X-Men ’97 Establishes Professor X and Magneto as the Greatest Superhero Romance

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

By the end of the latest of episode of X-Men ’97, “Rise of Apocalypse Part II,” Magneto has died. Again. At this point, no one who likes Marvel‘s superheroes can get too upset about any of the mutants meeting their end, as their round-tip ticket from the afterlife is so well-used that the comics made them canonically unkillable for a few years. But Charles Xavier doesn’t know that, so when he sees Apocalypse kill Magnus in front of him, he is inconsolable.

Yet, even with that bit of disbelief dutifully suspended, Charles is really upset about seeing his archenemy die, a guy who just a few episodes earlier ripped the entire skeleton out of one of his students. So enraged is Charles that he actually praises Apocalypse’s mother for trying to kill her son as a child. Obviously, then, Charles had a different relationship with Magneto, one that has long been present in the comic. Charles and Magneto have one of the most complex and romantic relationships in all of comic book history.

Romantic Genesis

Although the two debuted alongside one another in 1963’s Uncanny X-Men #1, we did not learn the depth of their connection until Uncanny X-Men #161 (1982), written by Chris Claremont and penciled by Dave Cockrum. They first met when Xavier, then a young psychologist, visited a hospital in Israel to work with survivors of the Jewish Holocaust. There, he meets Magneto, who was going by the name Magnus and volunteering at the same hospital. For readers, Magneto had only just begun to develop into something deeper than the usual Silver Age villain he’d been since first appearance. In fact, his Holocaust survivor backstory had only been revealed a year earlier, in Uncanny X-Men #150.

Xavier first impresses Magnus by curing a catatonic woman called Gabrielle Haller, employing his unique psychology technique—that is, using his telepathy to remove mental blocks, which Cockrum represents by sending a naked, glowing Xavier inside her head to duke it out with demon Nazis. For his part, Xavier realizes Magnus’ mutant status and the two bond over their desire to advance the condition of their people. Despite their stark disagreements, the ideas remain theoretical at that point, as neither has yet taken action to realize them. When Hydra soldiers attack the hospital and kidnap Haller, Xavier and Magnus join forces to rescue her and must confront their opposing philosophies.

Yet, even in that story, the clash between Magneto and Professor X wasn’t just about different ways of looking at the world. The two men had genuine affection for one another, a bond that went deeper than anything they shared with their respective female partners.

Nothing demonstrates this better than when one of those frequent partners, Moria MacTaggart, reveals herself to be a mutant in the complimenting series House of X and Powers of X, the 2019 launch of the ambitious (but ultimately unsatisfying) Krakoa Era of X-Men comics. Writer Jonathan Hickman retcons longtime supporting character MacTaggart from a human scientist sympathetic to mutants to a mutant herself, who has the ability to reset her life after death, being born again at the same time and to the same parents, but with her memories of past lives in tact. Thanks to those memories, Moria knows that Magneto and Xavier have failed time and again to implement their plan and she pushes them to found the sovereign nation of Krakoa as the best solution.

Given that Xavier has been romantically involved with Moria in the past, and given that she has now revealed both her status as a mutant and a deep desire to improve the lives of mutants, one might think that Xavier’s passions for her would only increase. And yet, it’s Magneto to whom Xavier turns, and the two spend the era united in a way they’ve never been before, proving that their soulmates to each other in a way that no one else can match.

Hidden, No More

At this point, we do need to allow for some rebuttals. Chris Claremont has been quite open about the limitations of Marvel editorial and the Comics Code Authority, which prevented him from directly portraying queer relationships. The most famous example is the love between Mystique and Destiny, but only the most obtuse reader would miss the longing between nearly every female character in the X-Men and most of the men.

That said, when Claremont visited the queer comic convention FlameCon in 2016, he did not admit to anything other than friendship between the two men. “My thinking was ‘God bless ambiguity,'” he told panel attendees. “Sexual orientation in that instance is irrelevant, they are best friends.”

Furthermore, the Krakoa Era made a lot of the subtext of previous comics into explicit text. Mystique’s quest to resurrect Destiny drive much of the plot—and she even openly identifies Destiny as “my wife,” something disallowed in previous comics.

Likewise, the love triangle between Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean Grey becomes a proper throuple; or, at least, Jean is shown on the page to be sleeping with both Scott and Logan (and Scott sleeps with both Jean and Emma Frost). And yet, even in this milieu, we don’t see any physical affection between Charles and Magneto. Heck, Charles hardly removes his weird Cerebro helmet at all in that period.

All of that aside, it’s impossible to see these two characters as just best friends, especially while watching “Rise of Apocalypse Part II.” The way that Magneto embraces Charles before sending his friend to safety and stopping Ship’s attack is warm and caring, in contrast to the violence about to unfold. The hurt that voice actor Ross Marquand plays when Charles calls out the name “Magnus” feels more like Xavier is losing part of himself than he even a close friend and ally. Even the last line that Magneto delivers before leaving Charles—”I gladly play the devil who pushes sinners to embrace the saint”—transcends supervillain dialogue to acknowledge an intimacy that foreshadows the loss about to occur.

Evolving Love

Is that enough to say that Charles and Magnus are romantically linked, especially given the rebuttals above? Maybe not in the same way we talk about, say Superman and Lois or Spider-Man and Mary Jane. But the love that Magneto and Professor X has for one another is something deeper, different, and unique. They have a love that looks unlike anything we find anywhere else in superhero fiction.

And that’s as it should be. Because mutation and evolution are, after all, what the X-Men are all about.

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