The End of Eternity is the end. But it shouldn’t have been.
As a season finale, it delivers everything: call-backs to past adventures, emotional reckonings, and the full weight of the Silver Surfer’s cosmic journey. We watch allies fall — Drax and Pip frozen in time, Galactus and Nova caught in an endless loop of consumption and collapse. And then comes the most disturbing image of all: humanity devolving into primordial ooze. It’s not just tragic. It’s squeamish. And it lands.
Thanos wins. The universe is wiped out. The Surfer fails. Time and space unravel. And for a finale, it’s perfect — a cliffhanger carved in cosmic despair.
But it’s also the end. Genuinely. Marvel’s bankruptcy and shifting tides in Hollywood left the animated universe fractured. By 1999, every series ended on a cliffhanger. The Marvel Animated Universe went silent — until X-Men ’97 reignited the flame.
Still, The End of Eternity is a good end. A bold one. And not a complete one.
Because scripts for season two were written. And they’re waiting. Somewhere in the void, beyond the white light, the story continues.
In deep space, Pip and Drax continue their journey, following the beacons of the Watchers. They stumble upon what appears to be another Universal Library. Drax disembarks to investigate — and time reverses.
The Silver Surfer awakens from a dream. Uatu the Watcher finds him, bearing grim news. The cosmic balance is failing. He introduces the Surfer to the entities who have long observed him: Eternity, in whom all time resides, and Infinity, who holds all space. They are dying. A threat has emerged that can unravel existence itself. Its name is familiar. Thanos.
On the planet Harmony, Beta Ray Bill and his people devolve into primordial oceans. The Kree and Skrull empires suffer the same fate. Infinity buckles under the strain. The Surfer accepts his task.
Meanwhile, Thanos continues his rampage, annihilating civilisations in pursuit of Lady Chaos. She remains silent. The Titan grows more desperate, more destructive.
Seeking aid, the Surfer finds Galactus and Nova. But they too are caught in the time disruption — reliving the moment of feeding in an endless loop. Galactus, never satisfied, unleashes his fury, destroying the planet, himself, and Nova in a blinding flash… which reverses. Again. And again.
The universe begins to shrink. The Surfer leaves Galactus behind. Thanos, now orbiting a time anomaly, amplifies its power and finds a way inside. From within, he can destroy the universe — and remain untouched, cocooned with Lady Chaos.
The Surfer finds the anomaly. He enters the rift, soaring toward its centre as time collapses around him. Thanos cackles, believing he’s won. Earth falls. Zenn-La devolves. The Surfer reaches the core.
A white light consumes everything.
The universe ends.
Several of the figures we’ve seen the Surfer interact with throughout this season reappear in cameos in this episode: Drax and Pip (last seen in Learning Curve (Part 2)), Beta Ray Bill and the inhabitants of Harmony (Innervisions), the Wanderers (Radical Justice), the Kree and the Skrull. All are wiped from existence at the end of the episode…
The Kirby-Lee quadrant mentioned by the Surfer is once again named after his creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
This episode was the last episode of the series to be made. However, there were eight additional episodes written that resolved the cliffhanger…
X-Cess Minutiae 
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