She deserves happiness, dang it!
Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 Episode 5.
The Big Picture
-
X-Men ’97
delves deeper into Rogue’s character than
X-Men: The Animated Series,
putting her resilience, her heartbreak, and her self-acceptance at the story’s forefront. - Even though Rogue deserves happiness after a lifetime of trauma, she faces even more devastating losses in Episode 5.
- Episode 5’s intentional and impactful storytelling highlights Rogue’s complexity and moral resolve, and sets the stage for her future journey.
The X-Men have tortured pasts. Pain is part and parcel of the mutant experience and reinforces the franchise’s purpose as a sociopolitical allegory. This means the X-Men have turbulent current lives, too. Appropriately, X-Men ’97 hasn’t skimped on the angst. Everyone’s grieving Charles Xavier (Ross Marquand), their life-changing mentor. Scott Summers (Ray Chase) and Madelyne Pryor (Jennifer Hale) send their sick newborn into the future. Jean Grey (Hale) is recovering from her kidnapping while Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith) navigates a different emotional and physical violation: a world without her powers. However, after Episode 5, ’97 ensures that no living team member is having a worse time than our dearly beloved Rogue (Lenore Zann), the best of all best girls.
A woman beset by lifelong pain, things were looking up for Rogue for a literally hot minute when Magneto (Matthew Waterson), Rogue’s ex-boyfriend and an encapsulation of the “stupid sexy Flanders” meme, reentered her life. (Booked and busy Danger Room, y’all. Enough said.) Episode 5, titled “Remember It,” grants Rogue the much-deserved space to identify her feelings, and in so doing, re-discover herself. It carries the high-intensity impact of a soap opera but centers Rogue’s hopes, her trauma’s lasting effects, and her indefatigable compassion as things crucial to the narrative backbone. Of course two men are gallantly vying for her affections, because who can’t adore this woman? She loves with her entire soul. The Southern Belle with a fist of steel wouldn’t hurt a fly unless she had no choice. She devotes her life to protecting mutants and humans alike.
Then, Episode 5 deprives Rogue of her love interests one after the other in merciless fashion. Of the three X-Men visiting Genosha, Rogue is the lone survivor. Cradling Gambit’s (A. J. LoCascio) corpse, her breathless sob of “I can’t feel you” is an agony on pair with WandaVision. That’s an eerily apt comparison, given how Rogue and Wanda Maximoff’s (Elizabeth Olsen) lives are stuck in tragedy loops. Let’s be clear: I eat drama with a spoon. X-Men ’97 giving Rogue the attention she deserves delights the fan whose favorite X-Men character for the past 15 years has been (you guessed it) Rogue. But, respectfully: why such pain? (Because drama demands conflict, I know. Still.) ’97 better restore my girl’s happiness. Send her on a journey, but don’t make me metaphorically toilet paper your metaphorical house, either.
X-Men ’97
A band of mutants use their uncanny gifts to protect a world that hates and fears them; they’re challenged like never before, forced to face a dangerous and unexpected new future.
- Release Date
- March 20, 2024
- Cast
- Jennifer Hale , Cal Dodd , Chris Potter , Catherine Disher , Adrian Hough , Ray Chase , Lenore Zann
- Main Genre
- Animation
- Seasons
- 2
- Number of Episodes
- 10
- Streaming Service(s)
- Disney+
- Franchise(s)
- X-Men
What Is Rogue’s Past in ‘X-Men ‘97’?
Before X-Men ’97, Rogue’s life was a recurring tragedy. Her mutant ability to absorb anyone’s powers, memories, and knowledge, proved a gift and a curse. Because she can’t control her power, Rogue’s incapable of touching anyone without endangering their lives. When a teenage Rogue kissed her first boyfriend, he fell into a coma. Rogue fled from her abusive father and survived on her own for a time, only to be discovered by the villainous Mystique (Jennifer Dale).
To Mystique’s credit, she loved Rogue like a daughter. Rogue knew her as “Mama,” and the Brotherhood of Mutants’s leader kept Rogue safe. Through Mystique’s mentorship (and Magneto’s, which precipitated his love affair with Rogue), Rogue grew to understand her abilities. However, Mystique still manipulated Rogue into harming others, which in turn hurt Rogue: permanently absorbing Ms. Marvel’s abilities caused Rogue immense psychological suffering. Charles Xavier’s intervention helped her heal. Now aware of the Brotherhood’s malicious intentions, she abandoned them and joined the X-Men.
‘X-Men ‘97’ May Have Just Revealed Its Big Villain
And he’s a major throwback to the original comics.
