Last week’s episode of Disney+’s X-Men ’97 finally revealed the orchestrator behind the Genocide at Genosha, along with some other surprising plot twists. According to Comicbook, showrunner Beau DeMayo (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Moon Knight) confirmed Thursday that the villain, known as Bastion, had secretly appeared in almost every episode but two.
DeMayo tweeted that the blonde maestro was teased multiple times before his full appearance.
“Bastion has been manipulating things all along, and thus has been in every episode except for Ep. 3,” the former Marvel writer said via Comicbook. He followed this tweet up with a slight technical correction.
DeMayo’s confirmation comes after some studious comic loyalists spotted the various cameos, according to Comicbook. A fan tweeted a short video compilation of the alleged cues happening since the second episode.
According to Comicbook, Bastion is a character with a long history of hate toward mutant kind. He first appeared as Sebastion Gilberti in Scott Lobdell (Red Hood and the Outlaws, Flash Forward) and Pascual Ferry’s (Ultimate Iron Man II, Spider-Man: Spider’s Shadow) 1996, X-Men #52. Sebastion was an antimutant businessman with ties to the global faction, Operation: Zero Tolerance or OZT, which is shown in the episode. After suffering a nearly fatal injury in battle, the mere mortal is saved as a reincarnation of Master Mold & Nimrod’s supreme Sentinel creations. He returns hellbent on enacting revenge on mutants and the X-Men.
Voiced by The White Lotus actor Theo James, Bastion’s arrival tees off the three-episode “Tolerance is Extinction” arc that will close season one. With two characters eventually returning and another confirmed alive, there’s no telling what the writers have in store for the X-Men and TV viewers.
New episodes of X-Men ’97 stream every Wednesday on Disney+.