against Idris Elba in Hijack, Donald Glover in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Gary Oldman in Slow Horses, Hiroyuki Sanada in Shōgun, and Dominic West in The Crown. Matt Berry also got a lead acting nomination for What We Do in the Shadows but his competition is also stiff; he’s up against Larry David for Curb Your Enthusiasm, Steve Martin and Martin Short for Only Murders in the Building, Jeremy Allen White for The Bear, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai for Reservation Dogs.
You can see the full list of nominees at this link. The awards will be given on September 15.
X-Men ’97 has come to an end and fans want more. Or at least we want to know the truth about whether or not the X-Men wear wigs! Talking with directors Emi/Emmett Yonemura and Chase Conley, I got to ask all the burning questions I had after the finale.
I asked both Yonemura and Conley about the episodes they each directed, the series as a whole, and then asked some important questions. Like whether or not they knew where Wolverine and Storm are. At the end of the final episode of the season, we get to see where some of the team end up. After Magneto used his power to destroy Asteroid M, it sends the X-Men into different points of time. Some to the future, others to the past.
We don’t know where Storm or Wolverine are. But Yonemura and Conley do. When I asked about whether they knew where they were, Conley coyly responded “Yeah” but did not give me more of an idea. Conley then went on to explain why the finale kept that information from fans. “I think we just don’t want to, we didn’t wanna give everybody too much at the same time. Hey, you gonna have to watch and find out. You don’t get all the answers. That’s way life works.”
Yonemura teased that they had to wait for answers too, saying “You’re gonna have to wait like how we had to wait.” Which, to be fair, we’ve all waited since 1996 for more of the X-Men but alas. We can wait a little more to know where Wolverine and Storm are.
Do you wear wigs? No I do not. Have you worn wigs?
Another thing we talked about is whether or not the X-Men wear wigs. When we see their costumes on Muir Island, they are all in class cases and there are…wigs attached. The team then use those costumes with those exact hair styles and it made fans wonder: Do the X-Men wear wigs?
Yonemura shared what they thought it meant and also explained how the drag community loved what was going on with the X-Men and their new looks. “Maybe,” Yonemura said with a laugh. “I mean, we never really think about it because I love to lean into Cartoon Logic sometimes, but we actually had a surprising amount of conversations around those mannequins that you see at Muir Island, where it’s like, ‘Okay, well I guess this is kind of a museum, so we should have the whole outfit there.’ And then they just happened to be like, ‘Oh, good. ’cause I need a costume right now. The other one burned up in at the mansion.’ It was really fun to play with that. And honestly, I love our drag community and the fact that a lot of queens reached out and were just like, ‘I love that they’ve got this outfit thing going on that they’ve got like skin matching mannequins that are already, and then the wigs.’ And so you know what, yes. Let’s just say that they go glam. I love that.”
You can see our full chat here:
Every episode of season 1 of X-Men ’97 is streaming now on Disney+.
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X-Men ’97dives into the world of the mutants from the team’s ’90s animated series, so if you’re behind, don’t worry! We have you covered with the complete list of episodes for X-Men ’97, to ensure you haven’t missed anything.
The return of the X-Men means a lot to us ’90s kids who grew up watching X-Men: The Animated Series. But again, it can feel like a lot if you are just diving into the rebooted series. You can, however, watch X-Men ’97 completely on its own because as long as you know your heroes, you won’t regret it. Each episode reunites us with our beloved mutants, catching us up on their drama. So let’s dive into every episode!
Episode 1: “To Me, My X-Men”
(Disney+)
The first episode of the series is titled “To Me, My X-Men.” It is a line that Charles Xavier has said, and then Scott Summers said it before … Magneto does. We’re back with the team, and the pilot mirrors that of The Animated Series. With Roberto Da Costa (Sunspot) needing the team’s help and Jubilee here to try to help him, it was a strong return for the mutants, especially when it ended with the return of Magneto!
Episode 2: “Mutant Liberation Begins”
(Disney+)
The reveal at the end of “To Me, My X-Men” led to us learning about Charles Xavier’s plans for the X-Men. Magneto is in charge of the team, which comes at the perfect time since Scott and Jean are thinking of leaving to raise their new baby boy. But Magneto suddenly being on the good side of the mutants doesn’t sit well with people, and we get to see the trial of Magneto unfold. It does, unfortunately, end with Storm losing her powers, the real Jean Grey showing up, and the other Jean giving birth to her son.
