After two long years, X-Men ’97 is finally back, and they dropped us right in the middle of the action with our time-lost X-Men. But it was the second episode of the season, “A Force to be Reckoned With,” that was perhaps the most fun, because it introduced us to the animated version of X-Force. And as X-Men ’97 often does, it gave us a new opening credits scene just for this episode, focused solely on the cyborg soldier Cable’s mutant black ops squad. But the amazing theme music is thankfully the same. You can watch the X-Force ’97 opening credits below:
So what’s different in this opening sequence? Quite a bit. We see Cable, a.k.a. Nathan Dayspring Summers, fighting off a battalion of Sentinels. Jubilee’s intro in the credits is much the same, with the young X-Man lighting off fireworks. However, her costume is different. Sunspot is wearing his ’90s Marvel Comics uniform, and finally lands a spot in the opening credits. Psylocke prowls the rooftops of Japan, and Archangel flies into the sky and shoots razor-sharp projectiles from his wings. We then get clips from past X-Men: The Animated Series episodes, like Cable fighting Apocalypse, and Warren Worthington’s transformation into Archangel.
The opening credits also fill in some missing story beats from the actual episode. We see Psylocke training Jubilee in a combat scenario, with Jubilee blindfolded, Luke Skywalker style. It looks like they are in a military hangar somewhere. After all, without a Danger Room, X-Force had to train somewhere. Finally, the famous “running at each other” moment before the title card goes up is now X-Force vs. Apocalypse and his Horsemen, instead of the X-Men vs. Magneto’s forces. Now, X-Factor also played a big role in this episode. Does that mean they’ll get a title credits scene of their own? We’ll have to wait and see as X-Men ’97 season two continues.