Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Ep7 Turns The Story Arc Into More Gritty Netflix Era 

Season 1 of XMen 97 ended with the team getting blown apart on Asteroid M, and not in the way anyone expected. They didn’t die. They scattered across time. Some woke up centuries in the future. Others opened their eyes in ancient Egypt, thousands of years before Apocalypse became Apocalypse. For three episodes, nobody on the show, and nobody watching, knew who was pulling the strings. Xmen 97 Season 2 spends its opening act making you sit with that mystery before finally answering it.

So who actually did it? A woman named Mother Askani. And by the time episode 3 ends, you find out she’s not just some new mystic dropped into the story for convenience. She’s family.

Episode 1: “Days of Past Future” — The Family Nobody Talks About

The beginning of Episode 1 shows Forge and Storm trying to gather their missing teammates by building up a new time machine. Forge traveled into the future to bring Cyclops, Jean, Storm, Morph, and Wolverine back into the present where they’re reunited with someone they thought they’d lost: their son, Nathan. In Season 1, Scott and Jean sent baby Nathan into the future to cure him of a techno-organic virus. What they didn’t know is who raised him on the other side.

That’s Mother Askani. She’s the mysterious figure who has spent Nathan’s entire life preparing him to become Cable. Mother Askani made him a battle-hardened soldier who is ready to defeat Apocalypse. However, when news of this prophecy reaches Apocalypse, he sends four horsemen after the boy but Askani and Storm reach at the right time to save the Summers. 

They crash into the Citadel and Mother Askarni reveals herself to Storm as Mother Askani, and when the hood comes off, longtime comic readers will recognize the face: Rachel Summers, daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey from another timeline entirely. 

She’s the family the Summers don’t know they have yet, and she’s been rewriting the timestream on purpose, placing both halves of the team at the exact moments that could stop Apocalypse for good. On the other hand, Apocalypse gets more angry and tries to strike the X-Men at their vulnerable time.

It’s a rough, honest episode, where Scott and Jean are stuck choosing between the son they just found and the world they still have to save. And it sets the emotional stakes before the show even explains the mechanics of the time split.

XMen 97 Season 2: “A Force to Be Reckoned With” — Back in the ’90s

Apocalypse failure angers him more and decides to strike X-Men at their vulnerable, XMen 97 Season 2 steps away from the past and future entirely and checks in on the present, where the X-Men who didn’t get pulled through time are left picking up the pieces. Two factions form: X-Force, led by a fully grown Cable, and X-Factor, a group that’s chosen to work alongside the government instead of against it. Jubilee and Sunspot get pulled into Cable’s crew, and the episode uses their recruitment to show just how much the world has changed since the team went missing.

It’s important to understand who sent X-Men in the past and future because Apocalypse is the most dangerous villain and he wants to destroy all mutants. The one who has the remote can actually help the team to fight. 

Episode 3: “Rise of Apocalypse Part 1” — Meeting En Sabah Nur Before He Was a Villain

Traveling roughly 5,000 years into the past, the other half of the team—Professor Xavier, Magneto, Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Beast are in ancient Egypt with a young En Sabah Nur, the mutant who eventually becomes Apocalypse. Magneto hatches a bold scheme: to raise Nur under Xavier’s ideals and not hunger for domination. Meanwhile, they intend to use the high technology of Rama-Tut to return to their time. 

Nur leads his Sandstormers against Logos and his robotic army of Rama-Tut where his powers as a mutant fully emerge, enabling him to destroy the mighty machines and defeat Logos. However, he stops before blowing up entirely since he is following Magneto’s advice and spares his enemy that shocked Professor Xavier. Magneto is determined to keep believing that Nur’s future can still be changed. 

That doesn’t go well until Nur finds out about X-Men’s hidden lab that made Nur lose its control with rage. Rama-Tut strikes X-Men with his army right before they prepare to escape, leaving a cliffhanger for the fans which leads to raise many questions among them. The show is stepping forward into a more darker and twisted storyline which sets the character’s emotional stakes higher.

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Why Did Mother Askani Send X-Men Back in the First Place?

Because one shot wasn’t enough. Askani needed Nathan trained and ready to become Cable, and she needed someone in Nur’s life early enough to change his path before Apocalypse’s ideology ever took root. Splitting the X-Men across both timelines wasn’t an accident of the Bastion fight. It was the plan the entire time.

There’s another important comic detail to keep in mind. Rama-Tut, the pharaoh of ancient Egypt in Nur’s day, is in fact one of Kang the Conqueror’s aliases in Marvel Comics. If XMen 97 Season 2 follows that storyline, it’s possible the show could be setting up for a grander multiversal dispute — one that goes well beyond.

What This Means Going Forward

XMen 97 Season 2 has already answered its central mystery, but it’s opened up a dozen new ones. Can Scott and Jean actually walk away from Nathan a second time? 

