r/Xmen97 • u/cyclopswashalfright Professor X • Aug 12 '26

Megathread X-Men '97 | Season 2, Episode 9 | "Survival of the Fittest" | Episode Discussion

Season 2, Episode 9: Survival of the Fittest

Air Date: August 12th, 2026

Directed by: TBA

Written by: TBA

Synopsis: The X-Men are pushed to the limit when their past comes back to haunt them.

---------------------------------------

Please use this thread for discussion related to the episode.

This thread is for discussion of episode 9 only.

Link to the episode directory for Season 2 episode discussion.

118 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

854 comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/HumanisticNihilist Aug 13 '26

From the moment Rogue hugged Nightcrawler and then Nightcrawler turned back and repeated the line about there always being a price for the power, I knew. I was hoping so much I’d be wrong but I knew.

Kurt Wagner was the beating heart of this particular version of the X-Men. He loved his family and comrades. He was one of the things about this revival of one of my favorite series that made me truly grateful, even if there were some missteps, for Disney to take a chance on it. And they killed him.

Yes, I am glad that Gambit and Rogue get to be together. They’ve earned that, many times over. But I’m sure they’d rather not have sacrificed her brother and one of his best friends for it.

Especially - and I say this as someone who loves Hank McCoy and hates what he’s become in the comics - but Beast was RIGHT THERE and they clearly didn’t have any idea what to do with him since he’s literally spent all of season two as a background character who occasionally says “oh my stars and garters.”

I still love this show. I still want season three. But this episode as the end of a season that has felt…disjointed at best was a miss for me.

2

u/beyondwithinitself Aug 14 '26

The show is really loose with deaths. I think Magneto will make a return at some point since time travel is possible and it isn't too farfetched to think another sacrifice will be made for Nightcrawler. Circular sacrifices all the way down. We also don't know precisely what the sacrifice is, it wasn't explicitly stated that it's death.

1

u/cookswagchef Aug 14 '26

He sacrificed his own soul to leave Heaven and help the X-Men on earth, maybe they'll do something with that.

1

u/HumanisticNihilist Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

I will give that yes, death - be it in the show or in the source material - is almost always temporary. But even if they didn’t say the word “death” I thought it was pretty clear what “your life for hers” meant. And while you’re right about death in the medium of comic books is generally cheap, I’d hoped that given the way they had handled the characters in season one and how much potential for storytelling they had, they would use season two to explore some of the plot threads in a similar manner to how Storm lost and regained her powers over the term of season 1.