Disney says X-Men ’97 is a big hit

To me, my… good ratings?! Yes, it looks like Charles Xavier’s dream has been achieved, with humanity finally agreeing to coexist with mutants—which is to say that Disney+’s X-Men ’97, a revived version of the beloved X-Men cartoon from the mid-‘90s or so, is a big hit. According to Variety, the show got four million views in its first five days on the platform, which makes its first episode the most-watched full-length animated series on Disney+ since the first season of What If…? in 2021. (That was one of the best episodes of What If…?, so it makes sense that it would be the high point for Disney+’s cartoons.)

But, as is always the case when streaming services gloat about viewership numbers like this, we must point out that this is somewhat bullshit: We have no way of verifying that “four million” number, we don’t know how Disney came to that number, and we don’t know if four million is actually a lot or if it just sounds like a lot. So the specific number doesn’t matter, but the fact that Disney chose to brag about this does. In other words, we don’t know (and we have no reason to care) if four million people actually watched X-Men ’97, but what we do know is that Disney wants people to know that it considers the show a it.

Regardless of any statistics, what that means is that Disney is happy with X-Men ’97’s performance so far, and that bodes well both for the future of this show and the possibility of other shows like it. Spider-Man ’94, anyone? Mary Jane has been lost in an alternate dimension for decades, after all. It would be nice if Peter Parker could see her again.