Marvel Studios sneakily debuted Rachel Summers, the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey, in its newest Disney+ release. X-Men ’97 returned on Wednesday, July 1 with the first three episodes of Season 2, picking up the cliffhanger that scattered the X-Men across time after the destruction of Asteroid M. The animated revival earned its reputation on deep comic book references, and its latest one touches one of the most tangled branches of the Summers family tree.
Rachel arrived under a different name. She appears as Mother Askani, the hooded psychic voiced by Star Trek: The Next Generation veteran Gates McFadden. The character appears in the premiere, aptly titled Days of Past Future. The episode never says her actual name out loud, but Askani is an older Rachel Summers, Scott and Jean’s daughter from an alternate timeline in Marvel Comics.
The premiere unfolds in the year 3960 AD, a barren world ruled by Apocalypse (Ross Marquand). Cyclops and Jean Grey help raise young Nathan Summers, the boy destined to become Cable, though he remains unaware that the two heroes are his parents. Askani leads Clan Askani, a resistance movement convinced that Nathan is the prophesied warrior who will end Apocalypse’s reign.
Askani also answered Season 1’s biggest lingering question. She admitted to Storm that she saved the X-Men from the Asteroid M disaster herself, sending half the team to the far future and the other half to ancient Egypt as part of her plan to defeat Apocalypse in two different eras.
The clues start piling up once Askani lowers her hood for Storm. Her long braid and facial markings make her a dead ringer for a slimmer Cable, and the Phoenix flares in her eyes when she describes her power. Askani hinted at her true origins by telling Storm she comes from "a hell that would make you call this one heaven."
Sharp-eyed fans technically met Rachel once before. She showed up briefly during Season 1’s Tolerance Is Extinction arc, inside a glimpse of Bastion’s grim future, where she served as one of the mutant-hunting Hounds.
Who Is Rachel Summers in Marvel Comics?
Chris Claremont and John Byrne created Rachel Summers in Uncanny X-Men #141, the 1981 issue that launched the legendary Days of Future Past storyline. Her world went wrong when the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly triggered a Sentinel takeover, with surviving mutants herded into camps. The villain Ahab brainwashed a young Rachel into serving as a Hound and forced her to hunt her own kind, an ordeal that branded her with the facial markings the premiere put on full display. She was pivotal in that classic story, using her telepathy to send Kate Pryde’s mind into the past in a bid to rewrite history.
Rachel eventually escaped into the mainline Marvel universe. She joined the X-Men, bonded with the Phoenix Force like her mother before her, adopted the Phoenix codename, and later helped found the British team Excalibur. Then a rescue mission gone wrong in 1994’s Excalibur #75 hurled her roughly 2,000 years forward into a future conquered by Apocalypse. Stranded and aging, she gathered rebels into Clan Askani, whose name translates to "outsiders," and took the title of Mother Askani.
The premiere also takes some inspiration from The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, the 1994 miniseries by Scott Lobdell and Gene Ha. In it, Mother Askani pulled the minds of the newly married Scott and Jean into the future and placed them in different bodies, where they posed as the couple Slym and Redd Dayspring while raising young Nathan. She guided the boy from the shadows, teaching him to keep his techno-organic virus in check and preparing him for his destiny as the Askani’son, the savior fated to destroy Apocalypse.
One interesting aspect of this X-Men '97 storyline is that Nathan and Rachel share Cyclops as a father, yet their mothers differ. Nathan is the son of Madelyne Pryor, the Jean Grey clone created by Mister Sinister, while Rachel descends from an alternate timeline’s Jean. This season's time-travel shenanigans are already proving to be its best element only three episodes in.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
