The Gifted- Season 1, Episode 1: eXposed

"Mutie, Andy? Racist much?"

Yeah, I know; starting a new series. But it’s Marvel, and I just have to!

“Things change when it’s your own kids!”

This is theoretically the X-Men “Cinematic Universe”- Bryan Singer is even directing- butvthe X-Men and Magneto’s Brotherhood are both missing in a world which is getting, at least in the USA, incrementally less comfortable for Mutants. There’s a Mutant Underground, including a bloke called Marcos plus familiar characters Lorna Dane and Thunderbird (going to die soon...?), and Mutants, it seems, have very few civil rights. We are, in a classic trope used in the X-Men film as well as many other places, by a newcomer- Clarice- whom they have come to rescue.

It all goes wrong and Lorna (who is pregnant!) is captured and interrogated by the intimidating Reed Strucker (Baron Wolfgang Von Richards- all sorts of Marvel references there. At first he’s seemingly going to be a baddie but he’s certainly a major character as he’s played by Stephen Moyer. But then we meet the rest of the family- kids Lauren and Andy and mother Kate (Amy Acker, no less). Set-up complete, we can now start the excitement as both kids, whose father has up till now hunted Mutants (what exactly did he do?) are exposed as Mutants in the most public and damaging way possible, forcing the family to go on the run, leaving Reed seemingly captured at the end.

We spend the rest of the episode in suspense as the fleeing family tried to conect with the Mutant Underground, pursued by the interestingly named “Sentinel Services”, who have robot spiders rather than big metal men. It’s too soon to tell where this is going but it’s certtainly exciting and I’ll keep on watching. And I liked the Stan Lee cameo.