‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 Breaks Every Marvel Record With Its Flawless Rotten Tomatoes Debut
The wait for ‘X-Men ’97‘ Season 2 has tested even the most patient Marvel fans. More than two years passed between the Season 1 finale and the return of the Emmy-nominated animated series, and anticipation built steadily as each trailer and festival announcement edged closer to a full reveal.
The first four episodes of Season 2 were screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, with Marvel lifting the review embargo the same day, a move widely interpreted as a clear signal of the studio’s confidence in what it had made. The new season picks up with the X-Men scattered throughout time, sending Professor Charles Xavier, Magneto, Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Beast to Ancient Egypt in 3000 B.C., Cyclops and Jean Grey to the year 3960 A.D., and leaving Bishop and Forge in the 1990s to pull the team back to their own timeline. The immortal Apocalypse stands at the center of all of it as the season’s defining threat.
That studio confidence has been rewarded. ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 opened with a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, one of the cleanest early scores any Marvel property has ever recorded. This builds on the first season’s Certified Fresh rating of 99%, a score that itself represented near-universal critical approval.
The numbers carry weight beyond the obvious milestone. Season 2 now stands as the highest-rated Marvel project overall, the highest-rated season the series has produced, and the highest-rated Marvel Studios animated series to date. The 100% rating is based on 12 reviews, arriving while Phase 6 is still building toward its larger theatrical releases later in the year.
That energy is matched by a noticeably darker creative direction. Ross Marquand, who voices both Professor X and Apocalypse, spoke to Collider and admitted he was “amazed Disney greenlit it because it’s so dark. It’s very, very dark. A lot of people die, and so many people don’t talk about it.” That blunt warning carries extra weight given that Season 1 already shocked audiences with its devastating Genosha sequence, which killed off major characters including Magneto, Dazzler, and Gambit.
‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 is set to hit Disney+ on July 1, with the series already renewed for a third season before new episodes have even reached general audiences. The nine-episode season follows a first run that became one of the most-watched Disney+ Original animated series based on hours streamed globally. With a perfect opening score, a festival launch, and the darkest chapter yet still ahead, the mutants are arriving in peak form this summer.
Whether ‘X-Men ’97’ can hold that flawless rating once all nine episodes are in and which deaths hit hardest are exactly the conversations worth having in the comments.
