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The latest episode of X-Men '97 just sneakily showed fans a major franchise villain in a way that 90% of them were guaranteed to miss. This is leading to an awesome twist that's been brewing for twenty-six years.
The most recent episode of X-Men '97 is 'Danger.exe,' and follows Polaris as she reconnects with the X-Men and battles Danger, an AI villain created by a Danger Room malfunction. Fans have been waiting to see Danger, but there's another, far more iconic villain lurking in the background.
Indeed, it's a major villain we haven't yet seen in X-Men '97, seemingly making their grand return with no-one the wiser.
X-Men '97 Just Stealth-Introduced Mystique
In an early scene of the episode, Polaris attends a meeting with Valerie Cooper in her office. As Cooper lectures her, Polaris pets her cat - a marmalade feline with a diamond mark on its head. I'll bet you any amount of money this is Mystique in disguise. Here's why.
In 2000, Marvel revamped the X-Men franchise with Ultimate X-Men - a new continuity set in the modern day. As Xavier's students went about their training, Xavier was accompanied by a marmalade cat with a diamond mark on its head. The pet was unremarkable until Mark Millar and Adam Kubert's Ultimate X-Men #32, when Charles happened to call it by its name: Mystique.
The villainous Mystique had yet to appear in this continuity, so the issue clearly set up the idea that the shapeshifting mutant was under deep cover at Xavier's School, biding her time as a seemingly harmless pet.
For complex reasons we'll discuss in a moment, that didn't end up happening, but it's clear that X-Men '97 is pulling the same trick. The similarities between the cats is simply too exact, and the detail too random, for X-Men '97 to be doing anything else.
Mystique Is Secretly Controlling X-Factor?
It makes sense that Mystique would make her X-Men '97 debut in connection with Cooper's government-led X-Factor team. In the comics, Mystique was the leader of a very similar group of government-supported mutants run by Cooper, codenamed Freedom Force. She was also later forced to work for a different incarnation of X-Factor against her will.
With the way X-Men '97 is mashing together iconic comic stories, it makes sense to connect Mystique to X-Factor, and her return is overdue. The only question left is what she's getting up to in the government team's base when she's not pretending to be a cat.
While Mystique did star in the original '90s X-Men animated series, she hasn't returned for X-Men '97. With Magneto's recent exit from the show, X-Men '97 needs another icon to step up, and that cat has arrived at the exact right time.
Marvel Finally Has a Chance to Pay Off Its Wasted Twist
X-Men '97 using the Mystique cat twist will be particularly satisfying for fans, given Ultimate X-Men dropped the ball. While Millar and Kubert were clearly playing the long game, they left Ultimate X-Men before they could pay it off. When Brian K. Vaughan and Stuart Immonen took over the series, they introduced that reality's version of Mystique with no reference to the cat.
The issue of the cat's name was addressed in Ultimate X-Men Annual #2 in a story by Robert Kirkman and Leinil Francis Yu, revealing the cat was directly named for the villain. In Ultimate canon, Xavier and Mystique dated until he dumped her for the younger Emma Frost, causing Mystique to trash his office. When Frost and Xavier's new kitten did similar damage much later, Frost suggested the name as a dig at her romantic rival.
Ultimately, it was a fun cover for a set-up that didn't pay off, but twenty-six years after Marvel introduced Mystique as a kitty sleeper agent, it's going to be beyond satisfying if X-Men '97 actually pays off this idea.
X-Men '97 is available to watch now on Disney+.
