'X-Men '97' Season 2 Ending Explained: the Cast Break Down 4 Crucial Moments

“X-Men: The Animated Series is quite literally the reason why I became an actor,” Marquand tells Polygon. “People look at me kind of cockeyed when I say that, but I mean it. That was such a seminal show for me as a kid because I was bullied a lot. I was super nerdy. I was in Boy Scouts. I was in theater. I was watching X-Men and getting into comics and everything.”

Marquand points to one specific episode (season 1 episode 6, "Cold Vengeance"), in which Wolverine heads to Alaska in an attempt to clear his head and befriends a local tribe. Eventually, however, Sabertooth shows up and Wolverine laments, "There's no peace for me. Not even here." That one line, in particular, stuck with Marquand.

"As a 12-year-old going through puberty, getting picked on all the time, I resonated so much with that line and with that character," he says. "After I watched that whole season and watched the show, I was like, 'That's what I wanna do. I want to do stories like this.'"

With X-Men: The Animated Series as a template, X-Men ‘97 has continued on from that original series — and even brought it to new heights. This is especially on display during the season 2 finale of X-Men ‘97, which delivers a satisfying conclusion to the show's Apocalypse plotline while taking the story in surprising and emotionally devastating directions. Ahead of the finale, Polygon caught up with Marquand, Lenore Zann (Rogue), and Adrian Hough (Nightcrawler) to get the voice-acting cast's thoughts on four major moments from the entire season and its stunning conclusion.

1 The philosophical battle between Professor X and Apocalypse

At the beginning of X-Men ‘97 season 2, Professor X and a few other mutants travel back in time and meet a young En Sabah Nur before he becomes Apocalypse, which culminates in the brutal murder of Magneto. So in a way, when Professor X and Apocalypse have their big showdown in the season 2 finale, it's thousands of years in the making. And just as he did in ancient Egypt, Apocalypse tells Professor X that his compassion, particularly for his students, will spell his defeat.

“Obviously, this is echoing episode four, where Apocalypse lays down the gauntlet and says, 'We've done this dance so many times. Your Achilles heel has always been your love for your students and your willingness to put others before yourself,'" Marquand says.

This may seem like classic supervillain goading, but the actor doesn't see it quite that way.

"That's always been Professor X's ethos, and it will ultimately be the thing that will cause his demise,” he says. “There is a lot of truth to that. Apocalypse is basically saying, 'You always think you can save the world through empathy and through caring, but the reality is, I am here to show you that is all inherently wrong, and you will feel the taste of my wrath once this is all over.”

2 Playing two roles as one

Performing both sides of that conflict also posed a real challenge for Marquand, who explains how he initially played Professor X and Apocalypse as two sides of the same mutant coin before ultimately splitting them into distinct roles:

“It's so haunting, and it was weird going back and forth between those two voices because, obviously, they're very different sounds, but more importantly, they're very different energies. At first, when we were doing that, I was trying to go back and forth like I was talking to myself, but it was just sounding weird. It was too much of a linguistic hurdle, but also a mental hurdle because, if you want to do it right, you really have to take a moment, recenter yourself, and do each voice individually, which is what we ended up doing.

"I think that was the way to go because then you feel the malice and the pain and the genuine loathing quality of Apocalypse, who believes he is inherently better than everyone around him. Whereas Professor X is very much of the mind that everyone deserves a fighting chance in this life; we have to work together; we have to take care of each other. And Apocalypse is not on board with that ethos at all.”

To get the voice of Apocalypse right, Marquand not only impersonated the voice that the late John Colicos did in the original series, he also turned to another surprising inspiration.

“I infused a bit of Jesse Ventura into the voice,” says Marquand. “I grew up listening to Jesse and watching Jesse on WWF and I worked with him on a movie almost 20 years ago. I listened to Jesse all the time and he had these great stories about being a Navy SEAL in Vietnam. And, even after his words were done, they would resonate. There was an auditory warble to his voice.”

