Tuesday, 16 January 2018

The Gifted: S1 finale - Jan 16

‘Gifted’ S1 finale came through last night. And?

And it works. As it was discussed earlier, (several times), ‘Gifted’ is a simple, straightforward, conflict-driven show. The complexity comes from the fact that there are at least three main plotlines in the show: the Strucker family (who are going for the Organa-Solo meltdown), the four main MU leaders – LCJM – having to deal with the Frost siblings and the Brotherhood/Hellfire Club fusion, (centered on Lorna because obvious reasons), and finally the former agent Jace Turner, who has quit Sentinel Services before they could fire him, and will be now waging his own war against the mutants, most likely.

…Speaking of fire, Campbell has apparently died in the plane crash, but given how shifty his character was revealed to be in this very first season of ‘Gifted’, there is always a possibility that he has made it alive, and will now be revealed a mutant himself. Or an alien, (think Hive from AoS’ S3), or a cyborg/robot/something similar, (aside from mutants themselves, there are plenty of other entities in the X-Men corner of Marvel universe, you know?).

Back to the main characters, (so far Campbell was more of a guest star instead)? The final confrontations both in the Strucker family and between the LCJM quartet was highly reminiscent of the conflict that Star Wars: Sequel Trilogy is doing now, light vs. dark, or in case of SW, Jedi vs. Sith. Yay?

Well, on one hand, this is nothing more than what ‘Gifted’ has done throughout its S1 – used a conflict to drive itself forwards. For most of the time in S1 it were mutants vs. Sentinels and co., but there were some others, most noticeable – Marcos’ ex, Carmen the crime boss, but now it seems that it is going to be good vs. evil mutants as well.

Again, this is nothing breakthrough-worthy, (that is more of a ‘Runaways’ thing), but it does put yet another level of conflict into ‘Gifted’ black-and-white world. No, seriously, there’s almost always some sort of a black-and-white image in ‘Gifted’ episodes, especially the last ones, which brings us back to SW universe, and its’ dichotomy, which is also fairly straightforward: there are Jedi, who are good, and Sith, who are bad. The two groups struggle throughout the ages, with neither side ever achieving a perfect victory. (This is why Rey and team Resistance are going to win in the next SW movie, yeah). The two sides are balanced, yin and yang, period. This makes Andrew Strucker’s decision to leave his family back in ‘Gifted’… actually less dramatic, because you know that he’s going to come back, even if he is currently trying to be MCU’s new Kylo Ren (just before puberty). One of the Frost siblings, (are they all-natural or are they all clones?), may be trying to appeal to Andrew’s…manliness, but while he might be going all-Ben Solo now doesn’t mean that he’s going to kill his father in S2 either, so there’s that.

Fathers bring us to Lorna, who, as Polaris, is daughter of Magneto, usually also known as Eric Lensherr. You can say many things about Magneto, but he has never been a member of Hellfire Club – usually he and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants did their own, separate thing. Frosts and their handler might have gotten Lorna to strike out on her own away from the mutant underground, but the question is for how long they will be able to hold onto her? And how high the body count will go when they fail? (Magneto was never the one for subtlety, whatever he would pretend).

Back to the white and black? It’s easy to see now as to how and why the Hellfire Club was chosen to be a part of this universe – even in the initial comics most of its mutant members, (though some were cyborg instead), were named after chess pieces, black and white. In chess, there supposed to be only one winner out of two…but real life being what it is, you can get a tie in there instead, and will have to rematch – whenever. It will be interesting to see the surviving MU members dealing with this GM mentality of HC…and of course, the ex-agent Jace – the most competent enemy of the mutants on ‘Gifted’ – never got this memo, so he will be doing his own thing, and probably shaking things up for everybody, because he has cut his strings…

No, seriously, this is how things are lying at the S1 ‘Gifted’ finale: the Strucker family lost Andy. The LCJM quartet has lost Lorna the L ‘Polaris’. And Jace is now on his own, he has no one. In the right hands, done correctly, this can be an explosive combination – and the cast of ‘Gifted’ are clearly ‘the right hands’, here. Will be exciting to see what ‘Gifted’ will bring forth in the future S2, when it comes.


…This is it for now, see you all later.

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