I say if they can figure out a way to feasibly fit them in there, then do it.
Dread, you say X-men and FF styles clash too much. I think that's exactly why I would want to see that team up in the show. And maybe FF having to face some harsh realities that mutants have to face while the FF don't have the same troubles of being hated. Not to mention, if Franklin is in there, Franklin could have the mutant angle. That could be reason enough to motivate X-men and FF in the same episode.
You do have a point; aside for a brief period in the 1980's, little hay has been made of the fact that Franklin Richards is not only a mutant, but a vastly powerful one; he once destroyed Mephisto for quite a while. One would think one of NY's most popular and media darling heroes having a kid who if he were in a poorer, less known family would merely be "a freak" and privy to hate speeches would be quite a big deal. Unfortunately, while Marvel prides itself on being a cohesive universe, the X-Men for large periods of time, aside for Wolverine, rarely interacted with other titles, beyond token crossovers or brawls.
Cartoons have been hesitant to include non-mutant superhumans into their X-universes. It is worth nothing that only the 90's series has been willing to include aliens as well, thus far. As I noted in prior posts, the TV shows' creative staff may find it distracting to have non-mutant superhumans on an X-Men show, feeling it may either diminish the effect that mutants have on the world or somehow blur the harsh reaction they get; Johnny Storm is a celebrity because he was empowered by space radiation, while Pyro or Magma are considered freaks and hated. I and others usually reasoned that the difference is that for the Marvel citizen, gaining super-powers unnaturally is something like winning the lottery; a random encounter with some radiation or whatever and ANYONE could be one of the Four, or whatnot. Mutants, on the other hand, are born that way and represent the possibility of normal humans being obsolete. The real kicker is the public always "knowing" who is and isn't a mutant in 616, or believing it. Spider-Man is usually lambasted in the media, but outside of Ultimate is rarely confused for a mutant.
There is the possibility of having Reed and Sue and the various members of the Four on the show with Franklin and they don't have super-powers, while he is still a vastly powerful mutant like Tilde. It would be a stretch, but then again, Nitro isn't a mutant in 616 yet he was one in Season 1 and it worked fairly well.
The impression I got from the Hulk episode was that the idea of "creating" genetically bred monsters was one attempt to try to "create" mutants, on another spectrum as the Weapon X people cloning Wolverine to make X-23. But the problem with the Four is once you introduce them into an X-thing, then you have to accept the fact that cosmic radiation exists in this universe, as do all of their goofy enemies like Mole Man. Is the world really begging for Wolverine vs. Mole Man on TV? Things that work in the comics do not always work in the cartoons. The last time any TV cartoon universe was "connected" was in the 90's. The X-Men showed up in Spider-Man's cartoon, Spidey (and Black Panther) had brief cameos in the X-Men show, and in the end of Spidey's show for Secret Wars, naturally the Fan Four and Storm got to team up with Spidey. No real hay was made of all the conflicting types of heroes. In no way did Storm ever bring up the idea that while she was often feared and hated for being a mutant, the Four were celebrity darlings.
On the other hand, both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four are connected to FOX right now (Fox has the rights to both movie wise, and they released the discs of the last FF cartoon). Not that such things matter as much for TV shows, but one could understand corporate not minding such an alliance. Wolverine was of course a member of the loosely assembled "New Fantastic Four" alongside Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, and the Hulk. He scarred half of Thing's face in one fight with the Four and Thing was deformed from it for several years real time.
But, it is possible I am over-thinking it more than a typical kid in the audience, who might just go, "hey, cool." Considering how Kyle & Yost wrote Dr. Doom in the FF animated series, though, I am not looking forward to the notion of seeing Wolverine defeat him with a claw swipe to a computer console somewhere.
I very much like the idea of Emma Frost dating Cyclops. Honestly, the Jean/Logan dynamic does absolutely nothing for me. Much like the Cyclops/Jean dynamic which I've grown tired of. I kind of stopped liking Jean and I don't like all the silliness that happened to her character after the Phoenix sagas.
Part of it is that I just hated X-men 3 so much and that they made Jean/Logan the OTP. A tragic pairing, but I loathed the fact that Logan was the only hero and Logan was the one that had to stop Jean because he loved her. That's wrong.
I just don't think Logan and Jean should be together. That's sort of why at first I thought the show was doing Logan/Rogue, which I totally misinterpreted. I always thought the idea of pairing those two up was fresh and interesting and I wish the comics went for it 100% before (there was some weird kiss moment a few years ago while they were both brainwashed, think Kirk/Uhura from TOS). So I was kind of thinking, OK, Rogue is pissed at Logan because you know she likes Logan and Logan's being Logan. Cool. Again, I totally missed that though.
