Forgotten Television: The Gifted

The seemingly normal Strucker family, has their lives upended when they discover their children possess mutant powers. Reed Strucker (Stephen Moyer), a district attorney who once prosecuted mutants, is forced to go on the run with his wife Caitlin (Amy Acker) and their children, Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) and Andy (Percy Hynes White), after the teens’ powers manifest during a violent incident at school. Lauren has the ability to generate force fields while Andy can generate powerful kinetic energy waves that can disintegrate or shatter objects and tear through structures with explosive force. When the two join hands, their powers combine and are amplified.  As the family evades a government agency known as Sentinel Services, they join an underground network of mutants, including Thunderbird (Blair Redford), Polaris (Emma Dumont), Eclipse (Sean Teale), and Blink (Jamie Chung), who are fighting for survival and equality in a world that fears them. The show explores themes of persecution, family loyalty, and resistance.

The Gifted premiered on October 2, 2017, on the Fox network. It was developed by Matt Nix in association with Marvel Television and is set in an alternate timeline of the X-Men universe where the X-Men have mysteriously vanished. The series ran for two seasons, concluding in 2019, with the first season having thirteen episodes and the second sixteen for a total of twenty-nine episodes. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its fast-paced storytelling, strong ensemble cast, and timely sociopolitical themes. While some noted it leaned on familiar superhero tropes, others appreciated its focus on character-driven drama within a dystopian setting.

First, I really liked this show when it originally came out.  It was well produced with a good cast and interesting storylines.  The fact that they reference the X-Men and actually use their character names, like Polaris and Thunderbird are a big plus, along with the fact that we actually got to see them use their powers.  So often in superhero television shows, neither of those things are done. We still didn’t get costumes, but for this series that is fine.  In rewatching an episode now, I realize just how timely the show was and is.  The violent rounding up of undocumented people who are different from us and that makes them scary is literally happening today.  And it is for that reason that I won’t rewatch the entire series right now.  .  The X-Men comic books have always been allegorical representing the marginalized and oppressed. I am over dystopian plots, maybe because I am living in one, but also because I want to see joy and hope portrayed. The constant fight and struggle to just survive weighs on me daily, and I want to escape that in my television viewing.  I want to see the heroes be celebrated and accepted and I know that is unrealistic, but right now, at this specific time, that is what I would like to see.  I think many people will find the series even more timely than when it originally aired and will enjoy the obvious correlation between reality and fiction.