Where To Watch The Sentinels: The X-Men Villains' Best Movies & TV Shows
Avengers: Doomsday heavily implied Sentinels appearing with its brief X-Men teaser, but it’s still not a hard confirmation. Nevertheless, Sentinels are a major factor of the franchise and have appeared in many movies and shows.
The Super Hero Squad Show (2009-2011), Marvel Anime: X-Men (2011), Ultimate Spider-Man (2012-2017), and Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers (2014-2015) are some examples of small Sentinel cameos. But below is a full breakdown of all major Sentinel appearances in movies and TV, available to watch now on Disney+.
The Sentinels in X-Men: The Last Stand can be described as the ultimate tease for fans of the franchise. The only time one shows up is when Wolverine cuts off and tosses a severed head of the giant robot during a Danger Room session.
What’s so frustrating about this moment is that it shows the X-Men fought Sentinels in the past, but it was never talked about. What’s even worse is that the head alone was more comic accurate than any other movie appearance.
An X-Men movie focusing on the Sentinels felt like a pipedream before X-Men: Days of Future Past. Exploring how the Sentinels were created and changed history, the film examines the first versions and the most advanced ones in a parallel narrative.
The Mark 1 Sentinels are strong but still robots susceptible to brute force. They can identify mutants, fly, and have a minigun for an arm. But the future versions are adaptable by using Mystique’s DNA and can mimic powers with ease. They travel in massive ships and can fly but are also much faster and organic in appearance, making them the scariest movie Sentinels ever.
X-Men: Apocalypse doesn’t focus on Sentinels as the last film did. Instead, they are used to tease the future of the X-Men in a way fans had waited for for years.
At the end of the film, when the next class of X-Men is starting training in the Danger Room, Beast starts the program and a small group of Mark 1 Sentinels from X-Men: Days of Future Past walk up. Looking more inspired by the comic colors, the movie ends before we see a fight.
The first true depiction of Sentinels on the small screen, X-Men: The Animated Series took everything that was shown in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981) and amplified it. From the very first episode, the massive robots were easily one of the most intimidating foes on the show.
From there, the series introduced Bolivar Trask, Master Mold, and Nimrod, as well as adapted the Days of Future Past storyline in its own way. It may not be the most terrifying showcase of the robots, but it is the best one to appear on TV.
The Sentinels are part of the primary antagonist of X-Men ‘97, Bastion. Though these villains appeared a lot in the previous series, Master Mold and Nimrod took a backseat to Bastion and the Wild Sentinels.
Bastion is a technopathic mutant enhanced by Sentinel tech and the architect of the genocide of Genosha that led to the death of Gambit at the hands of the Wild Sentinels. This season of X-Men '97 shines because it gives the Sentinels their due and is one of the scariest depictions on TV.
A short-lived animated series, Wolverine and the X-Men put a heavy focus on the Sentinel program and integrated its main storyline heavily into the Days of Future Past one. Early on, we see Senator Kelly introduce the Sentinel program and how brutal these robots can be, as one goes solo hunting down Rogue.
These Sentinels can evolve over time and even became the inspiration for the ones shown in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Wolverine and the X-Men was a show that never got a fair shake, and that goes double for representations like the Sentinels.
X-Men: Evolution reimagined the team with the main group being teenagers, while Storm and Wolverine were teachers. It was a perfect change to the status quo and promised even more unique takes for other characters like the Sentinels.
Still developed by Bolivar Trask, the Sentinels were incredibly strong and could take a hit from Wolverine’s claws and Apocalypse’s forces. These versions are more focused on apprehending mutants rather than killing them and will trap them in a hardening jelly for transport.
A little-known live-action series inspired by the X-Men comics, The Gifted, follows a family as they go into hiding when two siblings gain mutant powers. Of course, in a world where mutants are tracked down, Sentinels would be a logical choice even if their appearance isn’t accurate.
Without a budget to deliver on giant robots, The Gifted introduced Sentinel Services, which used small robotic drones to track down mutants before they’re taken into custody. It’s the weakest representation of the robots but still worth mentioning.