What happens when Magneto’s plan to “fix” Nur inevitably collides with Nur’s own free will? And how much does Askani actually know about a future she’s trying to prevent?

Conclusion 

These three episodes of XMen 97 Season 2 are much more than explain who sent the X-Men through time. The answer is easy, Mother Askani sent X-Men in different timelines to achieve the goal: destroy Apocalypse. With one team set in the future and the other in ancient Egypt, the series converts time travel into a profoundly personal tale of family, sacrifice and the belief that even the worst evils in history can find an alternate way. 

XMen 97 Season 2 promises that the battle ahead won’t just decide the fate of the X-Men, it could determine the future of the entire Marvel universe. 

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Walk into the comic shop on October 7 and ask for a copy of Midnight X-Men #1. The clerk isn’t going to just hand you one. They’re going to ask which one — because Marvel built it that way on purpose. The Marvel Comics Midnight Universe Variant Cover Program locks in five recurring covers, labeled A through E, on every issue of the publisher’s new horror imprint, and it’s the most structured collector play Marvel has run in years. 

If you’ve ever walked out of a shop annoyed that your favorite artist’s variant sold out before you got there, this is Marvel’s attempt to fix that — or, depending on how you look at it, to make sure you’re buying five books instead of one.

What Is the Marvel Comics Midnight Universe Variant Cover Program?

Marvel announced the program in mid-July, ahead of the Midnight line’s October 7 launch, and it applies across all three debut titles: Midnight Spider-Man, Midnight Fantastic Four, and Midnight X-Men. Instead of one-off variant covers that show up whenever a shop feels like ordering them, every issue in the line gets the same five-cover structure, month after month:

• Cover A – Regular: the standard cover, wrapped in the “Cloaked Midnight” trade dress that gives the whole line its unified look.
• Cover B – Midnight Bloodbath Variant: blood-soaked art built around the horror side of the line.
• Cover C – Midnight Special Variant: spotlight covers reimagining classic Marvel heroes, old and new, through the Midnight lens.
• Cover D – Midnight Horror Homage Variant: covers styled after iconic horror imagery — think classic slasher and creature-feature poster homages.
• Cover E – Midnight Gallery Variant: prestige, painted covers meant to look like gallery pieces rather than newsstand art.

On top of the A-through-E system, Marvel is also running three-part connecting variant covers by artist Clayton Crain across the launch titles, and a “Cloaked Cover” gimmick that hides the actual art until a shop unwraps or scans it — a wrinkle aimed squarely at people who like the mystery-box side of collecting.

The stated goal, according to Marvel’s own announcement of Marvel Midnight Universe Variant Cover Program, is consistency: shops can predict what their regulars want every month instead of guessing at one-off variants, and readers know exactly what they’re getting into before they walk in. That’s a real, practical retail problem Marvel is solving here — variant cover chaos has been a running complaint from shop owners for years, and a fixed A-E system is a genuine attempt to standardize ordering across an entire imprint rather than issue by issue.

The same-day release piece matters more than it sounds like on paper. Ordering three separate books on three separate schedules, each with its own one-off variant lineup, means a shop’s owner is juggling three different sets of Diamond or Lunar order forms with three different deadlines and three different guesses about demand. 

Collapsing that into one October 7 launch, with one shared cover structure across all three titles, turns three separate ordering headaches into one. That’s the kind of unglamorous back-office fix that never makes a splashy press release on its own — which is probably why Marvel bundled it with a horror-flavored variant program dramatic enough to actually get written up.

Marvel isn’t inventing the concept of a themed variant program from scratch — publishers have run alphabet-labeled variant systems before, usually tied to a single event or anniversary. What’s different here is duration and scope. This isn’t a six-week promotional push around one crossover; it’s the permanent cover architecture for three separate ongoing titles, meant to stay in place issue after issue rather than fade out once the launch hype dies down. 

That’s a bigger commitment than most variant programs make, and it’s also a bigger bet — if sales dip by issue #4 or #5, Marvel has locked itself into printing five covers a month for books nobody’s talking about anymore.

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Marvel’s New Era Begins With These Three Books 

The Marvel Midnight Universe Variant Cover Program only matters if the books underneath it are worth chasing, so here’s what’s actually launching on October 7.

Midnight X-Men: Vampires vs. Mutants

Written by Jonathan Hickman with art by Matteo Della Fonte, Midnight X-Men reimagines New York as contested ground between vampires and what Marvel is calling “mutant empires.” The two factions are holding an uneasy peace that’s already cracking by issue #1 — early previews show Storm and Nightcrawler apparently turned into vampires themselves, which tells you how fast that peace is falling apart. 

Hickman has been vocal about how much he’s enjoying the project, saying at one point that it’s the most excited he’s been about a book in years. Issue #2, already solicited for November, puts Cyclops front and center as a vampire hunter, which suggests Marvel has real long-term plans for this book rather than a one-and-done horror gimmick.

