The Gifted: eXit strategy - Oct 24

…We are back with ‘The Gifted’! Spoilers alert: Reed and Polaris have escaped the Sentinel Service custody!

Let us pause and acknowledge that so far, for all of ‘The Gifted’s’ advantages and pluses, we haven’t seen any actual sentinels; just some drones and spider robots (or is it robot spiders?). Both are cool, but are not exactly associated with the classic Sentinel – a humanoid robot, often of a giant size, that is designed to kill and capture mutants (in any combination of the two). Of course, given the fact that this is a live TV series with minimum CGI and animatronics, this is not surprising, but still… What next?

‘The Gifted’ continues to evolve its’ characters, showing that you do not need to have 22 episodes per season to accomplish that. It deliberately puts its characters into morally shady situations and it explains that sometimes to win a war you have to dirty yourself – and it drives this point home when Marcos/Eclipse goes to his old friends in the organized crime and has to torture a man so that they have to give him information about Lorna/Polaris’ and Reed’s transfer…

Speaking of Lorna/Polaris and Reed: on one hand, it was cathartic that the rescue became successful only when Reed got Lorna get over her hatred of authority figures/non-mutant humans/etc. That is good, but on the other, after Lorna had pulled out the metal screws from his leg, how he was able to make it to the getaway vehicle without them holding his leg together? Just what exactly was his medical condition (beyond the basic he got shot and could not walk in the premiere episode) and how bad was it?

Beyond the unnecessary criticism, of course, there is the twins’ progression, as the two of them continue to bond with each other…and are growing slightly apart away from the main team – it’s some sort of together but separate situation, it seems. Not unlike ‘InHumans’, ‘The Gifted’ are trying to give each character some sort of a major plotline on a regular, but rotating basis, but unlike ‘InHumans’, ‘The Gifted’ are actually making it work. …Possibly because they are not rushing the script as ‘InHumans’ do, but still… Anything else?

Aside from the Strucker family woes, ‘eXit strategy’, (aka this week’s episode) has introduced ‘Trader: A mutant who can cloud others’ vision to hide’, as a potential love interest for Dreamer, (the mutant who can manipulate the others’ memories), who has appeared in the previous episodes and has empowered Blink to rescue the Struckers and others from their universe’s version of Neighbourhood Watch or whatever. Now, of course, Blink will have to live with the consequences, as will Dreamer and the others, of course. This is a typical course for a TV series – some sort of a love/romantic drama, and it all depends on the viewers – how many of them care about this plot development and how many of them do not. Numbers tell, and if romance between Blink and Johnny, (or anyone else, really), does not sell, that is the end of that. In addition, there is always RL, as AoS and MCU have shown/experienced: whatever they had planned regarding the Ghost Rider, at the moment it seems to be over: NCB (Yo-Yo) has become a regular part of the cast, while Gabriel Luna (AoS’ version of the Ghost Rider) has not.

True, the S5 of AoS seems to be taking the titular agents into space, (but apparently there’s no S.W.O.R.D. yet), where the Ghost Rider doesn’t appear to fit in, but Marvel often does odd things with its’ characters; back in the comics, the Ghost Rider is teaming up with Satana, Helstrom and few others ala the Defenders to save the world, (probably), without any connection to S.H.I.E.L.D. It is like the Fenris twins – there are so many incarnations of any given character that it becomes hard to keep track of what is canon and what is not, yeah?

…Riverdale and co., BTW, don’t have this problem because there is no ‘Archies’ canon – there are a lot of comics, of course, depicting the adventures of Archie, Jughead, Betty & Veronica, etc. – but they aren’t connected to each other, each is a standalone adventure, and between that, how the entire franchise changed at least once each decade, and some other factors, Riverdale isn’t breaking any canon – it is just another incarnation of the comics’ multiverse, though the franchise itself treats it as a separate entity from the rest of the multiverse in question. What will come out of that is currently unknown.

…Back to ‘The Gifted’? There is nothing else to add, sadly. The Strucker family continues to evolve, as do the initial members of the Mutants’ Underground Network; Marcos met his ex, now the leader of a drug cartel, and neither of them ended happy from this encounter, leaving open a venue for new romantic misadventures as well as morally shady decisions. Really, ‘The Gifted’ is playing with a traditional set of characters, but it is doing so extremely well. Thus, for now let us leave them, and go and talk about something else the next time we meet.