Headscratchers / X-Men '97

Headscratchers pages never use spoiler tagging — so beware of unmarked spoilers

Trask's motivations

• Why would Trask risk another AI apocalypse even with the knowledge of Master Mold's uncontrollability?
  • He probably became emboldened by Gyrich's assassination of Xavier, and decided now was the time to finish the job and wipe out the rest of the mutants, consequences be damned.
  • Trask likely thought he could control the new Master Mold and if need be humanity would be able to stop it. Good old irrational hatred doing the thinking.
  • As of episode 6 it's heavily implied that he was Forced (Back) Into Evil by Mister Sinister.

Did Storm and Forge never meet each other in the original series?

• At the end of the third episode Forge meets Storm in a bar and introduces himself. My memory of the original series is extremely vague and all I really remember was that Forge was in it as a recurring character but I don't recall in what exact capacity...so I would have thought that he and Storm would have encountered each other at some point? Or maybe they never did, and the writers are keenly taking advantage of this detail?
  • This also begs the question of why Storm went to Dallas in the first place if she wasn't seeking out Forge, since she has no personal ties to the city otherwise.
    • Maybe she just took a random bus and ended up there by chance.
  • Funny enough, most of his appearances were in alternate timelines. So the one Storm would actually remember, she wasn't actually in the episode where the Team went up against X-factor. Which also means the Havok situation needs to be resolved.
  • Actually, Storm and Forge did meet each other at the end of the Phalanx Covenant two-parter. They didn't interact though, so maybe Forge just assumed she didn't remember him.

Morph turning into Magik

• Where would Morph get the reference to imitate Magik? Not only were the New Mutants never formed in this continuity, but Illyana herself is still a little girl on her parents' farm in Russia. I know the real reason is that it was a Mythology Gag since "Fire Made Flesh" was a condensed adaptation of Inferno, but Morph had previously only turned into people they could have actually met or at least learned about and studied, whereas teenage-Illyana and her Darkchylde persona don't exist here.
  • Kind of a stretch but it's possible that Illyana being taken to Limbo and growing into a teenager and getting powers and her soulsword happened at some point off-screen during the original series or before this one and Morph met teenage Illyana after that and that's where he got the reference.
  • It's been months since the first show ended and even longer since the character was last on the show. A lot could have happened off screen.
    • In response to the two points above, even if Illyana became Magik during the time skip, she was still wearing the New Mutants uniform. Founding a whole team of junior X-Men is a lot to happen offscreen.
    • Maybe in this continuity the New Mutants uniform is just a superhero costume that Illyana came up with for herself. Or she had no superhero costume at all so Morph made one when shapeshifting into her.
    • The New Mutant uniforms were just slightly modified versions of the original X-Men uniforms, which we already know exist in this continuity.
  • She last appeared back in season 2 of the original series. Jubilee was said to be only 15 in season 3, and in the new show she celebrates her 18th birthday.
  • Maybe Morph just encountered time-travelling Magik from the future at some point.

The Goblin Queen's costume

• Since this version of Madelyne Pryor never made a demonic deal and has no magic powers, where does her costume come from? It literally formed out of thin air
  • She could be using her telepathy to project an illusion of herself wearing that costume, although that doesn't explain the magical girl transformation.
  • During her time as Phoenix in the comics, Jean regularly transformed her clothing by telekinetically rearranging their molecules.

Bishop's Chrono-bracelet

• How could Bishop get stuck in the present, when he previously was able to stay in the present only thanks to his chrono-bracelet and would be sent back to his own time authomatically whenever it was taken off him or just ran out of power?
  • In the Marvel Multiverse, different methods of time travel can have different 'rules' (which is another way of saying it's very inconsistent). It's possible Future!Forge had to modify or redesign the time portal, and as a result Bishop's armband works differently.

Why Clone Jean?

• What was the point for Sinister to clone and switch Jean? In the comics he did it because Jean was believed to be dead at the time, which is not the case here. Scott could as well make a baby with the original Jean.
  • He couldn't control the real Jean and force her to bring him the baby.
    • Fair enough, but then why not just clone Scott too and have both clones under his control?
  • Lack of opportunity, probably — in the original series, Sinister has Jean alone for a while after he kidnaps her and before the rest of the X-Men catch up to save her and Xavier. It's unlikely that he cloned her right there and then, but that was plenty of time to collect her DNA for later. Meanwhile, he only has Scott captured for a short time, and the whole time Scott is kept along with the other X-Men and there's no time or opportunity for Sinister to grab his DNA.
    • Actually Sinister grabbed Scott's DNA (using a really nasty looking device) the first time he kidnapped him and Jean. He probably got Jean's DNA around the same time too, before X-Men saved them. So... I guess, the writers just stayed true to the source material, where Sinister went for a similarly overcomplicated scheme.
    • It's entirely possible that the sample he took from Scott was lost when the Phalanx assimilated his lab for all the data he'd collected on mutantkind.