It just feels like to me that the Logan/Jean/Scott angle which was a benchmark of the universe for so long has become an albatross to me. I liked in X-men Evolution that they never even went a Jean/Logan route. In a way, Logan staying perpetually unattached in that show sort of worked.
I won't argue about losing interest in Jean. I've never cared for her in most depictions. Johnson, Kyle, and Yost, among others, got something out of Jean in EVOLUTION, but beyond that she usually is a rather stock heroine, whose main gimmick is losing control. Part of me also thinks Craig Kyle at least likely finds Frost quite a bit more interesting than Jean; he's all but admitted it in some interviews. Thus, I was frankly surprised they wrote themselves into such a hole at the end of Season 1. I assume it was done to basically make the finale as good as possible, since there was no fore knowledge of a second season being approved, but it certainly makes Season 2 more awkward.
Season 1 had the dilemma of having Cyclops be such a whiney, moping, depressed mess without Jean, yet showed us little of Jean as she was so it was hard to understand why he was so morbidly attached. All we could do is try to see Jean through his eyes, and at best their relationship was co-dependent. Jean was the only one who could get through to the isolated mess that was Scott, and Scott was the only one who made Jean look extroverted by comparison. It was one of the sacrifices of showing the audience little of the set-up of the X-Men beyond fleeting flashbacks before they are blown up and split up. Without that foundation, getting into the characters was difficult. One has to know where a character came from to see where they are going and why this is supposed to be good or bad.
Season 2 thus has the task of trying to fill in the gaps to Jean's character as well as sort of explain why Cyclops isn't leading the X-Men now that he supposedly has the one cog he needed. Assuming of course that my conclusions from Episode 20 are "wrong" as some claim and were not intended to be interpreted that way. Furthermore, if Frost comes back, there is no good way out of Scott/Jean. If Jean is simply sent missing or seemingly dead again, that merely repeats Season 1, almost to the point of parody. They could of course have Cyclops be the one who goes missing, and that is one avenue. Marvel briefly tried that when he seemingly sacrificed himself to stop Apocalypse for "The Twelve" storyline at the end of the 90's. If Scott started to pine for the seemingly deceased Frost in Season 2, it would make him look like more of an insufferable cad since he was practically willing to abandon the X-Men to their fates at every turn because he missed Jean, and now he has her and isn't happy; no one would sympathize with him. He'd seem like those annoying emo goth kids in high school who cut themselves "to feel alive" (who all dress "uniquely" in exactly the same way, often with a lock of hair over mascara colored eyes) and are never satisfied with anything.
Honestly, if Johnson, Kyle & Co. wanted to emulate the comics with Scott/Frost, they played their hand poorly. It's not the easiest nut to crack, figuring out what to do with that dynamic as it stands at the end of Season 1 without rehashing old ground or making Scott seem like more of a wreck than before.
As for Wolverine, I wouldn't have minded some romantic tension for him. In the older comics I liked the idea of Mariko, and despite the Silver Samurai episode hardly being essential to the storyline or the best, I did like that potential. They also introduced the idea of him and Mystique once being lovers, which is odd since in the comics they want to kill each other. Wolverine in cartoons never gets to have a relationship with any woman who isn't out to kill him (in the 90's cartoon, virtually any woman from Logan's past either wanted to kill him, like Silver Fox or Deathstrike, or knew people who wanted to kill him, like Heather Hudson). EVOLUTION was a different beast, with most of the cast being jail-bait. The writers of W&TXM didn't want the Logan/Rogue think interpreted as romantic, but to me it seemed like it was in that middle-ground from the first X-MEN film or two, where one wonders if the line between "mentor" and "crush" is blurred for Rogue. It often can be for teenagers coming across mysterious older men. Where one could interpret it either way. In the comics they made out at least once, but Logan makes out with a lot of women in the comics. Rogue, Storm, Jean, Mystique, etc.
I would like to see how they explain why Prof. X still has the portable Cerebro device, if the alternate future (with the Sentinels) never happened. I thought that by changing the future, that device was never created. Just a random thought...
Welcome to the SHH!
Time travel is a very tricky wicket. Obviously while Wolverine and the X-Men prevented the Master Mold ruled future by happening (by stopping Dark Phoenix, which makes no sense really how the two are connected), it basically resulted in the future being messed up for another reason, with Xavier still in a coma for twenty years. Hopefully more will be explained as Season 2 starts.
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t: This seems very unlikely though.
