X-Men ’97’s Newest Mutant Faces Horrific Future

For those not familiar with Cable as a character, or maybe only know the version from Deadpool 2, Cable is essentially John Connor from Terminator. He was born in our time, but in the future, he’s a freedom fighter engaged in a war with the evil Apocalypse. But even if he didn’t end up being dragged into a war he didn’t start, Cable’s life still would have sucked.

For starters, the virus Sinister infected him with never gets cured. We don’t know if they’ll show it in an episode of X-Men ’97, but Cable has to constantly use the telekineses he inherited from his mother to keep the virus at bay. If you’ve seen Cable, you know that he has a metal arm and a bionic eye. Those are both from the virus, and if he stops holding it back for any reason, the metal will spread and eventually take over his whole body.

Then there’s his messed up family situation. We already know from Episode 3 of X-Men ’97 that Cable’s mother is technically not Jean Grey but an exact clone of her named Madelyne Pryor. That’s confusing enough as it is, but when he gets to the future, he’s given to Mother Askani as an alternate version of his half-sister Rachel Summers, whose original version is already from an alternate dimension. If you thought Lost was hard to follow, try reading the X-Men comics sometime.

Oh, and his sister had him cloned because she didn’t think he’d survive the virus. That clone ends up under the care of Apocalypse, who raises him as Cable’s evil doppelganger. If that’s not bad enough, he and his clone both go back in time to the present day and spend years fighting each other and arguing over which one is the clone.

Cable also has no idea that Cyclops and Jean are his parents and vice versa. This leads to the poor guy butting heads with his own parents several times, oblivious to the true nature of their relationship. At one point, a younger version of himself decides that older Cable isn’t getting things done the way he’d like and goes back in time to replace him. Lots of people have lost their jobs to someone younger and more capable, but only Cable has lost a job to himself.

If you’re still not convinced that the sweet child we saw cooing in X-Men ’97 ends up having the worst life ever, Cable once had to shoot his own son Tyler after the boy was brainwashed by Stryfe into becoming evil. Oh, and that was after Stryfe killed Cable’s wife.

So, to recap, Cable is born to a clone of the woman that should have been his mom, given an incurable disease, shot into the future, raised by an alternate version of his sister, has an evil clone made of him, the clone kills his wife and brainwashed his son, whom Cable than has to shoot and mortally wound. And that’s all before he traveled back to the X-Men’s time and was considered an enemy by his own parents.

Whether X-Men ’97 will show any of this in future episodes is anyone’s guess, but Cable made a few appearances in the old series, so it wouldn’t be out of the question for him to appear in the new show. The real question is, would Cable’s life have been better if his parents had just left him with Mr. Sinister? Because it definitely couldn’t have been much worse.