Debuting this week on Disney + is the latest season of the breakout hit reboot of the classic X-Men: The Animated Series, X-Men ’97. Picking up where the first season ended, i.e. placing the team smack into the Apocalypse saga, X-Men ’97 has not skipped a beat with animation, voice acting, scripting and overall direction. Starting with a three episode premiere, the series will then shift to a weekly format for the rest of the show’s run, though we at In The Seats were afforded the first four episodes for the purpose of review.

The second season starts with the splitting of the X-Men team as they are warped into 2 distinct time periods that are pivotal to the rise of Apocalypse (Ross Marquand). One part of the team goes back in time to before En Sabah Nur (Adetokumboh M’Cormack) becomes Apocalypse, while another team goes into the future where a teenage Nathan Summers (Michael Johnston) takes his first steps to becoming Cable (Chris Potter). Meanwhile, Jubilee (Holly Chou) and Roberto/Sunspot (Gui Agustini) have been left in 1997, with a destroyed Xavier School and bewildered students that are now being targeted and rounded up by the government. But Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith) and Forge (Gil Birmingham) have discovered where the groups of X-Men have been sent in the timeline and make a move to bring them all back to 1997.

Without getting into spoiler territory, I will say that it makes a lot of sense that we were afforded the first 4 episodes to watch for the review, as it takes four episodes to get all X-Men back to 1997, though the second episode shows us what’s happening in 1997 as it’s set there around Jubilee and Sunspot. The storytelling is strong and all four episodes have great writing behind them, which keeps the audience from missing the group being all together.

Cyclops (Ray Chase) and Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale) have to wrestle with how much Nathan can know in the future. Rouge (Lenore Zann) is still in mourning after what happened to Gambit at the end of season 1. And Xavier (Ross Marquand) concerns himself with his never ending battle to guide Magneto (Matthew Waterson) to the right side of the law. There are plenty of stories that bring familiarity here. But there’s also more side stories added this time which also work.

One of my favorite additions of the first season was the changing of the opening titles to fit which characters were being highlighted in which episodes and that continues this season. In fact, the opening of the second episode is particularly brilliant. The animation style is also still top notch as it continues to find the perfect balance between modern CGI backed style and classic hand drawn look that the original series was based on. The voice cast all return here too, along with a few new voices, most of whom worked on the original series too.

X-Men ’97‘s second season remains just a faithful and meticulously crafted love letter to the original series as the first season was, there is literally not an inch of drop off from one of 2024’s most beloved reboots. Episodes will be a joy to watch for fans of all knowledge levels, be they newbies or the most hardened of comic book nerds. I can hardly wait to see how the season plays out, but be forewarned. Make sure you stick around through the credits of episode 4 as there’s something at the end that needs to be seen.