Fox’s X-Men drama has a strong cast and one genuinely good idea. It also has 29 episodes of a show that never quite decides what it wants to be.
Trailer, via Marvel Entertainment.
A Suburban Family on the Run
The Gifted comes from Matt Nix, who built it around a simple premise: two ordinary parents discover their children have mutant abilities and take the family on the run from a hostile government. The parents are Reed and Caitlin Strucker, played by Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker. The kids are Lauren and Andy, played by Natalie Alyn Lind and Percy Hynes White. Lauren can push molecules of air or water together into force fields. Andy can pull things apart at a molecular level with his mind.
That is the hook, and it is a good one. The show sets itself in an alternate timeline to the X-Men film series, one where the X-Men have disappeared. The Struckers do not join a school for gifted youngsters. They join an underground network of mutants fighting to survive.
Reed Strucker’s Job and the Man Hunting Him
The best material in The Gifted sits in the first season, where Reed’s job as a district attorney collides with what he is. He has been part of the system that hunts mutants, and he knows the camps are not nice and that some people he captured have disappeared. Moyer described the character’s bind plainly: “He thinks he’s doing the right thing by moving [the mutants]. He does know these camps aren’t particularly nice. He knows a few people he’s captured have disappeared. He also knows this could happen to his kids. He has no choice but to go on the run.”
Coby Bell plays Jace Turner, written as morally ambiguous rather than simply villainous. Bell gets the show’s harder assignment, and he is one of the reasons the first season holds together.
The Underground Network and Its Splinter
The mutant underground gives the show its second engine. Sean Teale plays Marcos Diaz, called Eclipse, a mutant who absorbs and manipulates photons and who grew up smuggling drugs from Mexico into the United States. Blair Redford plays John Proudstar, called Thunderbird. Emma Dumont plays Lorna Dane, called Polaris. Jamie Chung plays Clarice Fong, called Blink.
At the end of season one, several members of the underground leave to join the Inner Circle. Season two sees conflict between those defectors and the underground, as well as others with their own extreme ideologies. Grace Byers joins as Reeva Payge. Skyler Samuels, who recurred in season one as the Stepford Cuckoos, was confirmed as a series regular in June 2018. That split is the right instinct. It just arrives after the show has already spent its best episodes.
What Worked, in Order
Ranked by what The Gifted actually got right:
- The Strucker family premise, which gives the show a human stake most superhero television skips.
- Amy Acker as Caitlin, a nurse and mother with no powers who still gets a real arc. Nix said he wanted to show “the evolution of a suburban mom into an underground warrior.”
- Coby Bell’s Jace Turner, the show’s most interesting piece of casting.
- The season two Inner Circle split, a good idea deployed too late.
- The mutant underground itself, which too often functions as a roster rather than a community.
Casting That Outran the Writing
Fox moved fast on this one. By January 2017, exploratory casting had begun. Blair Redford was cast as a mutant leader the next month, followed by Jamie Chung, Stephen Moyer and Sean Teale. March brought Natalie Alyn Lind, Amy Acker, Emma Dumont, Percy Hynes White and Coby Bell. The series received a put pilot commitment after a previous attempt at an X-Men television series did not move forward at the network in 2016, and it was ordered to series in May 2017. Redford’s character was revealed as John Proudstar at that point.
Acker auditioned alongside Moyer, who was already cast. The two did not meet the actors playing their children until the table read of the pilot. That detail explains a lot about the show’s warmth and its limits. The adult performances carry scenes the scripts do not earn.
Twenty-Nine Episodes and a Cancellation
The first season ran 13 episodes, from October 2, 2017, to January 15, 2018. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and “solid” viewership. The second season ran 16 episodes, starting September 25, 2018. Fox canceled the series on April 17, 2019, after two seasons and 29 episodes.
Here is the verdict. The Gifted is a show with a real idea at its center and not enough discipline around it. The Struckers work. The underground mostly does not, because the show keeps handing it plot instead of character. The season two split into the Inner Circle should have been the story from the start, and by the time it arrives the audience has already been asked to care about too many mutants with too little to do. Bell and Acker are the two performances worth the time. Moyer is solid in a role that keeps him off balance for two seasons.
This is not a bad show. It is a cautious one, and caution is the wrong register for a story about people with nothing left to lose.
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