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How X-Men '97 embraced the 'Magneto Was Right' slogan-turned-meme

'X-Men '97' episode 8 finally delivered what showrunner Beau DeMayo teased is the thesis of the entire season. Here's how the show embraced 'Magneto Was Right.'

While Professor Charles Xavier (voiced in X-Men '97 by Ross Marquand) always preached tolerance and fought for a world in which mutants and humans could coexist with each other, Magneto never believed this. These comics maintain parallels to the arc of X-Men '97: when Xavier leaves Earth to receive life-saving treatments off world, Magneto takes over as the head of his school and lead the super team known as the New Mutants. In the grand tradition of the X-Men being a metaphor for the plight of minority groups, DeMayo and his season 1 writers have expertly used the dueling ideologies of Xavier and Magneto to explore the idea of collective trauma, using references to real-life events like the Pulse nightclub shooting of 2016, the "Unite the Right" rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017, and even 9/11 in various episodes.

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