For a franchise that’s spent the better part of a decade on Krakoa-era politics and mutant nation-building, dropping the X-Men into a straight-up vampire war is a genuine tonal swing. Della Fonte, whose prior Marvel work includes Nova: Centurion, is drawing a book that leans hard into gore and body horror rather than the sleek sci-fi look X-Men readers got used to under the Krakoa banner — early preview pages already show Storm feasting on Phoenix, which tells you Marvel isn’t holding back to protect anyone’s sacred cows.

Midnight Fantastic Four: Cosmic Body Horror

Benjamin Percy writes, with Kev Walker on art. Marvel’s own synopsis describes a scientist’s curiosity accidentally unleashing ancient terrors on the world while transforming himself and three others in “strange and horrifying ways” which is about as close as you can get to a body-horror take on the FF’s classic origin without spelling it out panel by panel. 

Percy has built a career on horror-adjacent Marvel work — Wolverine and X-Force runs that leaned into body horror and paranoia long before Midnight existed so this pairing tracks. Walker’s art has the kind of jagged, unsettling linework that suits cosmic horror better than a straight superhero book, which matters here since the FF’s power set is getting rewritten around dread rather than wonder.

Midnight Spider-Man: Something Monstrous

Phillip Kennedy Johnson writes, with ScieTronc on art. Marvel’s official line teases that Spider-Man discovers “with great power… comes something monstrous” — intentionally vague, and Marvel hasn’t confirmed specifics beyond that. You’ll see some outlets already floating a specific transformation tied to Oscorp; treat that as speculation until Marvel or the creative team confirms it directly, because it hasn’t shown up in any official synopsis yet. 

What Marvel has confirmed is the pairing itself — Johnson coming off high-profile Marvel writing work, paired with ScieTronc’s art, on the book carrying the line’s most recognizable face. Of the three launch titles, Midnight Spider-Man is the one Marvel has said the least about, which either means they’re holding the twist close or that it’s still being locked down this close to release. Worth watching for a fuller synopsis as October gets closer.

Why Marvel Is Launching This Initiative Now

The first question — why does this specific Marvel Midnight Universe Variant Cover Program exist has a confirmed answer: Marvel wants predictable, line-wide ordering for retailers and a same-day release for all three titles instead of a staggered rollout. In fact, Marvel had originally planned to stagger the three books starting in August, then restructured the whole thing into a single mega-launch on October 7 so all three debut together. The variant program is part of that same restructuring — one unified system instead of three separate ordering headaches.

The second question — why is Marvel launching an entire horror-themed alternate universe in the first place does not have an officially confirmed answer, no matter how many outlets frame it that way. What’s actually happened is that DC’s Absolute Universe line, which launched in October 2024 with Absolute Batman and built out from there, has had a genuinely strong critical and commercial run, and a wide swath of comics press — Screen Rant, Den of Geek, Bleeding Cool, Inverse, and others has openly speculated that Midnight is Marvel’s answer to it. 

That’s a reasonable read given the timing and the tonal overlap: both lines take a “darker, altered reality” approach to flagship characters. But Marvel itself has never said “we built this because of DC,” and treating that connection as confirmed fact rather than industry analysis is the kind of thing that gets an article fact-checked into embarrassment later. It’s a fair theory. It’s not a quote.

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Is the Variant Program Actually Good for Collectors?

Depends which side of the shop counter you’re on. For retailers, this is close to a win across the board — a fixed five-cover system across three ongoing titles is dramatically easier to order for and stock than the usual scattershot of surprise variants that show up whenever an artist has a slow week. For readers who like completing a set, it’s also genuinely appealing: you know exactly what you’re chasing every single month, across all three books, instead of finding out after the fact that a shop got one copy of the cover you wanted and it’s long gone.

The catch is the math. Five official covers times three ongoing monthly titles is fifteen covers a month if you’re a completionist, before you even factor in the Clayton Crain connecting covers or any one-off exclusives Marvel layers on top later. The Cloaked Cover gimmick is fun the first time and expensive the tenth time, especially if you’re the kind of reader who wants to know what you’re buying before you buy it rather than treating every issue like a scratch ticket. Consistency is good for planning your spending. It doesn’t automatically mean you’ll spend less.

There’s also a longer-term collector risk worth naming plainly: alphabet-labeled variant systems only hold their value if the underlying books keep selling. If Midnight Fantastic Four or Midnight Spider-Man cools off by the fall while Midnight X-Men carries the line on Hickman’s name alone, expect Cover E gallery pieces on the weaker titles to become easy back-issue-bin finds within a year, no matter how nice the paint job is. A five-cover system doesn’t create demand by itself — it just makes it easier to see exactly how much demand exists, issue by issue, once the initial launch rush wears off.

