Who is Bastion? The comic history of the secret villain who has been hiding in X-Men '97 all along

After X-Men '97 episode 7's big reveal of Bastion as the main villain of the revived animated streaming series, we're left with more questions than answers about exactly how the mysterious master of Operation: Zero Tolerance (OZT) and his Prime Sentinels will attack the X-Men in the final few episodes of the season.

But we're not totally in the dark. Bastion first appeared in comics in 1996's X-Men #52 by writer Scott Lobdell and artist Pascual Ferry,  and was a main antagonist for the X-Men for some time - meaning that the show's '97 moniker applies not just to its setting, but to the exact era of X-Men comics it's now adapting.

In other words, we know exactly where (and when) to look in the comic history of Marvel's merry mutants to get some clues about Bastion's true nature, and what may be in store for the team as X-Men '97 moves towards its big season finale.

Be aware, we'll be getting into spoilers for some '90s X-Men comics that could potentially play into future episodes of X-Men '97, though which, if any, further connections will be made between the history of the comics and the show is just speculation at this point.

Who - and what - is Bastion?

First off, what exactly is Bastion? As viewers may have already surmised, he's not actually human - though he sure looks that way. In comics, he even has a full name: Sebastion Gilberti. And his followers and fellow anti-mutant villains in the Operation: Zero Tolerance program are mostly human. 

But that's all part of Bastion's programming as one of the most advanced Sentinels ever created, designed to look, act, and pass as fully human. What's more, Bastion is not just a new design of Sentinel. 

He's actually a merged fusion of a Master Mold, the massive Sentinel progenitors that create other Sentinels, and Nimrod, a super-powerful Sentinel from the future, both of whom appeared multiple times in the original X-Men: The Animated Series.

Incidentally, both Master Mold and Nimrod have been appearing in the credits of recent episodes of X-Men '97, making that one of the show's various Bastion Easter eggs that have been hidden in many of the episodes.

The thing is, when Bastion first started appearing in X-Men comics, not only did readers and other characters believe Bastion was human, but so did he himself. However, the truth of the matter is that Bastion originally began as a version of Nimrod, who was in disguise as a human when he made contact with a Master Mold unit. 

After a brief fight with the X-Men, the combined Master Mold/Nimrod was sent through a magical portal known as the Siege Perilous which somehow transformed him into an artificial human loaded with all the programming of the Sentinels in his own body, complete with false human memories. 

With his anti-mutant programming taking hold, Bastion launched a program named Operation: Zero Tolerance designed to rebuild - and improve - the Sentinel program.

What are Prime Sentinels?

Bastion's mission centers around the creation of other Sentinels masquerading as humans, known in this case as Prime Sentinels (viewers likely noticed that Bolivar Trask's Sentinel form in episode 7 is referred to as "Prime Trask," for example). 

A creation of Bastion's revived Sentinel program Operation: Zero Tolerance, or OZT, Prime Sentinels are intended as Sentinel sleeper agents, made from people who are transformed into Prime Sentinels by infecting them with Bastion's highly advanced technology.

Bastion's nanites then transform their bodies into living weapons that can be activated to take on any unsuspecting mutants in the vicinity with an entire arsenal of anti-mutant tricks.

This of course also has the side-effect of pretty much killing the Prime Sentinel's human host, but these are villains who wish to kill all mutants, so they're more than willing to sacrifice a few humans to do it.

There are also Omega Prime Sentinels which have further advanced abilities, including the power to generate weaponry from nanites housed in their bodies. One Omega Prime Sentinel, Karima Shapandar, has been active alongside a version of Nimrod in recent X-Men comics as members of Orchis.

Orchis is an anti-mutant organization that is currently hunting down mutants across the Marvel Universe with - what else? - a new breed of even more powerful Sentinels built from stolen Stark technology (as in Tony Stark/Iron Man).

What is Operation: Zero Tolerance?

In addition to being the name of Bastion's revived Sentinel program, Operation: Zero Tolerance is also the name of the main story in which Bastion clashed with the X-Men. Told as the big summer crossover of 1997, Operation: Zero Tolerance ran across multiple X-Men titles, taking up most of the line.

At the time, one of the big antagonists of X-Men comics was Graydon Creed, a presidential candidate running on a platform of open anti-mutant bigotry. Much like his depiction in X-Men: The Animated Series, he's also the non-mutant son of Sabretooth and Mystique, and the leader of the Friends of Humanity, who have been seen in both the original animated series and X-Men '97.

Well, at least, he was, until he was assassinated in the lead-up to the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover, by his own mother Mystique (though that wasn't revealed until years later). In the wake of Creed's death, humanity is further galvanized with anti-mutant hatred, allowing Bastion to launch his top secret Operation: Zero Tolerance program to destroy mutantkind with Prime Sentinels.

In the end however, it's Bastion's government connections that do him in, as SHIELD eventually moves to capture Bastion when the government revokes Operation: Zero Tolerance's clearance. The end of the crossover would also set up another departure from the X-Men for Cyclops, who winds up having to get a bomb removed from his chest by mutant doctor Cecilia Reyes, temporarily retiring to his home state of Alaska with his wife Jean Grey.

As for the remaining Prime Sentinels, some of them would later be activated by Stryfe, a villainous clone of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor's son Cable - potentially a plotline that could show up in the next season of X-Men '97.

New episodes of X-Men '97 stream every Wednesday on Disney Plus.

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