Following the high-profile firing of the popular animated series’ showrunner, X-Men ’97 season 2 won’t be landing next year as expected.
X-Men ’97 is one of the rare things to emerge from Marvel Studios these days: a production met with universal acclaim. The show delighted fans of the original X-Men cartoon (yup, that show hailed from an era when we simply called them ‘cartoons’) while picking up lots of new admirers too. The show was even nominated for an Emmy, as well as earning plenty of strong reviews.
However, behind the scenes, things have been running less smoothly. Series showrunner, Beau DeMayo was fired by Marvel just weeks before the new show aired and after penning all of season 2. DeMayo deleted his social media accounts and no reason was publicly announced regarding his departure. Then, a third season has now been confirmed too, with news breaking back in June that Matthew Chauncey, the writer behind 3Below: Tales Of Arcadia was coming in to take over writing duties.
However, A new report from Nexus Point News (via CBM) is stating that things have slowed down somewhat and the second season of X-Men ’97 won’t now be arriving until 2026, instead of next year as was anticipated. The reason for this? Matthew Chauncey, the new showrunner, has apparently decided to rework DeMayo’s scripts, meaning the whole process is slowing down to the point where a delay has become inevitable.
Marvel’s animation pipeline is still set to release Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Marvel Zombies and a third season of What If….? all within 2025 so there’s still plenty to look forward to, but there will no doubt be some disappointment that the show won’t be returning as soon as planned.
As for DeMayo, the writer (who also worked on Blade and Moon Knight for Marvel) finally went public last month, claiming that Marvel Studios had sacked him for sharing X-Men fan art imagery that celebrated Pride on his social media account. That story appeared on Deadline and Marvel did not offer a return comment.
As to how that side of the story will play out, we’ll have to wait and see, but given that his scripts for season two are now being reworked, DeMayo’s influence over the second season of X-Men ’97 will be somewhat diminished, it seems.