Even though Rogue’s X-Men peers respected her (and, in Gambit’s case, adored the ground she flew above), she couldn’t escape her physical isolation and the emotional loneliness that came with it. In a moment of desperation, she considered shedding her powers. The event reunited her with Mystique, which gave Rogue catharsis but worsened their estrangement and the profound guilt Rogue carried about unwittingly hurting innocent people.
At every turn, Rogue cannot win. She’s denied a first kiss. She lost her teenage love and then Magneto, her first adult love, to their different ideologies. She discovered her true family (the X-Men) only after her birth father and adoptive mother exploited her. Events that villains might cite as their origin stories only solidified Rogue’s heroism. Despite having every reason to hate the world, her heart holds a galaxy’s worth of love.
Rogue Takes Center Stage in ‘X-Men ‘97′
Entering X-Men ’97, Rogue appears confident in her identity. Magneto appointing himself the team’s new leader stirs the pot in more ways than one. Rogue longs for connection. Erik offers her that physically and emotionally, which doubles as another desperately needed emotion: hope. Hope for happiness, contentment, comfort, absolute acceptance — TheShockNews goes on. Except this is X-Men; Rogue’s newfound chance for fulfillment shatters Gambit’s heart. If Magneto is the one who got away, Gambit’s the one who stays by Rogue’s side despite her keeping him at a distance. Rogue accidentally hurts too many people to risk adding Gambit, the man she loves despite her reticence, to TheShockNews. Erik’s return helps Rogue overcome those fears and realize that true love transcends mere touch. After four episodes of immense inner strife, she chooses her Cajun rake, which doubles as Rogue finally accepting herself.
As soon as Rogue’s decision leaves her lips, the Sentinels demolish Genosha. She desperately tries to protect Magneto; her efforts are in vain. Their eyes meet, and Rogue watches as he (possibly) dies. Minutes later, the same Sentinel impales Gambit. The first time Rogue and her true love can safely touch skin-to-skin, she “can’t feel” him. This, after previously stating that although she knows Gambit’s heart beats for her, “I can’t feel it,” and minutes after Rogue had decided to fearlessly love him. The questions pile up like a barrel of monkeys: does a worse outcome for Rogue even exist? Can this poor woman have just an ounce of lasting happiness? To whom do I personally plead my case?
Comic book character deaths are as common as sneezing. For the animated X-Men, such personalized destruction is uncharted ground. It’s likely ’97 will revert at least one if not both deaths. There’s an equal chance the series further subverts our expectations by letting the weighty ramifications stick. Episodic director Emi Yonemura told IGN, “It was the thesis statement all along to know that we have to earn the loss and it has to mean something and then that has to be taken very delicately.” Supervising director Jake Castorena added, “Ideally our goal is to not have the audience become desensitized to the violence, but to be emotionally exhausted from it, to live in that true realm of how our characters are living with it.” Gambit and Magneto’s deaths are purposeful, and Rogue is the most benevolent and resilient X-Men character through which to portray the grief.
Can Rogue Just Have a Happy Ending, Please?
Of course, Episode 5’s intentionality doesn’t make the situation hurt less. Here is yet more proof that Rogue can’t win. Truthfully, this level of agony is fascinating and fresh. X-Men ’97 has gone in for the kill more than X-Men: The Animated Series did across five seasons. Rogue’s heartbroken fury, face streaked with tears and hair redder than flames, births a version of her we’ve never before seen onscreen. X-Men ’97 keenly draws out each individual’s interiority with an intimate and compelling touch. In the best way, the creators’ love for the characters bleeds through the frame. So does the heart of the extraordinary Lenore Zann, the actress whose voice guided our childhoods, echoes in our comic-reading minds, and comforts our adulthood as we watch ’97 unfold. Zann’s tender ferocity is as much a miracle as the excruciating agony she captures with one line read, which deserves every award on the planet.
The actress comforted devastated fans and teased Rogue’s future through an interview with the “To me, my X-Men” podcast: “We’re all gonna heal together,” she said. “I mean, we’re gonna go through a big journey now. It ain’t over yet. Buckle up. Rogue is just getting started.” Those statements spawn more ardent curiosities: will her heartbreak manifest in emotional collapse? Vengeful anger? Even if Rogue pursues a darker path, ultimately, her moral resolve will prevail, or I’ll eat Cyclops’s visor. Rogue is a survivor. Her heart of gold constantly melts and reforges through fire. Her journey is now as uncharted as the narrative. I’m confident X-Men ’97 will weave a story with remarkable payoff, but still: let Rogue be happy, please and thank you. She deserves the world, the world doesn’t deserve her selfless work, and few characters deserve peace more. Also, she’s just my favorite, okay? That’s, like, reason enough.
New episodes of X-Men ’97 premiere every Wednesday on Disney+.
This article was originally published on collider.com