X-Men ’97 returns July 1, while He-Man stumbles

Marvel’s X-Men ’97 is set to bring Charles Xavier’s mutants back to Disney Plus on July 1, escalating the fight against Apocalypse across ancient and distant-future timelines. Its momentum contrasts sharply with Mattel’s live-action Masters of the Universe mov

The two worlds can look alike at first glance: childhood icons. lavish Easter eggs. and the kind of fan service that feels like it was written by people who actually stayed up for the original episodes. But in 2026. Marvel and Mattel are chasing the same kind of nostalgia with very different results—and the difference is showing fast.

In the second season of X-Men ’97. Charles Xavier’s mutants are split into multiple teams and dropped into radically different points in history. One group finds itself stranded in ancient Egypt; another is transported thousands of years into the future. Both teams are trying to get back to the ’90s. but they’re forced to work around a bigger problem: Apocalypse is virtually immortal. and he’s alive in both time periods. Stopping him becomes the shared mission. even as the seasons’ structure makes it clear the characters won’t get the luxury of simply returning to what they already know.

That sense of pressure sits underneath the show’s biggest storytelling choice. Rather than adapting one clean storyline from Marvel’s comics, X-Men ’97 stitches together narrative elements from multiple limited series. Central to that approach are The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix from 1994 and 1996’s Rise of Apocalypse. while the season also introduces a relatively recent layer of X-Men comics lore to flesh out the world around the core characters.

If X-Men ’97 feels fresh for longtime viewers, it’s because Marvel has reworked the established canon in meaningful ways. The series is a continuation of X-Men: The Animated Series. but it’s designed to move forward without pretending the old rules were never bent. That reinvention is one reason the show landed as a ratings hit when it premiered in 2024—fandom familiarity helped. but the willingness to keep reshaping the canon is what kept it from feeling like nostalgia with the knobs turned down.

There’s a reason this matters outside the show itself. The X-Men brand has stayed visible enough that fans didn’t have to wait in silence for something new to arrive. Even when 20th Century Studios’ X-Men features were widely panned as terrible. there were always enough X-Men comics and TV series in the mix to keep hope alive that a studio would eventually land on something excellent.

Masters of the Universe doesn’t get that kind of continuous presence anymore—and the consequences are playing out at the box office. There have been newer series inspired by the original Masters of the Universe cartoon. but overall He-Man’s pop cultural prominence has waned since Prince Adam and his friends were explaining the lessons of their adventures every weekday from 1983 to 1985. Mattel’s new live-action Masters of the Universe movie, released last week, is now underperforming. So far, it has raked in $54.4 million against a $200 million production budget.

The movie’s struggles are being read as another example of Hollywood learning the wrong lesson from a major earlier win. People flocked to theaters for Barbie, which was a funny, feminist deconstruction of an ever-present icon. Mattel, however, interpreted that success as proof that audiences wanted stories about toys in general. Masters of the Universe does attempt a “mildly critical exploration of toxic masculinity. ” but that doesn’t appear to be enough to move audiences—at least not in a way that translates into broad interest.

For hardcore fans, the appeal is obviously there. But beyond them. many people aren’t emotionally connected to He-Man’s world. and the film hasn’t offered enough to change that. In a way, it comes back to visibility. If He-Man were in more people’s imaginations the way the X-Men are. the conversation around Masters of the Universe could look very different right now.

All of it lands while Marvel is pushing toward a big year. Between X-Men ’97’s second season and Avengers: Doomsday, the studio is rolling into a stretch that puts mutants front and center—something it has been building toward for years.

The second season of X-Men ’97 hits Disney Plus on July 1st. Masters of the Universe is in theaters now—and with the movie already sitting on a deep financial gap, it’s hard to shake the feeling that nostalgia alone isn’t carrying the weight it needs.

X-Men ’97 Disney Plus Charles Xavier Apocalypse Ross Marquand Masters of the Universe He-Man Mattel box office Avengers: Doomsday nostalgia