Episode 3: “Fire Made Flesh”
(Disney+)
Madelyne Pryor took the forefront of this episode as Mister Sinister came to torment the X-Men. Jean Grey and this clone of her trying to navigate who is the “real” Jean is quickly solved by the appearance of Mister Sinister, who reveals that Scott had a baby with the Goblin Queen. With nightmares haunting the team and Scott trying to navigate his own feelings, the episode results in the turn from the Goblin Queen to Madelyne Pryor and her son with Scott, Nathan, needing to be sent to the future to cure him from Mister Sinister’s tricks.
Episode 4: “Motendo/Lifedeath Pt. 1”
(Disney+)
Remember Mojo?! Well, he’s back, baby! This time, to torment Roberto and Jubilee. It is Jubilee’s birthday and she wanted to go play games, but Magneto was less interested in that and more concerned with deal with the rest of their issues. Motendo presents itself as a game system and puts Jubilee and Roberto at different levels, and the two have to fight their way back out, yet again taking down Mojo.
Episode 5: “Remember It”
(Disney+)
Episode 5 of X-Men ’97 brought us to Genosha. It also made us worry about everyone. While Scott, Jean, Logan, Hank, and those left back at the school were on a documentary of sorts, we saw as Magneto took a team to Genosha with him. Gambit, Rogue, and Magneto were confronted with a world that was for the mutants and Rogue thought about becoming its queen. But when Sentinels disrupted their peace, we were left wondering who even survived the trip.
Episode 6: “Lifedeath – Part 2”
(Disney+)
“Lifedeath – Part 2” did what we feared might be impossible: It brought us back mutant Storm! Towards the beginning of the season, she lost her powers thanks to mutant protestors. While she struggled to feel the power of the weather on her side, this episode had Storm and the Adversary together and resulted in Storm coming back into her powers with a brand new suit! And if that wasn’t enough, we also got the return of Charles Xavier! He is on another planet and struggled with being told he had to forget the X-Men but hey, at least he’s back!
Episode 7: “Bright Eyes”
“Bright Eyes” showed us the pain that exists in Rogue now that Gambit and Magneto (in her eyes) are gone. She is a woman on a mission to take out Trask for the pain that he has caused her. The issue is that once she goes so far in her grief that she refuses to even save him when death is in her hands (meaning she drops him to his death), he becomes a living sentinel and shows the X-Men what is really possible.
Episode 8: “Tolerance Is Extinction Pt. 1”
(Disney+)
The X-Men learned a valuable lesson in this episode: Bastion will do whatever it takes to destroy the X-Men. A being who was born as a living sentinel and fueled the creation of them has an evil plan to turn regular civilians into their own mutant selves (aka, living sentinels). The team has to fight back with Wolverine and Kurt tag-teaming the lot of them only to realize they can put themselves back together. With Cable working alongside his father Scott and Jean, the team is all trying to just survive as Magneto escapes. Oh and Charles comes back but comes back almost too late.
Episode 9: “Tolerance Is Extinction Pt. 2”
(Disney+)
The war between mutants has begun as those behind Charles Xavier must decide whether Magneto was right all along. After the attacks on Genosha and Bastion’s plans being revealed, Magneto is set in his belief that there cannot be an existence where mutant and human co-exist. Charles is still trying to keep that hope alive and it results in the X-Men all fighting with each other. Who will survive? We do not know.
What is to come
(Disney+)
Right now, we know the titles for the episode for the rest of the series. We don’t know what they hold, but we do know what they are called. The rest of the season is as follows: episode 10, “Tolerance Is Extinction Pt. 3.” Sorry, there’s just one left!
(featured image: Disney+)
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They’ve faced down Mojo, Mister Sinister, X-Cutioner, a Master Mold, and the Adversary, but the challenge that lies ahead for the X-Men in X-Men ’97 is one they could have never prepared for enough.
Pulling the strings this whole time was the android villain Bastion. His orchestration of the attack on Genosha was merely the beginning of his grotesquely evil Operation: Zero Tolerance, which boasts no other end goal than death to mutantkind.
A dictator, of course, is nothing without his soldiers, and in the case of Bastion, he’s set to have some of the most deadly in the Prime Sentinels: a strike force of uncanny-looking robots who make ordinary Sentinels seem about as threatening as a pigeon.
So, what’s the deal with these elite cronies anyhow?
What are Prime Sentinels?
Prime Sentinels are a group of new Sentinels developed by Bastion. These Sentinels are humans who have been fitted with special nanotechnology that, upon activation by the Operation: Zero Tolerance program, takes over their sleeper agent host and transforms them into a deadly robot warrior designed for combat and mutant apprehension/extermination. These Sentinels are many times more powerful than regular Sentinels, with far more durability, strength, and agility, and boasting extra abilities such as projecting laser blasts.
