The second season of X-Men ‘97 is done, and it’s given audiences a new fave in Polaris.
Created by Arnold Drake and Jim Steranko in 1968, Lorna Dane is one of Magneto’s handful of children. For those in the know, her being in ‘97 is the latest, biggest profile boost after being portrayed Emma Dumont in Fox’s short-lived The Gifted and joining the core X-Men team during the Krakoa era.
While she was a minor character in the original X-Men cartoon and appeared in some episodes of Wolverine and the X-Men, X-Men ‘97 positions Lorna as a more active player. After working with the government-backed X-Factor to round up mutants, she’s fired in “Danger.exe” and rejoins her old friends. Saving the ruined Genosha from Danger led to her joining Xavier’s newly formed X-Corp team, complete with her own title card in the intro.
Ahead of ‘97’s finale, io9 spoke with Lorna’s actor—Carolina Ravassa, who most will know as Sombra and Raze from the hero shooters Overwatch and Valorant—about becoming the new X-Man in town.
Justin Carter, io9: Did you have any previous relationship with the X-Men and Polaris before joining this show?
Carolina Ravassa: Growing up, I never read the comics, but I watched most of the live-action X-Men movies. I knew the basics, and I knew about Scarlet Witch, but I didn’t know much about Magneto’s other kids. And when I auditioned, I didn’t even know this was for X-Men ‘97! [laughs]
My agents find auditions for me that feel right for my voice type, and when the casting call went out over two years ago, Polaris seemed to fit that bill. I got the audition thinking this would be a show about young witches and warlocks at a boarding school, since I’d been auditioning for that a lot at the time. The scripts were changed so we wouldn’t know, and my character was described as an “heiress who has a difficult relationship with her father.” It never seemed to me like a Magneto/Polaris dynamic.
io9: When you booked the part, what did the writers tell you about Polaris? Did they give you a breakdown of her arc for the season, or just what was happening in a specific episode?
Ravassa: We get the episodes or scenes we’ll be in, and once we’re in the recording studio, we’ll have some staff from the show—directors or writers, maybe the showrunner or some producers. If we’ve got questions, we can ask, but they never give us the full beats of the season. As an actor, we want to be as present as possible, so it’s important for us to focus on being as present as possible. If there’s a piece of a character’s history very important to the scene, then it’s something we’ll talk about. Otherwise, we’re zeroed in on the moment at hand.
io9: You joined Overwatch early into its life as Sombra. Do you think that helped as you entered X-Men ‘97 in a similarly “post-launch” way?
Ravassa: I never thought about it like that, since I didn’t know when Polaris would show up in season two, and the show has a lot of characters. But I do think my video game experience has certainly helped: when I auditioned, she had some screams, so [Overwatch and Valorant] things like callouts for using our Ultimate abilities and death screams helped me connect. Polaris even has an EMP power like Sombra, and that helped.
Last year, I went to WonderCon, and a lot of the show’s actors had booths and prints of their characters. I stopped by to say “hi,” since I’ve known many of them as friends for years and worked with some of them before. When I got there, they already knew I was Polaris—it’s a truly lovely family of actors, and I was more excited that they were excited for me to join.
io9: You pull double duty on Polaris, since you also voice her in the Spanish dub for ‘97. What led to you landing that gig?
Ravassa: I grew up in Latin America and watched dubbing happen, but I didn’t think about it happening to me until I missed out on doing Sombra’s Spanish dub. There’s teams for every language, and I knew I’d have to ask for permission here, since the Spanish ‘97 team also has talented actors that they like to work with. So I got on that early and asked our director if she could get Mexico’s localization team to let me audition for myself.
Getting to record in neutral Spanish with our awesome Mexican team was really special for me. Every language has its nuances, so the dubs have to be in tune with what the audience wants. Sometimes, I’d do the same Polaris performance in Spanish as I had in English, and the director would want me to be sadder or feel more intensely. We’d heighten emotions in certain places that weren’t done in English, and it felt fun to do the performance based on those expectations.
io9: You said earlier the show’s cast was welcoming—have you been tuned into what the X-Men ‘97 community thinks of Polaris?
Ravassa: For the most part, I feel like it’s been a pretty positive response. She’s so new [here] and beloved by OG comic fans and readers, so I’m glad she doesn’t feel wrong to them. Since I travel to comic cons all over, I’ll get to meet fans—doing the Spanish dub lets me talk to the show’s Latino fanbase, and I’m excited for that. She was a minor character in the original show, so I’m glad I get to do my own thing with Polaris and make her unique, and I feel very lucky to be in this.
All episodes of X-Men ’97 season two are on Disney+, with season three expected in 2027.
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