The show wasn’t called “Wolverine and the X-Men” just because that’s how most casual fans think of the team. It also made Logan into the central character and team’s leader (though it was aware what a weird choice that was).

In the series’ three-part premiere “Hindsight,” Xavier’s School is attacked and both Professor X (Jim Ward) and Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale) vanish. The X-Men disband, but a year later, things are worse than ever for mutants. Wolverine (Steve Blum) decides the world needs the X-Men again, so he and Beast (Fred Tatasciore) gradually reassemble the team: Cyclops (Nolan North), Iceman (Yuri Lowenthal), Shadowcat (Danielle Judovits), Storm (Susan Dalian), Nightcrawler (Liam O’Brien), Rogue (Kieren van den Blink), Forge (Roger Craig Smith), and newcomer Emma Frost (Kari Wahlgren).

Jean stays MIA for most of the show, but the X-Men find a comatose Xavier at the end of “Hindsight.” He telepathically contacts them from a dark future, where the Earth is a wasteland and mutants are hunted by robotic Sentinels. This is, of course, based on Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s famous “Days of Future Past” comic, which was “Terminator” before “The Terminator.” The rest of the season cuts back and forth between present and future; Xavier’s future X-Men fight against the Sentinels while Wolverine and co. try to stop that future from ever happening.

With Xavier out of action and Cyclops more focused on Jean, Logan has to hold the team together. Series’ co-developer Greg Johnson said in 2023 that, far from the premise being just an excuse to spotlight Wolverine, it shook up the usual X-Men team dynamics in compelling ways:

“To me, putting a person in charge who should never be put in charge was a great place to start. The interpersonal conflicts that arose because a loner like Wolverine was unwillingly put in a leadership role provided for some dynamic storytelling. As long as I was true to Wolverine’s character, the results felt genuine. Ultimately, those vigilant fans did come aboard and enjoyed the series.”

Blum’s performance as Wolverine helps sell this too. You can feel Logan holding in his anger, trying (and not always succeeding) to be the kind of leader he admires Charles Xavier for being.

In the season finale “Foresight,” the X-Men stop a human-mutant war from breaking out. They touch base with the future Xavier, who confirms they’ve succeeded: The Days of Future Past will never come to be. But all is not right; now, Apocalypse will rule the world instead. The X-Men have traded a future where mutants are hunted for one where they’ve become the oppressors instead. The very last scene of the series shows that future as Apocalypse hails his cheering crowds.

This cliffhanger ending set up an adaptation of the 1995 comic arc “Age of Apocalypse,” which took place in a timeline where Professor X died young, Magneto founded the X-Men in his place, and Apocalypse seized control of the world then enacted his vision for Social Darwinism. As Fine explained in that aforementioned interview, the setting would be reimagined as a possible future instead of an alternate present; season 2 of “Wolverine and the X-Men” would’ve had the same parallel timeline structure as season 1. “Part of our task in adapting the story was figuring out which elements to pull into our present day storyline and how we were building towards this dark future,” said Fine.

But we never got to see them figure that out.