Xavier's "Death"

• Why does everyone treat Xavier as dead? Sure, he is off Earth now, but he is still alive just far away, X-Men and Magneto know that. In fact, since Magneto and Jean Grey are now in the same team, he could probably power up her telepathy enough to give Xavier a call, like he did with Professor himself in the last episode of TAS. Speaking of that episode, it also involved Morph as Xavier going on TV to claim that he recovered, so what about that?
  • It was established that Professor Xavier was assassinated shortly after returning from space.
  • Where? This is just plain not stated in any of the episodes.
    • Gyrich shot Xavier in the final season of the original but for those who forgot this detail, or misunderstood it, it could have been mistaken for another off screen event during the time jump. Despite this, since it hasn't been seven years since Xavier left Earth, if his will is being executed it does heavily imply his death. It could also be that they simply think he has died, because they cannot contact him. Xavier could be confirmed as deceased during the second half or revealed to secretly be alive. It's also possible he is dead and time travel shenanigans bring him back (along with a few others). Time will tell.
  • Yeah, they definitely, absolutely would not have killed off Professor X offscreen like that. It would be an incredibly stupid way to kill the character and make no sense.
    • We now have confirmation that Xavier is not dead. He simply didn't contact his X-men for the past year. His connection with them, however, has not been dampened. While on the Astral Plane, he was able to feel Gambit's death and the deaths of those on Genosha, urging him to head back to Earth immediately.
  • It's possible the X-Men didn't want to get their hopes up that Xavier would make it, so just prepared themselves to accept that he was really dead.

Madelyne's telepathic range

• How is she having a psychic affair with Cyclops, not to mention Jean feeling her pain later on, while living on the other side of the world? Jean, the Professor and Madelyne herself have previously been shown to need Cerebro or some other boost for smaller distances.
  • Madelyne, much like Jean, shares a psychic rapport with Scott that makes it easier to establish and maintain contact with him. It's more than well-within the realm of plausibility that that psychic rapport allows her to reach him from half a world away.

Storm's Costume

• Maybe Madelyne created her costume with TK but how did Storm manage to materilise her classic costume and tiara out of thin air?
  • Storm also did this in the first episode of the original series. Presumably by tapping into her latent, yet incredibly immense, natural magical power.

Lilandra being a powerful psychic

• If Lilandra is really Charles' telepathic equal, as her sister claims, then why didn't Apocalypse capture her along with Oracle when he was collecting psychics back in the "Beyond Good and Evil" story arc? He went full The Chessmaster to get Xavier, yet despite having a perfect opportunity to take another just as powerful one, he didn't even make an attempt.
  • Apocalypse probably wanted mutants, not aliens.
    • Again, the entire reason he was there was to capture a psychic who was part of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard.
    • Fair, it's been a while since I saw it.
  • Deathbird is just lying to avoid admitting that Xavier is superior to Lilandra in anything and thus their union is less unequal than she claims it to be. Or maybe she just doesn't know just how powerful Xavier's telepathy really is, she has never fought him before after all, and just assumes it's limited to psychic telephone like her sister's. The latter seems highly likely, since during her failed coup she clearly didn't expect Xavier to just mentally take out her forces.

Mutants? Inferior?

• It's understandable why the Shi'ar Empire believes non-mutant humans to be "inferior" to their kind, as that seems pretty common for alien races who seek out to conquer other planets. But that one councilwoman had some nerve to say that Xavier, who's capable of reading minds, projects his own thoughts in the minds others, and even taking control of people's minds if necessary, to be even lesser than the "normal" humans. Like, what sort of mental gymnastics does one have to perform to think the humans on earth born with superhuman qualities are somehow lesser, even to the humans born without such qualities?
  • It seemed like it was acknowledgement of Mutant's place in Earth's own society as outcasts and second class citizens not a judgement of them by their power level and abilities.
  • In addition to what's been said above, that's bigotry for you. There are mutants who are much more powerful than Charles Xavier but they too would be called inferior and less than to humans.

Magneto's tactics

• During the fight on Genosha, why didn't Magneto try to use his powers on Godzilla-Sentinel? It appeared to be made of metal, and even if it was made of non-magnetic alloys, it's circuits could still be vulnerable to a powerful EMP.
  • Since this Sentinel was dispatched intending to capture Magneto alive along with destroying Genosha and killing all other mutants, it would have been specially built to be resistant to all of Magneto's abilities. Plus, Magneto was fighting while enraged and so was likely not thinking clearly at first.
  • Part of me was wondering that too, but if I recall as early as the season 1 finale of the original X-Men: The Animated Series (implied to take place at least four years before this one) the Sentinels that were deployed to capture Magneto were made of plastic and thus immune to his powers (yeah, it's ridiculous, but not substantially more-so than anything else in this series). And there's no doubt that this even further evolved Sentinel and the mastermind behind it would have taken that into account and then some.

Prime Sentinel trash talk

• When the Prime Sentinel was taunting Cyclops, where did that 'orphan' bit came from?
  • That Scott Summers is an orphan has always been known. It's part of his backstory and (presumably) a matter of public record.

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