It’s been strange seeing Magneto taking on a good guy role in the new season of X-Men ’97, but that change wasn’t totally unwelcome. The metal-bending villain is recovering from an especially destructive tantrum at the end of Season 1, which nearly destroyed the world twice over. But after being sent far, far into the past alongside his fiercest rival, Charles Xavier — and meeting the world’s first-ever mutant, who’s also destined to become an evil mutant dictator — Magneto has understandably turned a new page.
As he tells Charles in Season 2, Episode 3, meeting En Sabah Nur is an opportunity they’d be foolish to ignore. They might know him as Apocalypse, a villain who will cause so much suffering for countless mutants in the very distant future — but the version they encounter in Ancient Egypt could be coaxed away from the Dark Side. Season 2’s best episodes have followed Magneto and Charles in their efforts to keep Nur from turning into Apocalypse, but in Episode 4, our heroes realize that the future is not that easy to change. In fact, they might leave the timeline in a worse state than they found it, bringing on the fall of a beloved X-Man and the rise of a divisive new mutant.
