If you were a fan of X-Men: The Animated Series, there’s a lot to look forward to with the reboot, X-Men ’97. Is Charles Xavier truly dead? Will Cyclops ever find out that Cable is his son from the future? Will the show introduce any characters we’ve met over the past couple decades? Oddly enough, one lingering question involves Morph, a character most casual comics or MCU fans might not even know.
Kevin Sydney, aka Morph, is the original X-Men animated team member that time forgot, a minor character seemingly killed in the show’s pilot to kick off inter-team conflict as he was mourned out of proportion to his prominence. As comic stories usually do, Morph was eventually resurrected and had a surprisingly complex arc throughout later seasons. X-Men ’97 is turning the whole thing on its head: A character famous for being disposable is now an indelible part of the X-Men cartoon canon. And the team behind the reboot is treating him that way, with a whole new look and reconsideration as a nonbinary character. But what’s actually going on behind that blank, noseless face? What’s the deal with Morph?
OK, so who is Morph?
Sydney, a mutant shapeshifter, was originally a minor X-Men villain called Changeling. He was part of a lesser-known and short-lived group in the comics called Factor Three (which also featured more famous characters like the Blob) that fought our heroes starting in X-Men #37. He only lasted a few issues before meeting an untimely death while he was impersonating Xavier. While he showed up a couple times in other series, he finally got his moment thanks to X-Men: The Animated Series.
First, his name was changed to Morph, out of concern that his name would raise the ire of DC Comics, whose character Beast Boy also went by the name Changeling. And then Morph was introduced with the rest of the team in the Animated Series pilot as a good friend of Wolverine (yes, it’s possible for the guy to have friends). When he’s killed by Sentinels, it devastates the team, especially Wolverine, who later kills a Sentinel by shouting “This one’s for you, Morph!” The idea at the time was for the show to have an early casualty that would set some high stakes, but without sacrificing a core X-Men character.
Beau DeMayo, former showrunner for X-Men ’97, told Empire Magazine that Morph’s death was very impactful for watchers of the original series. “He really set the stakes, and he had a very interesting relationship with the team because of trauma,” he said.
Perhaps ironically, Morph’s role in the cartoon only bolstered his presence in X-Men comics, where he became best known as a member of the Exiles. He would show up in some classic Marvel arcs, including Age of Apocalypse and House of M. He’s not a major character by any stretch, but he’s been through quite a bit, including becoming unhinged from time, witnessing the death of his friends, and becoming unstable goo. It’s also always fun to see a character get a new lease on life after a cartoon or movie appearance.
In X-Men: The Animated Series, Morph would also return for a major arc of the show’s second season, when Mister Sinister resurrects him and brainwashes him into hating the X-Men. Morph is able to break through that hold at the end of the season, and while he rejoins the team briefly in season 4, he once again leaves due to the mental damage from his previous Sentinel confrontation. It’s a pretty sensitive portrayal of trauma, especially for a 1990s kids’ cartoon.
His only other appearance is in the series finale, where he teams up with the X-Men to fight against Magneto, who’s enacting his plan for mutant domination as Xavier slowly dies. Morph doesn’t do much here, but you can see him standing with the rest of the team at Xavier’s deathbed, which is where the new series will pick up.
What role will Morph play in X-Men ’97?
We don’t know much yet about what storylines the series will tackle, so it’s unclear if Morph will be a primary member of the team. What we do know is that the show creators made some changes, the biggest being a whole new look with a bald head, light gray skin, completely white eyes, and no nose, along with a nonbinary identity (it’s unclear what pronouns Morph uses, but the creators use he/him in recent interviews).
Image: Marvel Studios Animation
People online did not take kindly to this revelation, with many saying that it was another forced change by Disney to make the series more woke or that the creators would be pushing a relationship between him and Wolverine.
However, the change makes a lot of sense. Shapeshifters can take on multiple genders, so there are many instances where these kinds of characters identify as nonbinary, or at the very least present androgynous, from Double Trouble in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power to Envy in Fullmetal Alchemist to versions of Loki in Marvel comics. Shapeshifters might even go so far as to mess with the man/woman biological paradigm. Just last year, after decades of retconning and uncertainty, Marvel confirmed that Nightcrawler’s father is actually Mystique, who transformed into a man and produced a baby with her longtime girlfriend/wife, Destiny.
This trope doesn’t speak to the experiences of all nonbinary people, but the idea of a character who isn’t confined to a binary gender spectrum — or a human spectrum, for that matter — fits right in with this idea. Why stick to one gender when you can change your physical form to look like anything? Plus, Morph has played around with gender before, so to the team working on X-Men ’97, the change just felt right.
“He attacks Wolverine, his closest friend, in the most dramatic way by turning into Jean Grey and putting his hand on Wolverine’s neck and leaning in for a kiss. That’s as nonbinary as you can get. It’s Morph turning into a woman and coming onto Wolverine to freak him out,” original cartoon creator Eric Lewald said in a Variety interview. “Now it’s become such a social thing that I think people will be more sensitive to how it’s used. That’s the only difference.”
X-Men ’97 will debut on March 20 on Disney Plus.
