For almost as long as they have been in the comics, the X-Men and mutantkind at large have been stalked by a world that hates and fears them—a world that manifested that hate in the metallic, unflinching face of the Sentinel Program. Just as the X-Men have grown and changed wildly since those early days, so too have their most hateful foes, embracing the series’ mantra of adapting to survive as much as its heroes have.
This week’s episode of X-Men ‘97 weaponized that idea even further by tapping into another classic ‘90s comic element, with the revelation that the real villain pulling the strings behind everything the show’s thrown at us so far—from Mr. Sinister’s machinations, to the Genoshan genocide, and beyond—is none other than Bastion, the Human-Sentinel hybrid that led the Prime Sentinels during Operation Zero Tolerance. But the primes are just one evolution among many the Sentinel threat has taken in 60 years of comic books, so let’s take a walk back through Marvel’s history to see where the Sentinels began—and how far they’ve come in their unyielding command to exterminate mutantkind.
