X-Men ’97 season 2 is leaning into the classic mutant-team formula by pitting the heroes against a different threat while bigger dangers remain in the background. In episode 6, “Danger.exe,” that threat comes from one of the franchise’s most familiar settings: the Danger Room. What begins as a training scenario escalates into something far more dangerous when the room reveals a mind of its own and transforms into the robot known as Danger.
The episode uses the villain to push several storylines forward at once. Polaris is driven to embrace her connection to Magneto and use her magnetic powers against the rogue machine, while the X-Men are also forced to abandon Xavier’s mansion and relocate to the newly named X Corp tower. By the end of the episode, Danger appears to be destroyed, though the character’s comic-book history suggests that may not be the last time viewers see her.
According to the report, Danger is a much newer addition to Marvel lore than the Danger Room itself. The training facility dates back to the earliest X-Men comics from 1963, but the sentient version of the machine first appeared in Astonishing X-Men #9 in March 2005, written by Joss Whedon. That comic revealed that Professor X had been secretly using the self-aware Danger Room AI to train the team, a decision that eventually backfired when the system broke free and took on a humanoid form.
In that storyline, Danger’s anger is tied directly to Xavier, and her main objective becomes revenge. She repeatedly resurfaces in later comics with the same goal, even teaming up with Emma Frost at one point. The article notes that Whedon’s name now carries controversy because of allegations tied to his work on Justice League and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but his Astonishing X-Men run remains the source of the character’s introduction. Whether X-Men ’97 will bring Danger back again is still unknown, but for now the show has given the long-running mutant franchise another excuse to dig into its deeper comic history.
Source: polygon.com