Conclusion 

If you’re picking up Midnight X-Men, Midnight Fantastic Four, or Midnight Spider-Man on October 7, decide your cover strategy before you walk in, not at the register. Cover A alone gets you the story and the “Cloaked Midnight” trade dress that’s meant to define the whole line’s identity — that’s the same baseline if you’re budget-conscious. 

If you’re chasing art specifically, Cover E’s painted gallery style is the one most likely to hold value as a standalone piece, since prestige painted covers tend to age better than gimmick Marvel Midnight Universe Variant Cover Program once the initial hype cools off.

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This September, Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover bring two superheroes together. This one comic event offers an action-packed performance of two heroes with completely different natures. Dark humour of Wade Wilson who thrives on making his fans laugh, whereas the Punisher barely cracks a smile. A combo of epic collide promises explosive brutal fights and humour that deliver unforgettable moments that marvel fans don’t wanna miss. 

Big Guns arrives at a time when both Deadpool and Punisher solo series have trended toward grittier, more grounded narratives, and that’s likely why this collision seems less like a stunt and more like something bigger. 

Big Guns Crossover Release Schedule 

Mark your calendars, because Marvel isn’t dragging this one out. The carnage kicks off September 2, 2026 with Wade Wilson: Deadpool #8, drawn by Geoff Shaw. A week later, on September 9, Punisher #8 hits shelves with art from José Luis Soares, picking up right where Wade left things burning. The story wraps in October with Wade Wilson: Deadpool #9 and Punisher #9, though Marvel hasn’t locked in exact dates for those yet.

Marvel decided to reveal all of this on June 16th — “616 Day,” the publisher’s annual tribute to Earth-616, the main Marvel universe. It’s a small thing but it’s a sign of how much Marvel is playing this as a flagship-style street-level event and not a side story. 

Creative Team of Deadpool and Punisher: Big Guns Crossover

Geoff Shaw handles the main cover for issue #8 of Deadpool, while David Marquez takes the art duties on Punisher #8’s cover. Josemaria Casanovas is also doing a four-part connecting variant set across all four issues, so anyone hunting that full picture across covers will want to track down each part as it drops. 

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What is the “Big Guns” Crossover?

This isn’t just a brief cameo of the Punisher or Deadpool. It’s a massive four-part event that weaves directly through the current ongoing series of both characters. The chaos kicks off in Wade Wilson: Deadpool and bleeds over into Punisher.

The story has a classic and exciting setup. Deadpool makes a massive mess because things get out of control on one of the biggest mercenary jobs of his life. It attracts The Punisher’s attention who is brutal and known for his serious behaviour. Both are caught up in a single path that sets the stage for a relentless clash where neither man is walking away without a few extra holes in them.

The Masterminds Behind the Deadpool vs Punisher Big Guns Marvel Series

Benjamin Percy is currently writing for both the Deadpool and Punisher solo series. He perfectly balances the crazy humor with high-stake action in Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover.

Percy recently noted that putting these two together was simple math. They are two heavily armed, street-level characters with completely opposite personalities. To bring this violent vision to life, Marvel tapped artists Geoff Shaw (handling the Deadpool issues) and José Luis Soares (drawing the Punisher chapters). According to Percy, they are “the best pens drawing the biggest guns.”

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Why the New Deadpool and Punisher Crossover 2026 is a Must-Read

If watching Frank Castle get increasingly frustrated by Wade Wilson’s endless talking isn’t enough to sell you, Marvel has promised some massive additions to the 616 universe in Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover run. 

• A Classic Villain Gets a New Twist: An unknown interloper is stitching the thread behind the conflict, and a duo is ready to return with a fresh new look and role.
• The “Merc-Mobile”: Deadpool is getting a brand-new rolling headquarters, which is guaranteed to be as ridiculous and dangerous as he is.
• A Game-Changing Weapon: The storyline revolves around multiple forces converging on an “ultimate weapon” that Percy claims will change the Marvel 616 universe forever.

Whether you are here for the intricate plot or just want to see two of Marvel’s most lethal anti-heroes tear each other apart, the Deadpool and Punisher: Big Guns Crossover is shaping up to be the spectacle of the fall.

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Conclusion 

Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover has all the ingredients for a classic Marvel team-up – high-octane action, violent slugfests, black comedy, and a mystery with implications that could reverberate throughout the Marvel Universe for years to come. 

With Benjamin Percy writing and some of the best artists in the business illustrating the chaos, this four-part event will be about more than your run-of-the-mill hero vs hero skirmish. If you’ve been laughing along at Deadpool’s unpredictable brand of humor, or wondering how things got so dark with the Punisher’s brutal version of justice, Big Guns is lining up to be one of the biggest comics events for Marvel in 2026 and a must-read for anyone who enjoyed explosive superhero storytelling. 

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