X-Men '97 Season 2 Teases A Villain Even Stronger Than Apocalypse

Warning: This article contains spoilers for "X-Men '97" Season 2 Episode 7, "Strange Land, Savage Heart."

"X-Men '97" changed forever when Remy LeBeau/Gambit (A. J. LoCascio) met his end in Season 1 Episode 5, "Remember It." But Marvel fans knew that still probably wasn't the last hand Gambit had to play. 

In the "X-Men" comics, Gambit spent a brief time as a Horseman of Apocalypse. The "X-Men" Season 1 finale "Tolerance Is Extinction" teased this would happen to the animated Gambit too, as did merchandise for "X-Men '97" Season 2 that showed an undead Gambit.

This prediction came to pass at the end of "X-Men '97" Season 2 Episode 6, "Danger.exe." Apocalypse, with some Dr. Frankenstein-esque lightning, resurrected Gambit. Gambit's playing cards transformed into a deck of tarot to reflect that Remy LeBeau is no longer Gambit, but rather Apocalypse's Horseman, Death. I'd been expecting that Death would be a loyal enforcer of Apocalypse, but the latest episode's ending complicated that.

X-Force, who we last saw back in Episode 2, "A Force to be Reckoned With," finally track Apocalypse to the lab where he resurrected Gambit. But once they get inside, they see he's already dead; Apocalypse is just a withered corpse, and there's one obvious suspect for who killed him. 

When Gambit became Death in the comics, his explosive touch was altered into a "Death Charge" that could disintegrate living matter. That's a plausible explanation for why Apocalypse's fresh corpse looks so decrepit. Did Apocalypse just hoist his own petard by bringing an enemy back to life and expecting him to be a servant? Or is it not all as it appears to be?

As we saw from Apocalypse's origin this season, he is no mere mutant. He is also a cyborg, merged with technology from the godly Celestials. Yet even he has not totally cast off the weakness of the flesh; he must periodically rest in a "Lazarus Chamber" to maintain his immortality. (In fact, in the original "X-Men" episode "Beyond Good and Evil," Cable sought to destroy this chamber to also destroy Apocalypse.)

Back in "X-Men '97" Season 2 Episode 1, "Days of Past Future," we saw Apocalypse was in one of his rejuvenation periods during 3960 A.D. He wanted the young Nathan Summers (Michael Johnston) because he believed that if he could transfer his consciousness into the boy's body, then Nathan's immense mutant power would mean Apocalypse would no longer be bound to his regeneration chamber.

Apocalypse's attempts to claim Nathan failed, but it seems odd for the show to introduce the idea of Apocalypse wanting a new host if it wasn't going to pay off. That, combined with Apocalypse's dead body, raises another possibility altogether: perhaps Gambit/Death did not kill Apocalypse. Instead, Apocalypse transferred his mind into Gambit, and the decayed corpse is a side effect of that transference process. 

The question becomes why Apocalypse would specifically want Gambit as his host. Remy is powerful (powerful enough that the last act of his first life was vaporizing a skyscraper-sized Sentinel), but he doesn't sit at the upper tier of the X-Men's power the way Professor X, Storm, Jean Grey, etc. do.

Then again, Apocalypse is also a sadist, so perhaps it's all psychological warfare; he wants to make the X-Men fight their worst enemy while he wears a lost friend's face.

"X-Men '97" is streaming on Disney+.