X-Men ’97 cast members Matthew Waterson and Ross Marquand discuss if Magneto was right.

Was Magneto right? That’s one of the biggest questions raised by X-Men ’97 Season 1. After seeing Magneto try to play to Professor X’s rules for the first part of the season only to be captured and tortured after a genocidal attack on the mutant nation of Genosha, Valerie Cooper, one of the X-Men’s human allies, defiantly proclaims that “Magneto was right” during the first chapter of the three-part X-Men ’97 Season 1 finale, “Tolerance Is Extinction.” Once again fully embracing his rage, Magneto uses his magnetic powers to shut down all electronics on Earth, costing many lives (one of several story beats taken straight out of the 1993 X-Men story “Fatal Attractions”).

With such a winding season-long character arc, was Magneto right? That question was put to X-Men ’97 stars Matthew Waterson and Ross Marquand, who voice Magneto and Professor X, respectively, during a panel hosted by Comic Book Men’s Ming Chen at the 2024 Nashville Comiccon, as seen in the above video.

Matthew Waterson and Ross Marquand at the 2024 Nashville Comiccon

Was Magneto right in X-Men ’97?

Waterson was quick to support the character he voices in the Disney+ animated series, pointing out that Professor X has the benefit of seeing the potential good in the enemies of mutantkind; Magneto has to deal with the reality of their actions. “One of the things that’s so much fun about these particular two characters is Charles literally can see the good in everyone because he can see to their heads,” Waterson said. “So it doesn’t matter how horrendous a character is being, he can see the good. And so, there’s something there for him whereas Erik, that’s not Erik’s skill. Erik is like, ‘I just have to react to what people actually do, not their potential, their reality.’

Waterson continued, “Erik feels much more, realistic is not the right word but, much more pragmatic to the universe he exists in which makes it, for me, really easy to sort of walk in and go, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ And what also helps is that he’s not trying to take over the world or make himself rich or anything for any selfish reasons. Like it is just a case of, ‘If you leave my people alone, we’re fine. If you don’t, we’re not ok.’ And that makes it very easy morally to attach to it, to go, ‘No, I’m with him.'”

Marquand noted that just because Magneto may be right doesn’t mean Professor X is wrong. “There’s so much hurt with Magneto, right?” Marquand says. “I mean, he literally lived through the holocaust. His parents perished in the holocaust. Imagine being subjugated for one reason for the first 10-15 years of your life, and then subjugated for a whole different reason for the rest of your life. All he knows is hurt, so you can certainly understand and make a case for why he reacts the way he does.

“And I think you nailed on the head,” Marquand continued saying. “His power is magnetism. Charles’s power is empathy and really seeing the good in everybody. And so, he knows that at the heart of all of these humans that are trying to subjugate mutants or even kill them. There is a sense of fear, a sense of, ‘I don’t know if I can trust them because they might come back and hurt me someday, so I have to be proactive and take him out now.’ But he knows that there’s goodness there he knows that there’s goodness behind the fear and he’s always trying to bring everyone together and say, ‘No, no, no it’s ok. We don’t have to fight all the time.’ But you can certainly understand why he believes the things he does. So, was Magneto right? Yes, you can understand why he would say that. But I also think Charles is also right. I mean, it’s a weird catch-22 you know. So then that’s always going to be the beautiful thing about these two characters. It’s like the Joker and Batman but more familiar. They’re friends, literal friends who came up with the same dream of uniting the world. It’s just, they’ve gone about it in these very different ways. And I think that’s what’s always going to make these two characters some of the most interesting in the comic book universe because they genuinely are rooting for each other. They just go about it in vastly different ways.”

How Magneto’s Leadership Changed Cyclops in X-Men ’97

Magneto taking over leadership of the X-Men for Professor X left a mark on the X-Men, especially Cyclops. Having once been entirely devoted to Professor X’s dream and opposed to Magneto on principle, Cyclops now seems to see some value in Magneto’s philosophy.

“One of the really interesting things this season, one of the ways that they sort of rehabilitated Scott is because like he shifts through the season and, and what Ray [Chase] does with him is so amazing,” Waterson said. “He shifts into kind of not being where he was and he’s kind of in the middle more because he’s like, ‘I’m starting to kind of see Eric’s point of view’ and that makes him fascinating because you are finally getting, you know, this, one of the main characters who is kind of splitting the difference for a while. And that’s the one where the, for me watching it, it was very easy to go, “Yeah, well now that’s the person whose point of view probably is going to be the most productive.”

X-Men ’97 Season 1 is streaming now on Disney+. X-men ’97 Season 2 is already in the works.