The Gifted fits into the overall X-Men universe from the Marvel Comics and Fox films, but allows the audience to see a smaller more intimate view of what it would look like for a family to discover their gifts for the first time.
Reed Strucker (Stephen Moyer) works for Sentinel Services, but when his children, Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) and Andy (Percy Hynes White), display their powers, the family suddenly goes on the run from the government. Fortunately, there are others with gifts, called mutants, who have formed a sort of Underground Railroad to protect those with gifts from persecution. Marco Diaz AKA Eclipse (Sean Teale) heads up the mutant uprising, alongside his girlfriend Lorna Dane AKA Polaris (Emma Dummont), a ripped-from-the-comics character who is also the daughter of Magneto. [Other mutants who feature in the show, from the comics, are Blink, Sage, Thunderbird, Beautiful Dreamer, the Von Struckers AKA Fenris, and the Frost triplets AKA the Stepford Cuckoos.]
While possessing some of the special effects of the X-Men and Wolverine films, the show has a way of focusing on the interpersonal communication and relationships between its main characters. This allows for some exciting moments dotting times of serious soul searching, that asks some mental exercise from the audience. How would we respond if suddenly our loved ones were persecuted? How would it change what we think of someone “other” than us if the people we loved were considered “other” by some? What would be the right way to use our authority, power, responsibility, and lives to bring change or provide relief to someone persecuted? These are questions the X-Men have been provoking since Stan Lee created them, but they’re no less valid in the world we live in today.
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