Bolivar Trask is the first and only Prime Sentinel we’ve seen as of episode seven, with his programming activating after Rogue dropped him to his death. Despite the combined efforts of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Morph, and Beast, the Prime Sentinel single-handedly had them all on the ropes until Cable interfered, incapacitating Trask with a special electromagnetic grenade.
It’s going to take a lot more than Cable’s loadout foresight to dampen the threat posed by Bastion and his Prime Sentinels, however, and the future of mutantkind hangs in the balance as the X-Men plan their most unprecedented plan of attack yet.
(featured image: Marvel Studios)
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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (and probably a few more times): Even if X-Men ’97 wasn’t wielding some of the beefiest nostalgia known to nerdkind, it would still be flying just as high as it is now thanks to its top-notch storytelling fundamentals.
Having proved itself in that camp, there’s no harm in shoving plot aside to go full-blown, flashy nostalgia mode for half an episode. That’s precisely what the show did with “Motendo,” the first half of episode four, in which Jubilee and Roberto get trapped inside a video game created by the one and only Mojo, an old enemy of the X-Men who’s up to his old tricks that many of us remember from the original animated series.
But who is Mojo exactly? And why does he work so magnificently as a villain for the first half of X-Men ’97‘s fourth episode?
Who is Mojo?
Mojo is an alien creature who rules over the Mojoverse. There, he traps heroes like the X-Men and their on-and-off ally Longshot to act and compete in a variety of challenges structured like television programs, all for the entertainment of himself and the residents of the Mojoverse.
In X-Men ’97, Mojo has made the switch from television to video games, a move he claims was strategic as he sought the next evolution of mind-numbing media. He traps Jubilee and Roberto inside a game featuring levels inspired by previous X-Men adventures, including the night Jubilee was kidnapped by Sentinels, the early days of Genosha, and Asteroid M. They ultimately come out on top with the help of Abscissa, a Jubilee variant, and return to the real world.
Why the Mojo episode is lowkey brilliant
By the standards X-Men ’97 has set for itself so far, “Motendo” wasn’t all that impressive plot-wise. Jubilee’s relationship with Roberto and her officially coming into adulthood weren’t necessarily poor developments, but the episode’s sporadic, overarching arc of learning to embrace the future and all of its uncertainties just didn’t quite fit with Jubilee as a character, who’s always been pretty gung-ho about throwing herself into new situations. The payoff of said arc, then, felt unearned or otherwise compromised.
That said, by ’90s Saturday morning cartoon standards, it’s exactly what you’d expect, and “Motendo” was honoring those days of X-Men in every sense of the word. Between revisiting classic animated series settings and the pixelated set dressing of Mojo’s new video game trap (itself resembling a Super Nintendo), “Motendo” was entirely in service of a nostalgic, scrambly plotline that prioritized flashy comic book shenanigans over depth, which is more in line with a plot from the original animated series rather than its more complex successor in ’97.
“Motendo,” then, is one last ride for the spirit of the animated series as it plunges ahead into the more mature territory of X-Men ’97, as well as a riff on Mojo himself as a character. The villain tried and failed to literally force Jubilee back into the generally less complex, old-news beats of the original animated series, and given that Mojo was conceived as a parody of network television executives, the fact that he thought it was a good idea to do that puts “Motendo’s” satirical subtleties into a class of their own.
Indeed, we had our fun with the old show, but ’97 has proven that the people want smart superhero stories now more than anything; Mojo seems to have missed that memo, but hopefully from now on, Marvel Studios will not.
(featured image: Marvel Animation)
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A trailer and teaser poster have been released for Marvel Animation’s “X-Men 97.” The all-new series, which features 10 episodes, begins streaming on Disney+ March 20.
“X-Men’97” revisits the iconic era of the 1990s as The X-Men, a band of mutants who use their uncanny gifts to protect a world that hates and fears them, are challenged like never before, forced to face a dangerous and unexpected new future.
This undated image shows a promotion for Marvel Animation’s new series “X-Men 97” on Disney+.
Marvel Animation
The voice cast includes Ray Chase as Cyclops, Jennifer Hale as Jean Grey, Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm, Cal Dodd as Wolverine, JP Karliak as Morph, Lenore Zann as Rogue, George Buza as Beast, AJ LoCascio as Gambit, Holly Chou as Jubilee, Isaac Robinson-Smith as Bishop, Matthew Waterson as Magneto and Adrian Hough as Nightcrawler. Beau DeMayo serves as head writer; episodes are directed by Jake Castorena, Chase Conley and Emi Yonemura.
Featuring music by The Newton Brothers, the series is executive produced by Brad Winderbaum, Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso and DeMayo.
Disney is the parent company of Disney+ and this station.