Marquand fused that sound with the Shakespearean quality Colicos brought to the role, along with a slight tinge of metal bands like Nine-Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, and Cannibal Corpse.

3 Rogue and Gambit (and Magneto)

Rogue also experiences a full-circle moment in the X-Men '97 season 2 finale when the man she loves, Gambit (A. J. LoCascio), returns from the dead and is finally rid of Apocalypse’s influence. It’s a reunion fans have been waiting for ever since Rogue chose Magneto (Matthew Waterson) over Gambit in season 1. (And then Gambit tragically died in the attack on Genosha.) Rogue's decision, while it did have precedent in the comics, has been controversial, and it took her long-time voice actor, Lenore Zann, by surprise.

“When I first read about [Rogue and Magneto] in the scripts, I was not aware of the fact that they had had this thing happen in their past lives,” Zann says. “When I realized, Okay, well, it's, it's in the comics, I realized this would give a little bit of spice to Rogue's sugar. I figured the fans wouldn't be particularly happy, but it's a story. If everything just was all simple and Rogue and Remy just got together and they got married and they could touch and everything, it would be boring. So I figured this'll keep people on their toes and get them talking. Sure enough, it did.”

Now that Gambit and Rogue are reunited, Zann says their relationship may be stronger than ever. "Rogue feels that Remy is her soulmate. She realizes that in episode five of season 1.”

According to Zann, Rogue chose Magneto, not just because she could touch him, but because she wanted to help build up Genosha as a place where mutants were accepted. But after the scene where Magneto and Rogue dance together, the character realizes she belongs with Gambit.

“Remy was right,” she says. “Some things are deeper than skin. She realizes it's not all about touch. It's about what's deeper than that — the love that you feel for somebody deep inside. She's about ready to fly to Remy's side and then, bang, all, all hell breaks loose with the Genosha genocide.”

Now, finally, Gambit and Rogue are together, but it comes at a hefty price…

4 Nightcrawler's sacrifice

Despite the fact that Nightcrawler only appeared in two episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series, actor Adrian Hough says the role has always stuck with him. Years before X-Men ‘97 was in production, he was still talking about it during auditions for other animation jobs.

“Even five, six years ago, I said to my voice agent, ‘Look, there's this big animation job coming into town, can you just tell him I was Nightcrawler in the original X-Men?’ And he says, very flatly over the phone, ‘Nobody cares about a 25-year-old cartoon,’” Hough says with a laugh. “Then, two years ago, I get this kind of sheepish email from him saying, ‘Adrian, you might recognize these lines. Can you please read them out?’ And it's all the lines from the Nightcrawler episode. So I got my little mic out and read them all out and, turns out, we're back 30 years later.”

Nightcrawler has several memorable moments over the past two seasons of X-Men ‘97, thanks largely to the character's religious and spiritual traits.

“If ever there's anything sort of philosophical or soulful, it's like, Okay, let's give it to Nightcrawler,” says Hough.

Now though, it's entirely possible that Hough’s 30-year journey with Nightcrawler may be over. At the end of the season 2 finale, it's revealed that he made a deal with a Celestial, sacrificing his own life so the X-Men can finally defeat Apocalypse. This happens after Rogue makes a similar deal, meaning that Nightcrawler technically takes his fellow X-Men's place, giving Gambit and Rogue a chance to be together.

“You don't like to see that when you come and read a script,” Hough says. “Oh, my character's going to make this ultimate sacrifice and go into the void? So yeah, I mean, I just went there and did my job.”

Death, of course, is rarely permanent with the X-Men, but when asked about the possibility of Nightcrawler’s return, Hough simply says, “I don't know. That's not in my hands. That's in the hands of the writers and directors.”

Hopefully, Hough is just being coy here and Nightcrawler will be back. After all, it's been more than 30 years since X-Men: The Animated Series debuted and the fans still care about its characters, and there are definitely still more stories to be told with Nightcrawler.

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X-Men '97 is streaming on Disney Plus.