X-Men 97's Bastion Almost Made His Cartoon Debut In Another Marvel Show

"X-Men: The Animated Series" frequently adapted comic storylines with near manga-to-anime fidelity (near because the show sometimes swapped out certain characters, like using Jubilee to fill Kitty Pryde's role). The show introduced the pinnacles of the titanic Chris Claremont "X-Men" run to its young viewers: first "Days of Future Past" and then "The Phoenix Saga" and subsequent "Dark Phoenix Saga." The revival "X-Men '97" season 1 carried on that spirit, using storylines like "Trial of Magneto" for its second episode, "Inferno" for its third Two, and the 1997 crossover "Operation: Zero Tolerance," about the titular effort to wipe out all mutants. 

In "X-Men '97," OZT's leader, the technopathic human-Sentinel hybrid Bastion/Sebastion Gilberti (Theo James), takes Cassandra Nova's place as the one who sets the Genosha genocide into motion. The animated Bastion's ethos that "tolerance is extinction" melds the two stories' titles and reflects the larger combination.

Since OZT failed, Bastion has returned here and there in "X-Men" comics, but "X-Men '97" was his animation debut. Yet it could've come more than a decade earlier: Bastion was meant to appear in the 2009 cartoon "Wolverine and the X-Men," and concept art (found on Facebook) was even drawn up for him:

Marvel Studios Animation

Marvel Studios Animation

However, "Wolverine and the X-Men" was canceled, with a truly massive cliffhanger ending never to be resolved. The show's planned season 2, which would've primarily adapted "Age of Apocalypse" but also worked in Bastion and "Operation: Zero Tolerance," was left unrealized.

"Wolverine and the X-Men" elevated the bullheaded Logan (Steve Blum) into an unlikely role — team leader. One seemingly normal day, Xavier's School explodes, and both Professor X (Jim Ward) and Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale) are nowhere to be found. A year later, the U.S. government has instituted a Mutant Response Division (M.R.D., or "Mardies") that's actively hunting and imprisoning all mutants. Wolverine must reunite the scattered X-Men; telepathic messages from a future Professor X say if the X-Men don't stop a war between man and mutants, a Sentinel-dominated wasteland awaits them all. 

The series' writers such as Christopher Yost and Joshua Fine (who both later worked on also too-short-lived "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes") completed eight episode scripts for "Wolverine and the X-Men" season 2 before the cancellation. The season's three-part premiere, "A New Order" would've introduced Operation: Zero Tolerance as a new wave of the M.R.D. and revealed Mister Sinister (Clancy Brown) was developing a new "sleeper" Sentinel model. Those threads would've likely paid off with the introduction of Bastion and his "Prime Sentinels," or humans transformed into cyborg Sentinels.

In series finale "Foresight," the X-Men prevented the Sentinel-ruled future, but not before Magneto (Tom Kane) reprogrammed several Sentinels and used them to attack the United States. So, based on the season 2 scripts, humans still fear mutants and war is still coming. This time, as the cliffhanger ending of "Foresight" showed, that war would bring a future ruled by Apocalypse, where the strongest mutants have enslaved mankind.

This is pure speculation, but since Sinister serves Apocalypse, perhaps that duo would've orchestrated Bastion's creation to play human and mutant against each other. Apocalypse's M.O. is a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest, after all.

After a debut season with the Sentinels as the main threats, "Wolverine and the X-Men" season 2 introducing Bastion and Prime Sentinels would've been the logical next step in storytelling evolution. The show may have even been planting seeds (never to be reaped) for Bastion in season 1. In the episode "Backlash," the X-Men try to destroy the central Sentinel AI, Master Mold (Gwendoline Yeo), in the present to stop it ruling in the future. The ending reveals they failed; Master Mold escaped the X-Men destroying its physical form by uploading into a damaged Sentinel.

In Marvel Comics, Bastion emerged out of a retcon to Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri's "Uncanny X-Men" #246-247, where the X-Men fight a Master Mold upgraded by futuristic Sentinel Nimrod. This Sentinel is sent through space-time portal the Siege Perilous, and ("Operation: Zero Tolerance" revealed) emerged out the other end in a human-shaped form, but with its anti-mutant programming intact.

Marvel Comics

This might be one reason Bastion hasn't appeared all that much; his origin is too complicated and synonymous with the diminishing returns of the 1990s' labyrinthine "X-Men" spin-offs. Indeed, "X-Men '97" revised his origin; Bastion's father was infected by a nanotech piece of Nimrod's AI, so Sebastion was born with Sentinel directives and control over machines. This adds new depth to Bastion's character; he persecutes mutants even though he's something of a mutant himself.

"X-Men '97" proved that Bastion could work in animation, which "Wolverine and the X-Men" never got the chance to do. Since "Operation: Zero Tolerance" was the big "X-Men" comic storyline in the real year 1997, and time hasn't diminished its narrative, it was the obvious choice to adapt for "X-Men '97."