In X-Men ’97, Jubilee was paired with Sunspot, the reluctant mutant who hoped his family’s riches would shield him from bigotry. He quickly learned that wasn’t the case, and eventually bonded with Jubilee and the X-Men—just in time for the main team to be scattered across time. “As she faces down a world without the X-Men, she’s going to have to step up like never before,” teased Foxe.
The time-travel adventure that will be the prime story of X-Men ’97‘s second season gives Foxe the opportunity to play with another character forever tied to the decade. Foxe calls Cable “a character I’ve ALWAYS wanted to write more of,” because “he’s got the weight of a time-spanning destiny on his broad shoulders, and that can make a man very dangerous.”
Few mutant characters represent the ’90s better than Cable, who first appeared in 1990’s New Mutants #87, by Louise Simonson and Rob Liefeld. Initially a silver-haired time-traveller with a smattering of ’90s accoutrements—including giant guns, robot parts, and so many pouches—Cable was soon revealed to be Nathan Summers, the son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor (a clone of Jean Grey), sent to the future as an infant.
Because he’s most associated with X-Force, Cable only made guest appearances in the original X-Men cartoon. And, like Jubilee, he has gone through his own evolution, becoming the surrogate father to the young mutant Hope and even being killed and replaced by his teenaged self. But every time, Cable returns to his status quo, all gargantuan guns and ostentatious pouches.
As Foxe notes, that suits X-Men ’97 just fine. The series allows writers to explore aspects of the characters without removing them from the time frame in which they work best. Now if Foxe could only do something with the most ’90s mutant of all, Adam X, the X-Treme…
X-Men ’97 season 2 streams on Disney+ in 2026.
