X-Men '97 Just Did Something Truly Awful To Wolverine – What Comes Next May Lie In The Comics
Spoilers for "X-Men '97" follow.
The goriest moment of "X-Men '97" season 1 will assuredly go down as episode 5, "Remember It," which saw the mutant nation of Genosha wiped out just as it was in the dark "X-Men" comic arc "E is for Extinction."
Episode 9, "Tolerance is Extinction Part 2" just gave it a runner-up though. Magneto, who has returned to his old villain ways, is fighting the X-Men on his new base of Asteroid M. Wolverine, famous for his adamantium-coated claws and skeleton, stabs Magneto. Undeterred, Magneto uses his powers to tear out the adamantium from Wolverine's body.
This bit, like most of the episode, is taken from 1993 "X-Men" comic crossover event "Fatal Attractions." The episode ends with a shot recreating a panel from "X-Men" #25 (drawn by Andy Kubert) of liquified adamantium heeding Magneto's call and pouring out of Wolverine's battered body. Writer Peter David first suggested this as a joke, but in the words of "X-Men" #25 writer Fabian Nicieza, "None of us laughed, because we thought it was a great idea."
Marvel Comics
"X-Men '97" is rated TV-14 and this whole sequence shows why. The original show (rated TV-Y7) could barely even show blood and the only "people" Wolverine could slice and dice were Sentinels and other robots. "Fatal Attractions" was published four years before "X-Men" concluded in 1997. The show theoretically could have adapted the story, but there would be no way to depict Magneto's attack on Wolverine without watering it down to destroy every last bit of flavor.
Ah, the irony: Wolverine finally uses his claws to their full extent right before they're destroyed. So, what happens next?
Is Wolverine still alive on X-Men '97?
Wolverine has mostly been a supporting player in "X-Men '97." (Tellingly, he got bumped down in the credits. In the original show, he was second after Cyclops, but in "X-Men '97," his title card comes after Magneto, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Storm.) What cruel irony that his biggest moment so far is this.
Logan is still the most popular of the X-Men, though, so a lot of you reading this may be fretting with his life hanging in the balance. What follows is only informed speculation based on how the comics played out.
Going off of the comic, I'd say Logan's probably still alive. Magneto intended the attack to be fatal (read his dialogue from "X-Men" #25 that the show excluded) but it doesn't take. However, in "Fatal Attractions," the severity of the attack burns out Wolverine's healing factor, leaving it diminished and barely able to save him.
The attack also leads to a surprise for the X-Men and Wolverine himself (depicted in "Wolverine" #75, written by Larry Hama, gorgeously drawn by Adam Kubert). After Logan semi-heals, he decides to test how much strength he's got left with a Danger Room session. During the battle, his claws pop out, minus the adamantium.
Logan's claws aren't pure adamantium, but bone growths that were covered in adamantium like the rest of his skeleton. Weapon X, the black-ops group that implanted the adamantium in Wolverine, also brainwashed him and erased his memory so he could barely recall his life before their experiments on him. Hence, he didn't remember being born with the claws.
Wolverine's bone claws on X-Men '97
"X-Men" depicted Wolverine's backstory with Weapon X in the episodes "Repo Man," "Out of the Past," and "Weapon X, Lies, and Video Tape." Though the process wasn't shown in graphic detail, the show went with the assumption that Wolverine's claws were added during the skeletal-bonding experiments. In the flashback to Wolverine getting the adamantium, he's surprised when the claws pop out. And in the season 5 episode "Old Soldiers" (a flashback to Wolverine on a mission with Captain America in World War 2) he doesn't have any claws, bone or otherwise.
If I had to bet, I'll say "X-Men '97" will probably reveal Wolverine's bone claws in "Tolerance is Extinction Part 3." They're an accepted part of his character at this point. (Hugh Jackman's Wolverine even had them in the "X-Men" movies.) Like the comics, though, this will be a retcon.
I hope they don't, though. The bone claws always struck me as Marvel editorial trying to have its cake and eat it too; you can't have Wolverine without his claws, so just say they're made of bone. The bone claws undercut Magneto's attack on Wolverine (his adamantium skeleton is invisible to us, but the claws aren't) and his tragic past. Wolverine's adamantium is a curse, forced on him by people who wanted to make him a soulless killer. The claws are the most visible manifestation of that. Every time Wolverine uses them, they not only remind him of how he was stripped of his humanity, they cause him literal, physical pain (they are basically knives slicing open his hands). Making it so they're a natural part of his body misunderstands his story.
How will Wolverine get his adamantium back on X-Men '97 season 2?
In the comics, Wolverine leaves the X-Men after "Fatal Attractions," feeling he is of little use to them in his diminished state. (Being the grump he is, he doesn't say goodbye and leaves only a note for his mentee/surrogate little sister Jubilee.)
This is probably too similar to how Storm's arc played out on "X-Men '97" — she too lost her powers, left the X-Men with a note, and went on a walkabout of self-discovery/recovery. The one difference is that Storm's powers are encoded in her DNA, while Wolverine's adamantium is unnatural; he can't regrow the metal. Indeed, comic Wolverine went without his adamantium for a full six years until 1999.
In the comics, Wolverine got his adamantium back via Apocalypse. The mutant supervillain brainwashed Logan into one of his four Horsemen, giving him new adamantium to increase his lethality. The issue where this happens, "Wolverine" #145, used a simple cover (drawn by Leinil Francis Yu) of Wolverine unsheathing his adamantium claws in front of his face to excite readers with their restoration.
The currently-deceased Gambit was also a Horseman of Apocalypse in the comics. Since former "X-Men '97" showrunner Beau DeMayo has confirmed Gambit won't be saved by time travel, the running theory right now is that Apocalypse will resurrect him as his Horseman in season 2. Both Wolverine and Gambit were the Horseman Death at different times, but that should be an easy fix — Wolverine makes even more sense as the Horseman War instead.
If Apocalypse does return in "X-Men '97" season 2, we might have already met two of his new Horsemen. If Wolverine is going to get his adamantium forced back on him, it should be at the hands of a villain.
"X-Men '97" is streaming on Disney+ and the finale is scheduled for Wednesday, May 15.