Let me tell you about an X-Men L one bigger than the one Professor X took in Multiverse
of Madness, a bigger L than the fact we ll probably never see Dafne Keen as X-23 again,
an L arguably bigger than, just, Dark Phoenix as a whole; let me tell you about the tragedy
of Wolverine and the X-Men. It s not a story Marvel Studios would tell you. And don t worry,
we re not really going to get into spoiler territory here.
Wolverine and the X-Men, or WatXM for short, was an animated project which ran for one
season and one season alone back in 2009. It centred on the X-Men, obviously, but with
a few twists. For one, Professor X and Jean Grey are out. They re here, they fulfil story
functions, but they re not exactly on the team. No, this time round, we ve got Emma
Frost. We ve got Forge. We ve got Cyclops, but he s not exactly the Cyclops we re familiar
with. No, he s kind of a mess. And as the name might suggest, we ve got Wolverine leading
the team. But in some ways, the show s behind-the-scenes team is just as interesting as its main cast.
The show was developed primarily by Greg Johnson and Craig Kyle, the minds behind a lot of
these 2000s era Marvel animated projects, and these guys were no stranger to the X-Men,
having worked on Evolution a few years prior. Also involved, even moreso toward the tail
end of the season, were a creative duo we ve talked about before on this channel Josh
Fine and Chris Yost. Wolverine and the X-Men was the bedrock of their project to build
a new Marvel Animated Universe, which has been dubbed the Yostverse in retrospect, and
yeah we ve talked about this plenty before so I won t dwell on it here but it is neat
to think, when we see characters like Hulk and Fury show up, we re getting a glimpse
into what was, at one point, going to be a massive, interconnected universe. But yeah
to say the team behind this show were familiar with these characters, this setting, would
be an understatement. This wasn t their first X-rodeo which makes it even more admirable
that they chose a different route. You see, there s a sort of default setting
that most X-Men adaptations and reboots have tended toward in the past few decades, in
TV, and in film. That is, we re in a school, the Xavier institute, on the edge of town,
the X-Men are teachers or custodians while going out on-mission, clashing against Magneto,
the brotherhood, apocalypse, and so on, while generally trying to keep out of the spotlight.
Now obviously there s a great deal of comic-book precedent for this setup, and it can lead
to some great stories, but as time goes by, as we see this again and again it gets stale.
But this show recognised that. The opening, the story hook which sees Xavier and the X-Mansion
blown up, shows the Wolverine and the X-Men detonating this status quo. That s a gutsy
move. And, yeah the rest of the show follows through. This show does things differently.
The aesthetics, cast, and tone all skew a lot closer to the 2000s era New X-Men and
Astonishing X-Men stories than most X-adaptations do. Considering the timeline of this show
s development that d be like if the MCU put out an X-film today which passed over all
the classic stuff, the Claremont stuff, and drew mostly from the recent Hickman run. In
addition, Wolverine and the X-Men was committed to a degree of serialisation, right from the
start, which was rare in the show s predecessors. I ve talked before about how Avengers: Earth
s Mightiest Heroes, which we could consider a sister-show of sorts to this one, balanced
long-from plotting with an episodic structure, and a lot of those points could apply just
as well here and toward the end of the season, all the setup comes together beautifully.
And then, of course, there s the move to put Logan in the drivers seat. Now, the decision
to do this was corporate presumably to tie the series in with the Hugh Jackman-led Fox
films, studio bigwigs told the show s developers to tell a Wolverine-centric story. But the
way Kyle, Johnson, and co. took this corporate directive and turned it into creativity is
remarkable they realised that without decades of comic-book buildup the only way Logan would
take over leadership duties would be if Charles was taken out of the picture, temporarily
at least, and that one of the best motivators for his continued leadership would be an effort
to find Charles and bring him back. So the season revolves around Logan as a reluctant
leader type trying to save a time-displaced Xavier, who s awoken in a dark, dark future.
That s a pretty unique premise to base a superhero cartoon around especially one rebooting a
franchise whose previous adaptations had rarely been so plot-driven.
You might be thinking, alright, cool, I guess? Different vibe, different characters, a different
focus. Fine. What s the big deal? And that s fair that is, more or less where the show
stands now, some changes to the formula, some cool new ideas, nothing major. Nothing big
enough to stick, really. But that s because it got 1 season. And in one season, the potential
of Wolverine and the X-Men was there, but never realised. Because that almost, time
travel angle wasn t a one-off. No, it was to be the core of this show. Because the pitch
for the second season was, Wolverine and the X-Men manage to stop the horrible, Days of
Future Past-esque timeline Charles had been trapped in all season long, but in doing so?
