In seemingly confirming that the act of declaring Morph to be ‘nonbinary’ was nothing more than a shallow attempt to score social media brownie points, the mutant shapeshifter’s X-Men ’97 voice actor J.P. Karliak has admitted that despite the public promotion that the hero now identifies as ‘non-binary’, the show will never explicitly refer to him as such.
Karliak, who themselves identifies as nonbinary but openly uses he/him pronouns, provided this baffling insight into the Disney Plus series’ approach to Morph during a recent post-series-premiere interview given to CBR‘s Sam Stone.
Asked by Stone if he could elaborate as to why, despite purportedly being ‘nonbinary’, Morph still exclusively refers to himself as male, the voice actor said that the production team declined to have him use ‘they/them’ pronouns because it would have been historically inaccurate.
“‘Two things about that,” said Karliak, “one, as far as I know, we’re never going to say the word ‘non-binary’ because nobody said the word ‘non-binary’ in the ’90s. It’s not that it didn’t exist; it was just in no way a mainstream term at the time. Morph’s understanding of who he is could equate to what a modern person would say is non-binary, but he just doesn’t have the terminology for it. At the same time, they/them wasn’t a concept in terms of using it as a pronoun.”
“There are so many ways I identify with Morph, but one of them is that I personally identify as gender-queer, which some might say is an offshoot of non-binary, but I use he/him pronouns,” he continued. “A lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m in my 40s and I came into my full understanding of my gender in my late 30s. I’ve always used he/him pronouns, and they feel like an old college sweatshirt, where maybe they don’t fit all that well, but they’re still really comfy and, until I find something better, I’ll just keep using that.”
To this end, Stone then asked Karliak if he had been ‘surprised’ to the backlash against this change to Morph’s character, to which he admitted, “No. [Laughs].'”
“I’m a queer activist,” he explained. “I run a nonprofit that advocates for queer representation. I also co-founded a voter registration organization. I know what’s going on in the world, especially politically, so no, it didn’t surprise me at all. [laughs] I think what I appreciated was how much counter-backlash there was, with people like ‘Have you watched the X-Men? Are you familiar with why they were created and what they’re about? Did you forget that?’ That was reassuring.”
“I haven’t really taken offense with anything anybody’s published, as much as they’ve tried. [laughs] There was one article that called me a radical queer activist [as penned for That Park Place by its current Edtior-in-Chief John F. Trent] and listed the insidious mission statement of my organization — verbatim of what was on the website. I was like ‘Facts. No lies here, thanks for the promotion!’ [laughs]”.
(Per the official website for Karliak’s Queer Vox, the non-profit organization’s lists their mission as “providing training and professional support for LGBTQIA+ voice actors in the entertainment industry while advocating for equitable opportunities and authentic representation in voice performance work.”)
To this end, while the series has yet to explicitly refer to Morph as ‘nonbinary’, it has referred to him twice using ‘they/them’ pronouns – Once during the UN riot in the second episode, wherein Cyclops informs Storm that “Morph’s here but they’re losing the line’! and again in his end credits profile.
As such, given that the actual contents of the end product stand in stark contrast to Karliak’s claims – or at the very least leaves them disingenuous, as even if they don’t use the term ‘nonbinary’, their use of they/them pronouns still represent an attempt to label Morph as such – it remains absolutely unclear just how the series will handle the mutant shapeshifter’s existence going forward.
The next episode of X-Men ’97, ‘Fire Made Flesh’, is currently set to hit Disney Plus on March 27th.