How the 'Magneto was right' meme made it to X-Men 97

'Magneto was right' was a slogan uttered by a young mutant in 2003's New X-Men comic book by Grant Morrison, which received a callback in X-Men'97 episode 8. In the original comic book, a student at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, named Quentin Quire, had worn a red t-shirt which had the aforementioned words emblazoned.

The idea behind the same was to highlight how Magneto's radical defense of mutants against anti-mutant oppression made more sense and was more realistic than Professor Charles Xavier's pacifist approach.

The idea returned in X-Men'97 when Dr. Valerie Cooper voiced the exact same words to show that the time for one-sided peace was over after the Sentinels' genocidal attempt to wipe out humans.

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Valerie Cooper utters the words "Magneto was right" in X-Men'97 episode 8

X-Men'97 episode 8 showed everyone that Magneto was alive after his seeming disappearance and death while fighting a Sentinel. Dr. Valerie Cooper uttered the words after a series of events led her to become disillusioned with the human-machine hybrid Bastion's anti-mutant policies. After joining Bastion, she soon realized that he had been weaponizing the most radical of the anti-mutant civilians.

These humans were having their DNA rewritten to create a breed of cyborg Sentinel warriors who could annihilate the X-Men, and were simultaneously capable of reproducing.

Originally joining Bastion's side, Valerie realized the error of his ways and remembered Genosha, where she had felt pain, grief, and admiration for the mutants who had fought against all odds.

This led her to realize that the genocide of Genosha highlighted the ugly nature of human society. She also recognized that Magneto's radical method of taking up arms against one's oppressors was the only logical reaction to the anti-mutant zealotry in the contemporary world. As such, she utters the following words:

"Yes, I was scared, but really I just had the most profound sense of déjà vu, as if past, present, and future didn't matter and never had, because we always end up in the same ugly place. Thing is, Magneto knows us better than Charles ever did, knows we know better, that most of us experience tragedies like Genosha as a bit of déjà vu before getting on with our day."

She continued:

"But the scariest thing about Genosha wasn't the death or the chaos. It was a thought, the only sane thought you can have when being chased by giant robots that were built to crush you: Magneto was right."

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X-Men'97 calls back to an old slogan that had become a meme

Quentin Quire was a student at Xavier's school of mutants, where he had worn the t-shirt which spelled the word "Magneto was right". On the shirt, Magneto was depicted in the style of Che Guevara the famous revolutionary, highlighting their similarities. Magneto was a holocaust survivor who had once been discriminated because of his religion and was now at the forefront of the mutant war of liberation.

While Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto had begun as friends and have continued to be allies over the course of several points in their lives, their friction emerged from one massive difference - Magneto's experience with the ugliest side of humanity as a holocaust survivor and mutant had led him to be a cynic. He never believed that humans would accept mutants coexisting with them.

While most of the X-Men media, and to a degree X-Men'97 as well, asks viewers to align their view points with those of Charles and his team, viewers over the years have gone on to see the logic in Magneto's ways.

The idea of striking back against one's oppressors is an idea that many fans of the comic books have grown to believe in, thereby transforming Magneto into a hero rather than a villain in their eyes.