Week of Review - Wolverine & the X-Men

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The late 2000s were an unkind time for the X-men franchise.  Specifically, I’m talking about the film side of the X-Men offerings as the comics were actually fairing really well back then.  The movies had completed their trilogy with the spectacular failure that was X-Men: The Last Stand and moment was quickly slipping away from the series as the decade dwindled.  Meanwhile, in the comics, the X-Men had undergone a radical reinvention since the events of the 2005-2006 stories House of M and Decimation. 

Mutants were suddenly an endangered species with barely 100 left alive, Cyclops had become a militant mutant leader and founded his own rogue nation in the San Francisco Bay called Utopia.  Even the Ultimate Comics line was in a fit of bizarre storytelling under the banner of Ultimatum, a mega-event where Magneto killed most of the Ultimate superheroes including Xavier, Cyclops, Captain America, Wolverine and more.  It was a strange time and Wolverine and the X-Men really reflect that particular strangeness.  

To date, Wolverine and the X-Men is the last of the X-Men animated series and while it’s not as well composed as X-Men: Evolution or as slavish a transliteration of the comics as X-Men TAS it is fun its own unique way.  The premise is actually pretty clever and out there and probably the best use of Wolverine in adapted media pre-Logan, which is a pretty impressive feat given this came out at the same time as X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine is probably the big reason the show didn’t get a second season but we’ll get to that in due course.

The premise of Wolverine and the X-Men is that sometime in the past a mysterious explosion knocked the X-Men completely out of commission.  The mansion was badly damaged and discontinued as an institute, Professor Xavier ended up in a coma, and Jean Grey went missing.  In the wake of this disaster, the X-Men have been pretty much scattered and the government has pounced on the opportunity to finally start rounding up the mutants with Sentinel technology.  Unhappy with the current state of affairs and concerned about the future of mutant-kind Wolverine takes it upon himself to reform the old team and bring the X-Men out of retirement.

What I love about this particular set-up is that it completely flips the script on who Wolverine is meant to be to the team but in a logical way.  Wolverine is very much the fantasy of anger but in practice, every great Wolverine story usually boils down to him learning how to trust and love again.  That’s part of why he always ends up the dad figure to all the X-Men, his whole struggle is letting go of a core element of his power fantasy to become a more complete character.  

Wolverine and the X-Men takes place well after the X-Men have been established for a while so it makes sense Wolverine would already BE more fatherly and willing to act as team leader.  He’s basically the Cyclops of the team- the optimistic, “better living through teamwork,” beating heart of the team. 

As for Cyclops, in a brilliant move, he’s basically the show’s Wolverine- a rugged loner who doesn’t let anyone in or care about the stuff he breaks.  It’s kind of the perfect switch up and also really reflects events that were ongoing and yet to come in the comics.  As I said earlier, by this point in the X-Men comics Cyclops had supplanted Xavier and Magneto as the leader of the Mutants and he was a pretty militant leader at that.  

At the same time, Wolverine was quickly developing into the team’s conscience and the one person who thought that mutant kids should be allowed to be kids instead of child soldiers.  In the books, this eventually led to a full-on split between the two in 2011’s Schism, which spawned its own Wolverine and the X-Men comic. 

Aside from the “rebuild the X-Men” plot of the show, there was also a bigger season-long story that loosely adapted Days of Future Past.  The idea was that Professor Xavier was able to communicate from the future through his coma body (the details of how this works are unrewarding.)  

The future he’s reporting from is a dystopian wasteland overrun by the Sentinels after the project became super-charged in the wake of a mutant related tragedy.  What really works on this side is that we actually get a lot of cool episodes set in the dystopian future including the show’s best episode ‘Rover,’ about a malfunctioning Sentinel who joins the mutant resistance.

The “prevent the future” storyline is a pretty solid way for the show to integrate a lot of mutant lore and breadth into the series as the X-Men try and solve the mystery of what happened.  Genosha ends up a major part of the series with Magneto as more of an anti-villain rather than a straight antagonist, which is pretty unique all on its own.  

Ultimately, they made the pretty clever decision to compress the Phoenix plot and Apocalypse plot into one, with the Hellfire Club’s attempt to control Jean Grey’s Phoenix form as the spark that sets the world on destruction.  I admit, that kind of condensing is perhaps a little too much and the finale does feel rushed in a few areas.  Overall though it’s pretty solid and they even ended on a great cliffhanger promising the appearance of Apocalypse the next season- that sadly didn’t happen.

I’m not entirely sure why the series was canceled even though it did fairly well and was pretty well received though I suspect it’s to do with one of two things.  Firstly it could easily be a victim of the Fox/Marvel feud as it was replaced with an Avengers show to help along Marvel’s growing clout as a studio.  Secondly, and this is the one I most suspect, it could be fallout from X-Men Origins: Wolverine bombing so hard.  This happens sometimes, bad movies hurt good shows because of how monetizing this kind of product works.

In both cases a lot of the money comes from toy sales so if the film bombs and retailers are stuck with a ton of unsellable toys they aren’t going to carry that particular brand in future.  I believe that the X-Men Origins: Wolverine did a number on the Wolverine/X-Men toy branding and stores were wary about carrying Wolverine and the X-Men toys, especially as the MCU related merch began to sell more and more.  This is basically the same thing that happened to Green Lantern the animated series; the poor sales of the film’s toys killed the show’s ancillary merchandise. 

Overall I’m glad I got to end X-Men Week with Wolverine and the X-Men as it really is an underappreciated gem in the “X-Men on TV” canon.  It’s a thoroughly unique approach to the material that leans into the franchise’s strengths to avoid feeling like just a tired retread of stuff we already know.  It’s a damn shame the series never got that second season but the one we got is still pretty good and easily worth your time to check out.  I mean, it’s a superhero show that was such a good idea it became an entire comic all on its own- that’s got be worth at least a look. 

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