Fans have been asking about the X-Ternal since 1994, and X-Men ’97 just closed the book on one of the show’s oldest mysteries.
The character first showed up as a shadowy background figure in X-Ternally Yours, an episode of the original X-Men: The Animated Series that dug into Gambit’s backstory and the blood feud between the Thieves and Assassins Guilds.
She hibernates in the Louisiana bayou, gets summoned by the guilds for power, and was never given a real name. That changed earlier this X-Men ’97 season when the closing credits of Rise of Apocalypse – Part 2 quietly confirmed her comic identity. Now, in season 2 episode 8, titled “Dead Man’s Hand”, she’s back, and her story comes to a violent end.
Who Is Candra In The Comics?
In the comics, Candra is a member of the Externals, a rare offshoot of mutantkind who don’t age and can only truly be killed by another External. She first appeared in Gambit Vol. 1 #1 back in 1993, created by Howard Mackie and Lee Weeks, and she spent decades as one of Gambit’s most persistent adversaries.
Unlike Selene, Gideon, or Apocalypse himself, Candra never joined the other Externals in forming the High Lords. She preferred working solo as a power broker, cutting deals rather than building alliances.
To protect herself from her own kind, she poured her life force into a gem, a move that let her survive nearly anything so long as the gem stayed intact. Lose the gem, and she’s suddenly mortal and vulnerable. That single detail from the comics becomes the entire engine of her arc in X-Men ’97.
For centuries, Candra used that gem to strike a bargain with the New Orleans Thieves and Assassins Guilds, granting them power in exchange for tribute. It’s the same arrangement the original animated series hinted at without ever naming her.
Candra’s Fate As The X-Ternal In Episode 8
X-Men ’97 built out Candra’s backstory earlier this season, revealing she was once an Egyptian priestess serving Rama-Tut, who fans already knew was secretly Kang the Conqueror. When Kang abandoned his followers to face Apocalypse, he told Candra that Apocalypse could only be beaten by “a force that is external.”
Candra took the words literally. She got close to Apocalypse, convinced him to hand over a piece of his power through the very gem that defines her comic origins, and then betrayed him the moment she had it, avenging what he’d done to her people.
That backstory pays off hard in episode 8. A resurrected Gambit, now serving Apocalypse as his Horseman of Death, learns the X-Ternal is holding the gem he needs to make Rogue immortal.
Bella Donna summons Candra for him, and she’s caught off guard to learn Gambit is the one who woke her. When she refuses to hand the gem over, Gambit stabs her and takes it by force, ending her life in a matter of seconds after more than three decades of fan speculation about who she even was.
It’s a blunt, almost anticlimactic exit for a character comic readers have followed since the early ’90s, but it fits the season’s larger theme of Apocalypse’s horsemen leaving nothing but wreckage behind them, even the people who once loved him.
X-Men ’97 season 2 heads into its finale next week on Disney+.