X-Men '97 received highly positive reviews and was widely embraced by the majority of fans. Some episodes were better than others, but one instalment in particular stood out as a low point of the season for a lot of viewers.
Episode 4, "Motendo; Lifedeath - Part 1," featured a mostly self-contained Jubilee adventure along with the first part of a Storm/Forge focused story which was supposed to build towards a romantic relationship forming between the characters.
Unfortunately, this part of the episode felt very rushed, with complaints that the connection between Ororo and the mystical mutant inventor seemed forced. "Lifedeath - Part 1" also introduced Storm's demonic Adversary, a bird-like creature who arrives near the end of the episode with hardly any explanation.
In the thread below, former showrunner Beau DeMayo claims that the reason this episode felt so "off" is because the show's co-executive producer (we assume he's referring to Victoria Alonso) "hated" his original idea, "stole the episode away and gave it to an editor on What If to redo it to her vision, which coincidentally eviscerated about 1/3 of Storm’s story and split Ep4 into two separate pieces."
DeMayo says that he also had to work very hard to convince Yellowstone actor Gil Birmingham to voice Forge after Marvel Studios soured their relationship by cutting his Native American God character from Thor: Ragnarök without telling him (DeMayo could be mistaken here, as Birmingham was actually listed in the credits for Eternals).
You can check out DeMayo's comments in full in the thread below.
While everything DeMayo says above might well be accurate, it's important to put his beef with Marvel into context.
Last year, we got word that Marvel Studios/Disney had fired DeMayo shortly before the animated revival show's world premiere. Since then, the internet has been rife with rumors and speculation about what might have led to his dismissal, and Marvel finally released a statement on the matter in late 2024.
"Mr. DeMayo was terminated in March 2024 following an internal investigation. Given the egregious nature of the findings, we severed ties with him immediately and he has no further affiliation with Marvel."
Though there are some conflicting reports on what exactly occurred, DeMayo is said to have been terminated for sending lewd photos to members of his staff, and there have been further allegations claiming that he was physically and sexually inappropriate with several of his colleagues.
DeMayo has always denied this, suggesting that his firing was simply due to homophobia, and claiming that he was stripped of his X-Men '97 season 2 credit shortly after sharing some Gay Pride Month fan art of himself in a skimpy Cyclops costume.
It's up to you who you choose to believe, but whatever the truth may be, DeMayo clearly hasn't been able to let things go.