Disney+
Former ′X-Men ‘97′ Creator Shares Insights on Episode 5 “Remember It”
Beau DeMayo, who was fired before the series premiered on Disney+, has broken his silence since his departure to share details about the latest episode.
The experience of watching X-Men ‘97 every Wednesday has brought a great deal of nostalgia to the generation that grew up with the ‘90s series. The most recent episode, “Remember It,” gave us a glimpse into the chiaroscuro that is mutant life, and how the life of an X-Men is never easy. In addition, Beau DeMayo, creator of the series for Disney+, took to Twitter/X to give more information about this episode and at the same time break the silence since his dismissal from the series at the beginning of March.
Warning: Spoilers for episode 5 of X-Men ‘97, “Remember It”, below:
The episode showed us that there is no perfect happiness in the world of the X-Men. Genosha is about to be integrated into the United Nations, and Magneto is chosen by a group of “eclectic social climbers” to be its new leader. Things don’t go so well when Wild Sentinel arrives to literally crash the party, and in an attempt to save the day, Gambit sacrifices himself for the mutant child.
In light of this, DeMayo shared a statement regarding the series and how this fifth episode “was the centerpiece of my pitch to Marvel.”
“The idea to have the X-Men mirror the journey that any of us who grew up on the original show have experienced since being kids in the 90s,’ DeMayo wrote. “The world was a seemingly safer place for us, where a character like Storm would comment on how skin-based racism was ‘quaint’ in One Mans’s Worth.”
DeMayo goes on to explain how events like 9/11, COVID-19, and the Pulse Nightclub shooting changed much of society, from populist movements to “collective trauma and fracture of various demographics.” All of this influences where the show wants to go with its situations and characters.
“Yes, it looked like Gambit’s story was going a specific direction...,” DeMayo wrote. “But if events like 9/11, Tulsa, Charlottesville, or Pulse Nightclub teach us anything, it’s that too many stories are often cut far too short.”
“Like many of us who grew up on the OG cartoon, the X-Men have now been hit hard by the realities of an adult and unsafe world. And they, like we did, will have to decide which parts of themselves they will cling to and which parts they’ll let go of in order to do what they’ve been telling humanity to do: face an uncertain future they never saw coming,” DeMayo concluded.