They accidentally cause an even worse one. Now? It s age of apocalypse and again, they
ve got to reverse engineer the future, and figure out how to stop it in the present.
And this isn t just speculation. The first season ended teasing this direction, and the
first few scripts for season 2 leaked. You can read these. This was the plan. We ve even
heard recently from Josh Fine that the few discussions the team had, back in the day,
about a potential season 3 outline, featured yet another alternate future and that one
inspired by House of M was on the table. So move over Loki, cause you re not actually
the first piece of timeline-hopping Marvel television, after all. Of course, that doesn
t come through so strongly with just the one season. You can t really spot a pattern if
the sample size is one. But if we d seen more, then people would have
realised. Wolverine and the X-Men wasn t just another X-Men show. It was an X-Men show about
something. Taking this familiar cast, and not just exploring the same contours of the
setting, the same story directions that other writers had explored in this medium before,
but using these familiar starting points to do something new? That s awesome. This isn
t X-Men cartoon number 3 , it s X-Men vs the timestream and that shows a creative mindset
we really need. I don t know if any of you guys have noticed a sense of cultural d j
vu recently, but over the past few years the landscape of pop-culture has shifted, placing
an ever-greater focus on familiarity. Reboots, revivals and adaptations are the norm. If
you were to describe this phenomenon uncharitably, you might well call it postmodernity in decay,
a rotten hellscape of recycled properties and canned nostalgia, an artificial weighted
blanket of corporate cowardice stifling creativity the death knell of the new. I don t know that
I d be quite so negative, but there s clearly some truth here. And maybe the re-adaptation
of the X-Men for yet another cartoon, the third to be on the air in a decade or so contributes
to this landscape, but this show was always going to get made. A new X-Men cartoon was
always going to air back in 2009. That was out of the control of the shows runners and
writers. It wasn t a given, though, that the show would be as fresh as Wolverine and the
X-Men ended up being. That it wouldn t be content to just, be another X-Men cartoon.
That it would use these second-hand parts to iterate upon the formula. If ours is an
era of reboots, of unoriginality, then I think the fact that the team behind Wolverine and
the X-Men managed to cobble together some newness from all this corporate recycling
is worth admiring. And it s tantalising to imagine just how much new ground this show
could have covered, what it could have grown into, if it d been able to fully dive into
its time-displacement premise across another few seasons. That should have been on the
cards here the season premiere did numbers but t wasn t meant to be. Way back in 2008,
a second season was confirmed to be in production. Images from season 2 were shared at comic
con a year later showing us new characters like Deadpool, Colossus, Jubilee, Magik, and
more. But then things went quiet, and on the 15th of April 2010, Marvel confirmed that
Wolverine and the X-Men would not be returning. Why did this happen? Well, we don t know the
details, but it seems like it was due to financing issues ultimately arising from Disney s purchase
of Marvel. And nowadays, the show s all but forgotten. You can t even view it on Disney+
- at least here in the UK and it seems like the brass up at Marvel HQ have completely
memory-holed the project. But, as always the fans remember.
So that s the tragedy of Wolverine and the X-Men a show cut down through no fault of
its own, just as it as it was starting to come into its own to reveal that it wasn t
just another X-Men cartoon. And think about the aftermath - not counting the anime cause
that s kind of its own thing the only X-Men animation to be made since this cancellation
is the upcoming X-Men 97 a continuation of a 30-year old show. One wonders if all hope
of breaking new ground with X-men adaptations died, with Wolverine and the X-men, 12 years
ago. Or, maybe it didn t. maybe the MCU s take on everyone s favourite mutants will
chart a bold new course. But either way the loss of this show, before it even got to show
what it really could be that s truly a shame. Thanks for watching! If you want to hear more
about this show, particularly from a behind-the scenes perspective, I ve linked below an interview
Josh Fine did with youtuber Chainsaw Reacts. And a few of my old Yostverse videos have
been hitting the algorithm recently, so just in case this one does too, either now or in,
like a year s time I ll just mention that there is a fan campaign to revive these shows.
Joining in is very easy just follow this twitter account and keep an eye out for upcoming trend
events and so forth. And as always I d like to thank all my Patrons onscreen now there
s a lot of new names here, some of whom joined up following the recent restructure and I
m grateful to every one of you, especially Kevin Douglas and Ian Fyfield. But oh no!
I m stuck in an alternate future timeline, and you can only stop it from happening if
you like and share this video! Please save me! Please I beg! Alright, yeah, bye.