“And you can shove that deal up your ass!”
I know it’s been a while since I blogged the first two episodes of this season; suffice to say this is me finishing it, and see the Marvel index for the previous two blog posts.
Anyway, where were we? We have the Struckers, a family thrown out of complacency by the revelation that their children are mutants in an America that’s very Days of Future Past, except with much cheaper Sentinels and obvious contemporary resonances in Trump’s land of the not-so-free- much of the harshness of the US law and justice system is from real life, and it’s not hard to see the allegories in a real world America where the tiny children of othered immigrants are inhumanly ripped from their parents. The mutant underground is even likened to the Underground Railroad of slavery days by dialogue.
There are Marvel resonances- I know Polaris and Thunderbird from the comics but none of the other mutants, and the Strucker name is of course quite resonant, significantly or not- but for now we have the mutant underground, desperate and reactive, and the X-Men seem to exist but are nowhere to be seen. Other mutants include Eclipse, Dreamer and the powerful butcrecently awakened Clarice, who can make portals. Interestingly, we are told that mutant abilities first assert themselves during adolescence when the person is highly upset, and it takes a while to control them.
This episode is about the trade-offs and compromises of living under tyranny, resonant of a Milan Kundera novel; Lorna refuses to compromise, not betraying her friends at the cost of harsher treatment for herself. Her bid to escape, using her powers to destroy the door in spite of the extreme pain, is tragic, especially as an early flashback shows her to be rather lovely. Reed at first agrees to betray his family but changes his mind when he sees the moral consequences. Caitlin learns a harsh lesson that she cannot use the law in her favour, as even her own brother refuses to give any real help in order to protect his own immediate family.
But Dreamer makes a big moral compromise, controlling Clarice’s mind by implanting a false memory so she can produce a portal and save the day, the only compromised decision all episode. I’m sure there will be consequences.
This is all good so far, if dark, although leavening all this darkness with the odd bit of humour would be good.
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