On Friday, Marvel Studios has announced the expansion of its slate of animated series with three new shows for Disney Plus: ‘X-Men ’97’, ‘Spider-Man: Freshman Year’, and ‘Marvel Zombies’.

Marvel Studios was expected, by many observers, to reboot the ‘X-Men’ reintegrating the characters back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Disney purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019 and the ‘X-Men’ movie franchise experienced its last with ‘The New Mutants’ and ‘Dark Phoenix’, in accordance to Variety.

Advertisement

The company is reaching back to its own origin story instead, for its first swing at the team of powerful superheroes.

The continuation of the 1990s ‘X-Men’ animated series, is the ‘X-Men ‘97’. The previous beloved series was telecasted for five seasons on the Fox network from 1992 to 1997. The show was debuted in primetime and captured such a sensation that it is broadly credited for convincing 20th Century Fox to make an ‘X-Men’ movie driving the modern era of superhero movies premiered in 2000.

Current Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige was one of the associate producers on that movie. Marvel Studios probably would not exist in the present day with the existence of the ‘X-Men’ animated series.

The writer of Netflix’s animated ‘The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf’, Beau DeMayo will lead the writing team of ‘X-Men ‘97’.

While evoking Marvel’s deeper history, with an aesthetic approach, ‘Spider-Man: Freshman Year’ will be tied to the MCU. According to a press release, it “celebrates the character’s early comic book roots.”

The show will depict the journey of Peter Parker to becoming Spider-Man within the MCU. It is suggested to dramatize Peter’s original story with the live-action movies bypassing Tom Holland completely.

Jeff Trammel is the head writer who wrote and acted on the Cartoon Network series ‘Craig of the Creek’.

‘Marvel Zombies’ are similar to Marvel comics, especially the series written by Robert Kirkman and art by Sean Phillips that was released in late 2005, where almost all Avengers become zombies.

In an episode of the first inaugural animated Marvel series ‘What if…?’, the comic was adapted loosely. A virus was involved in the alternate universe premise of the episode that rapidly infected most of the Avengers resulting in the zombie apocalypse. In the conclusion, Spider-Man (voiced by Hudson Thames), T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), and the artificially preserved head of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), were traveling to Wakanda with the Mind Stone to form the antidote, where zombie Thanos, along with the help of Infinity Gauntlet, awaited them.

Presently it is very much unclear that whether ‘Marvel Zombies’ will be a spin-off of the zombie episode of the ‘What if…?’ or will carry on with its course. But Bryan Andrews, the director of ‘What if…?’ is also ready to direct the new series of the same.

The first wave of animated shows from Marvel Studios is marked by these three series besides, the second season of ‘What if…?’ and the spin-off of the ‘Guardian of the Galaxy, which is ‘I am Groot’.

The executive producer of ‘What if…?’, Brad Winderbaum had told Variety that “multiple” animated series for Disney Plus were “in various phases of development,” made the discovery enthusiastic that animation could afford a wider array of storytelling opportunities rather than in live-action.