X-Men ’97 Revives a Botched MCU Storyline

This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 4.

You might expect the big bad of the X-Men ’97 two-parter “Rise of Apocalypse” to be Apocalypse, the immortal blue-lipped mutant who culls the weak from the strong. The episodes do indeed trace Ancient Egyptian outcast En Sabah Nur’s transformation into Apocalypse, but he isn’t really the villain of the story. Instead, that honor belongs to Rama-Tut, a warlord from the future who came to the past to conquer Egypt.

Ask even the most devoted MCU fan about Rama-Tut, and they’ll probably give you a blank stare. But they have heard of him, just not by that name, something that he acknowledges in the episode. When Xavier demands that Rama-Tut identify himself, he answers (in the deliciously catty voice of John de Lancie of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame), “I  have had so many names, Nathanial, Kang, Victor… Finding one’s self can be so confusing.” And for those who didn’t pick up on it, Rama-Tut exits the episode by pulling on the distinctive purple mask of Kang the Conquerer and returning to the future.

But the moment isn’t just a fun Marvel easter egg. Combined with other nods throughout X-Men ’97, Rama-Tut’s story ties back to a major plot line that the MCU abandoned.

Kang’s Dynasty

Hard as it might be to remember in these days leading up to Avengers: Doomsday, Doctor Doom wasn’t intended to be the primary antagonist of the next Avengers film. Instead, Marvel originally planned to pit Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against Kang the Conqueror, more of an Avengers villain than the Fantastic Four‘s nemesis Victor Von Doom, in a film called Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.

Marvel began laying the groundwork for that movie with the first season of Loki. In that season’s finale, Loki and Sylvie meet the founder of the TVA, He Who Remains, played by up-and-coming actor Jonathan Majors. He Who Remains explains that he formed the TVA to prevent a multiversal war that occurred when variants of himself started traveling across realities. He Who Remains and other variants may be benevolent, but some, he warned, are not.

We met one of those cruel variants in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Kang the Conqueror tries to escape the Quantum Realm and expand his rule to our reality, but he’s thwarted by Ant-Man and his allies. In the movie’s post-credits scene, the Council of Cross-Time Kangs convene to plan a counter-attack, led by variants Immortus, Centurion, and, yes, even Rama-Tut, all played by Majors. Majors played yet another variant in Loki‘s second season, helping Loki and Mobius M. Mobius restore the timeline as the kind and retiring Victor Timely.

And then Kang and his variants disappeared. Why? Not because of the heroics of Ant-Man, Loki, or any Avenger, but because of misbehavior by Majors himself. After being charged with assault, Majors was dropped from his contract with Disney, and Kevin Feige changed directions, casting Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom and replacing The Kang Dynasty with Doomsday, never to mention Kang again… until now.

The Cross-Show Kangs

Of course, it makes sense for Rama-Tut to bring up Kang in X-Men ’97. The series prides itself on its deep-cut comic book references, and Kang has been a variant of Rama-Tut (who was introduced as a separate character in 1963’s Fantastic Four #19) since his first appearance in Avengers #8 from 1964.

But X-Men ’97 doesn’t just gesture toward the comics. Instead, it embraces the MCU version of the character, by integrating some imagery from the live-action universe into the cartoon. The hieroglyphics around Rama-Tut’s throne room recall the figures that He Who Remains used to explain his backstory in Loki, and we see He Who Remain’s symbol, which is also integrated into the TVA’s iconography, on the walls of his fortress.

This isn’t the first time that X-Men ’97 has gestured back to the mainline MCU, nor that the MCU has acknowledged the cartoons. In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Patrick Stewart played less an older version of his character from the X-Men movies, and instead one closer to the Professor Xavier on X-Men: The Animated Series. The same may be true of the version of the Beast who Kelsey Grammer plays in the post-credits scene of The Marvels, and possibly the X-Men slated to show up in Avengers: Doomsday. Storm, as voiced by Alison Sealy-Smith, appeared in a season three episode of What If…, and that series’ overseer the Watcher appears just before the destruction of Genosha in the X-Men ’97 episode “Remember It.”

Taken together, it appears that Kang has returned to the MCU, just in a very different form.

He Who Remains

Even though he seems to serve a relatively minor role in the grand scheme of X-Men ’97‘s second season, Kang the Conquerer deserves a second chance after the Majors debacle. Kang is one of the Avengers’ most compelling foes. Mind-boggling as his backstory (or frontstory, when talking about his futures selves? side story when talking about variants?) might be, Kang presents a unique threat that leads to compelling stories.

Perhaps X-Men ’97 is the first steps on a path to bring Kang the Conqueror back to the MCU, even if it’s in a different form and, yes, with a different name.

X-Men ’97 season 2 streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.