X-Men ’97 earned critical acclaim from reviewers and general audiences alike almost instantly, but the show hit a new level of popularity midway through its run. “Remember It” depicted Genosha being attacked by a Master Mold Wild Sentinel that killed thousands of mutants (though thankfully, Magneto was not one of the casualties as initially believed). It was only thanks to Gambit sacrificing himself that the robotic monstrosity was destroyed, but needless to say that this genocide changed the Marvel TV show’s status quo. Looking back on X-Men ’97 Season 1, head director and supervising producer Jake Castorena talked with CinemaBlend about why it was so important to “nail” the Genosha tragedy.
Genosha Was A Pivotal Turning Point In The Show
Shortly after the X-Men ’97 Season 1 finale was released to Disney+ subscribers, I chatted with Castorena about a variety of topics tied to “Tolerance is Extinction - Part 3,” which included hearing his excitement about Gates McFadden voicing Mother Askani and getting a response from him on Wolverine, Storm and Morph being MIA at the end of the episode. As our conversation was winding down, I opened the floor to the entire season and asked him which action set piece was the most difficult to pull off. Castorena started off by saying:
At the end of the day, X-Men is an ensemble show. There's a boatload of characters that you have to track. It’s always making sure that everybody can get equal time. We don't always get to give everybody all the time you want to give them… because every episode and every sequence within the episode presents its own challenges, unique or mundane. But at the end of the day… man, that's hard. Everything kind of presented its own challenge. I think Genosha. And obviously, look, we want to stick the landing with the season finale and everything, and we worked very hard to do that, but Genosha was such a pivotal change in the series. If we didn't nail that change, we wouldn't be setting ourselves up for success to pay off the landing as much as we lean into it.
With the inclusion of Cable, the time-traveling mutant who was finally confirmed as Nathan Summers, the adult son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, fans like myself were wondering if the devastating events in Genosha would be undone. Yet despite Cable voice actor Chris Potter seemingly indicating that his character would try to bring Gambit back, that didn’t happen. The Genosha tragedy stuck, and given how fans reacted to the death and destruction in “Remember It,” it’s safe to say that Jake Castorena and his team did indeed “nail” this major twist.
Audiences Needed To Quickly Become Emotionally Invested In Genosha
As the director went on to explain, in order for X-Men ’97 to stick the landing with Genosha in “Remember It,” audiences needed to become emotionally invested in this mutant haven and its inhabitants within the span of just an episode, while also making sure not to drop the ball on the greater story being told. As Castorena put it:
A good creative challenge was just making sure we pulled off Genosha, establishing that it is a flourishing city full of life and after everything, making us care and invest enough before we obliterate it on screen in the same episode. That and just pulling off the sheer amount of effects and character-wrangling and scope. We want the audience to feel the scope and to feel the action to be emotionally exhausted by the action. But we also don't want to lose narrative through it at the same time. We don't want the audience focusing on [a] different thing. You want to have cameos, you want to open stuff, but you don't want it to stop the moment. You want the moment to stop when the chaos has stopped, and then the audience realizes, ‘I’ve been holding my breath the whole time.’ So I wouldn't even say that was the most difficult, but… it was one of the most, “We gotta nail this. We have to nail this and we are going to nail this.’ I 100% believe we did. We have the audience to healthily validate us for that.
CinemaBlend’s own Rich Knight placed “Remember It” as #1 on his ranking of X-Men ’97 Season 1’s episodes, and like Castorena mentioned, you won’t have trouble finding other people who enjoyed this heartbreaking chapter. No doubt the episode helped cement X-Men ’97 as one of the best Disney+ TV shows. If there’s a downside to the success of “Remember It” and Season 1 as a whole though, it’s that the bar has been placed ridiculously high for Season 2, which is in production now. Still, I’m confident that the cast and crew will meet those expectations, if not exceed them.
Once concrete news about X-Men ’97 Season 2 starts trickling in, we’ll pass it along. For now, read some of our other exclusive coverage about the show, like the process that went into figuring how to show Wolverine’s adamantium being ripped from his skeleton, as well as Emi/Emmett Yonemura and Chase Conley explaining why they wish Storm and Forge’s “Lifedeath” storyline could have been longer.
