‘The Gifted’ is wrapped up in a sense of timeliness
This new ‘X-Men’ world revolves around themes relevant to today
There’s a distinct lack of Spandex for an X-Men property, but metaphor is one hallmark of the Marvel mutant crew that’s very much in the DNA of Fox’s new series The Gifted.
Civil rights, immigration, LGBTQ themes, mental health and even health care all weave their way into the show (premiering Monday, 9 ET/PT) about a family on the run. And that timeliness plays just as an integral role as high-stakes action scenes and neat abilities.
“The social relevance of the XMen universe is central,” says creator Matt Nix ( Burn Notice). “Otherwise, they’re just an assembly of superheroes.”
In Gifted, genetic mutants with extraordinary abilities are disenfranchised outcasts hunted by ruthless Sentinel Services agents. Reed Strucker (Stephen Moyer) is a district attorney in charge of prosecuting mutant criminals, but when his son Andy (Percy Hynes White) and daughter Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) are outed as teens with special powers, Reed and wife Caitlin (Amy Acker) have to depend on the fledgling mutant underground for help.
The series explores not only the idea of the nuclear family but what constitutes a family when you’ve been cast out by your own, and how these ideas “co-exist in the face of prejudice and bias,” Moyers says.
Nix says the various X-Men movies have also explored those questions, usually in a limited way. But Gifted’s episodic format allows writers to really dig into topics. In the second episode, the teleporting Blink (Jamie Chung) is injured, and her allies need to get her medical attention. But,
Nix says, “mutants are uninsurable. Hospitals won’t treat them because they have no idea what they’re treating.”
And when she’s finally taken to the hospital, Caitlin sees for the first time the scorn mutants face. Seeing the world through this new lens, the protective mom decides “how she wants to rectify what she’s done in this previous life, and what she wants to fight for,” Acker says.
The show also draws characters from more than 50 years of X-Men comic book lore that deepen its relevance, Nix says. Super-strong Thunderbird (Blair Redford) is “someone who’s steeped in Native American (history) in the United States, and the parallels to what’s going on with mutants are clear to him,” while Polaris (Emma Dumont), a young mistress of magnetism, is a conflicted girl who has historically been a hero and a villain “and both things are very alive in her.”
Dumont can’t stand when people like Polaris are written off as “crazy,” she says. “Yeah, she’s manic and she gets depressed and has impulse-control problems, but she can still be a hero and a strong woman.”
The actress sees today’s political climate in many of the show’s details: Sentinel Services is ICE (“There’s a reason we call it the SS: They’re Nazis”), while the mutant underground is patterned after the Underground Railroad. But Dumont also appreciates The Gifted’s dark comedy and streetlevel grounding.
“If you want to see how Thunderbird works out at the gym, you’re going to see it on our show. (Or) if you want to see how Polaris eats her cereal — does she hold the spoon or hold it with her powers?” she says. “It’s the everyday things that people don’t ever get to see in the films because everyone’s just saving the world or trying to save the mutant race.”