X-Men '97 Resurrects Marvel's Kang Story in Ancient Egypt

X-Men '97 season 2 is doing something the MCU couldn't quite pull off: giving Kang the Conqueror a storyline that actually lands. The animated series is diving into Ancient Egypt, where the X-Men encounter Pharaoh Rama-Tut, a time traveler with godlike ambitions who wants to harness powerful technology to remake civilization itself.

Here's where it gets interesting. Rama-Tut isn't just some historical tyrant—he's Nathaniel Richards, the same person who becomes Kang the Conqueror. The show is pulling directly from the 1996 miniseries The Rise of Apocalypse, weaving together timelines and identities in a way that connects the X-Men's mythology to one of Marvel's most complicated villains.

The MCU has struggled with Kang. Jonathan Majors' appearances across Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania set up what was supposed to be a major threat—Marvel even renamed entire Avengers films around him, with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Doomsday on the slate. But those plans have largely stalled, leaving Kang's narrative arc incomplete and his potential unrealized on screen.

X-Men '97, operating in the animated space with fewer constraints, is picking up that thread. By grounding Kang's origin in a time-travel story set in Ancient Egypt, the show taps into Marvel comic lore that's been dormant in live-action. The Rama-Tut arc allows the series to explore what makes Kang compelling in the source material: a villain who isn't bound by a single era, whose schemes span centuries, and whose connection to other Marvel characters runs deeper than a simple crossover.

What makes this move particularly clever is timing. With the MCU's Kang storyline in flux, X-Men '97 gets to tell a version of his story without waiting for Hollywood to figure out its next move. The show adapts elements that the films haven't touched yet, potentially showing audiences what a fully realized Kang narrative could look like—one where his time-traveling nature and hunger for power actually define the stakes, rather than feeling like setup for a future payoff that may never arrive.

Source: Polygon