The Saturday morning cartoon that taught a generation these characters, and the only version of them that ran for five years without recasting anybody.
For most people who were children in the nineties, this is where the X-Men came from. It ran for five seasons and seventy-six episodes on Fox Kids, starting on Halloween 1992 and finishing in September 1997, and it adapted the comics with a seriousness the format was not supposed to allow: the Phoenix saga, Days of Future Past, the Legacy Virus, mutant registration.
It is in this catalogue for a specific reason. X-Men ‘97 is not a reboot of it and not a homage to it. It is the next season, thirty years late, with most of the same voices and the same theme tune, which means this show is a prerequisite rather than a curiosity.
Show detailsWhere it sits
It shares no continuity with the Fox films or with anything Marvel Studios has made, which is why it is filed outside the connected universes rather than inside one of them.
The episodes run twenty-two minutes each, which is the standard half-hour slot with the advertisements taken out.
How it connects
This one sets these up.
Sources
Facts last checked on Sep 8, 2026
Released: October 31, 1992