The X-Men may be the mutant group of Marvel comics, but there have been known to be splinter factions of the group made up of different mutants and usually different approaches to a mission. What’s interesting is, we could be seeing them come the second season of X-Men ’97.
Talking to Collider, series EP Brad Winderbaum teases some incoming X-teams in the next season. He says, “There’s many teams, in Marvel, that have the letter “X” that are followed by a hyphen. I would put it to you like this… there’s two other X teams in Season 2.”
For now, fans are just left to speculate who the incoming teams could be, and based on the comics, there have been the teams X-Force and X-Factor. In the comics, X-Factor was formed as a way to reunite the original X-Men including Jean Grey, Angel, Beast, Cyclops, and Ice Man. They were said to have pretended to be a mutant-hunting group in order to be able to help other mutants. Their main adversary was Apocalypse—who is going to be one of the major baddies in the second season.
As for X-Force, they were considered to be a revamped version of the New Mutants, and they were considered to be more aggressive and deadly when it comes to their missions. Cable had led the team once, and we saw a version of them led by Deadpool in his second movie.
With more mutants teased and the team having split by time, it was a no-brainer that there would be two X-teams in the next season. With just the first season being able to adapt some of the more obscure comic storylines, fans are excited to see how Marvel Animation is going to adapt some of the newer stories that came out around the early ‘00s.
No release date has been set for Season 2 of X-Men ’97, but it is expected to premiere sometime next year.
