TL;DR – The ending gave me pause, but this was still a fantastic episode.  

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ Service that viewed this series.

X-Men ’97 Review –

When you have a trilogy, the middle part is always going to be, well, for lack of a better world, the middle child. They are stuck following up on what went before while also having to set everything up for the final part. In that space, there is rarely time for them to shine on their own. Today, we will see if Tolerance Is Extinction – Part 2 will continue or buck that trend.

So to set the scene, at the end of Tolerance Is Extinction – Part 1, just when everything looks like it is about to fall apart, two critical events happen. Professor X (Ross Marquand) returned to Earth and called all his X-Men to him, and then Magneto was released from his prison. But this time, Magneto is not going to let humans get away with their crimes. This time, Magneto is going to war. The problem is that Magneto is destroying the Earth’s magnetic field, and in 12 hours, that might be irreversible. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there may be [SPOILERS] ahead.

Well, if nothing else, I think I would use explosive to describe this episode, as much of it is taken up by the twin fights. However, the one thing I did notice here is just the quick pace at which the narrative is proceeding. You get plot points, and character beats thrown at you as if you were standing in front of a malfunctioning baseball pitcher. Cyclops (Ray Chase) and Professor X have a significant character arc together in this episode that may have only happened in three sentences. We go from the mansion, to Magneto coming down to parley, to splitting the party, to all-out war in what felt like half a breath. Also, can someone tell me why Magneto is the only one of the Brotherhood of Mutants appearing outside of Morph (JP Karliak) cameos?

While we raced at a sprint to get to the battles, get to them we did as the X-Men split up even more to target Magneto and Bastion (Theo James) at the same time. Having this split focus did help because whenever you started to lag on one part, you could cut to the other fight to pick up speed again. It was nice to see Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith) come back in full fury again this week and maybe controversially, like stuff Cyclops, Prof-X, and Magneto, like we all know she is the better leader for the X-Men? Right?

The fights were all well-crafted, with everyone getting at least a moment to shine, which, given the cast at the moment, is quite an achievement. I particularly liked the Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale) and Mister Sinister (Chris Britton) brawl with bowling balls a plenty. However, I know this was the second part of three, and I know they want you to come back next week for the finale. But every character ending on a cliffhanger was too much for me. You had the big Wolverine (Cal Dodd) de-adamantium-ing, which was the critical visual touchstone that you wanted to land on. It just didn’t have the same impact, given everyone else was having their own big moments.
  
In the end, do we recommend X-Men ’97 – Tolerance Is Extinction – Part 2? Look, I was a bit frustrated at the ending, and maybe part of that is that I have to wait until next week to see the ending. However, I still liked the episode overall; the action was solid, and it did hit the emotions at times. Here’s hoping they can stick the landing next week.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of X-Men ’97
Directed by – Emi-Emmett Yonemura
Written by – Anthony Sellitti
Created by – Beau DeMayo
Based On – Stories by Marvel Comics, X-Men Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby & X-Men: The Animated Series Developed by Eric Lewald, Sidney Iwanter & Mark Edens
Production/Distribution Companies – Marvel Studios, Marvel Animation & Disney+
Starring – Ross Marquand, Ray Chase, George Buza, Matthew Waterson, Jennifer Hale, Alison Sealy-Smith, Lenore Zann, Cal Dodd, Adrian Hough, Holly Chou & JP Karliak with Gui Agustini, Gil Birmingham, Chris Potter, Chris Britton, Theo James, Ron Rubin & Catherine Disher