In 2026, Marvel and Mattel are each releasing initiatives designed to capitalize on folks’s love for iconic animated heroes from their childhoods. Masters of the Universe has put a live-action He-Man on the massive display, and the second season of X-Men ’97 is about to fling a few of Charles Xavier’s mutants into an apocalyptic future. Each initiatives have been clearly made by individuals who love the supply materials, and they’re equally full of nerdy Easter eggs meant to get hardcore followers overestimated. X-Males ’97 and Masters of the Universe are each nostalgia performs, however the largest distinction between the 2 — and arguably the rationale one among them hasn’t been all that a lot of a hit — is the work that has gone into holding their respective characters and worlds alive within the popular culture consciousness.
In its second season, X-Males ’97 splits its crew of mutant heroes up into a number of groups that discover themselves stranded at drastically completely different factors in historical past. Whereas one group winds up in historic Egypt, one other is transported 1000’s of years into the long run. Although each groups need to get again to the ’90s, they’re additionally desperately trying to find a approach to cease the just about immortal mutant villain Apocalypse (Ross Marquand) from destroying the world. And since Apocalypse occurs to be alive in each time intervals, the 2 X-Males squads agree that it’s price spending a while precisely the place they’re.
Relatively than adapting a single storyline from Marvel’s comics, the brand new season of X-Males ’97 combines narrative components from numerous completely different restricted collection — chief amongst them The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix from 1994 and 1996’s Rise of Apocalypse. Utilizing beats from these particular comics to broaden its story makes some sense given the ’90s of all of it. However extra stunning is the quantity of comparatively latest X-Males comics lore the present introduces in an effort to flesh out the world round its core characters.
Whereas X-Males ’97 is a continuation of X-Males: The Animated SequenceMarvel has made it really feel recent by reworking the established canon in significant ways. Taking that strategy is a part of what made the collection a ratings hit when it first premiered in 2024, however followers’ long-standing fondness and familiarity with the X-Males have been additionally key components within the equation.
One of many essential causes that followers have been foaming on the mouth for brand new X-Males initiatives like ’97 and the upcoming X-Men MCU film is that Marvel has by no means actually let this property fade into the background. Though twentieth Century Studios’ X-Males options tended to be horrible, there have been at all times sufficient X-Males comics and TV series within the combine to present followers hope {that a} studio would finally come up with something excellent. And if Marvel spent much less time cultivating the X-Males’s model, the franchise may need discovered itself floundering the way in which Mattel’s Masters of the Universe at the moment is.
There have been a handful of newer collection impressed by the unique Masters of the Universe cartoon. However on the entire, He-Man’s pop cultural prominence has waned within the years since Prince Adam and his mates have been explaining the teachings behind their adventures on tv each weekday from 1983 to 1985. That is probably a part of why Mattel’s new Masters of the Universe film has been underperforming on the field workplace since its launch final week. To date, the film has raked in a paltry $54.4 million against a $200 million production budgetmaking it an enormous monetary dud.
Masters of the Universe has grow to be a case research in Hollywood’s tendency to be taught the unsuitable classes from its earlier successes. Folks flocked to theaters to see Barbie as a result of it was a humorous, feminist deconstruction of an ever-present icon, however Mattel interpreted {that a} signal that viewers are hungry for stories about toys in general. Masters of the Universe makes an attempt to do some mildly vital exploration of poisonous masculinity, however that clearly hasn’t been sufficient to persuade audiences to care about He-Man. Except for hardcore followers, many individuals merely aren’t that invested in or emotionally linked to He-Man’s world, and Mattel hasn’t achieved sufficient to persuade audiences that there’s something attention-grabbing about this newest movie.
If He-Man was a fixture in additional folks’s imaginations the way in which the X-Males are, the dialog round Masters of the Universe would probably be very completely different. Mattel would do properly to internalize this as a invaluable lesson, however there have yet to be signs of that being the case. Between X-Males ’97’s second season and Avengers: DoomsdayMarvel is rolling right into a 12 months of large tales that put mutants entrance and heart. And it’s a second that the studio has been constructing towards for years.
The second season of X-Males ’97 hits Disney Plus on July 1st, and Masters of the Universe is in theaters now.
