‘The Gifted 1×12 – Extraction/1×13 – X-Roads’ Review

This week, The Gifted ends with a double episode. Making the finale a double bill brings a feature-length ending to the season dealing with not dealing with Dr. Campbell (Garret Dillahunt) but starting a new chapter where surprising lines are drawn.

The Gifted

With Dr. Campbell attending an anti-mutant summit to try to drum up national support for his Hound program, the Hellfire Club entices Polaris (Emma Dumont) into action. While all of this is going on, Jace (Coby Bell) makes an all-out attack on the Mutant Underground Headquarters where Andy (Percy Hynes White) is more than ready to take them on.

Showing the final two episodes of The Gifted season 1 was a smart move. Focusing on two-story strands the slower events with Dr. Campbell are handled in the first hour with the more action based events which focus on Andy’s need for action, and his obvious move to the darkside. It allows the two main story threads to breathe, and makes sure there is no rush to get things closed off before the end of the season.

What we are looking at with The Gifted season 2 is a show that feels even more like it is part of the X-Men world. The only problem is the Mutant Underground still needs that element of the true X-Men. They are looking for a focus, but in the end, all they have is the Hellfire Club, and we see the result of that in the final moments of season 1, where lines are drawn and enemies are created.

Whatever the fate of Dr. Campbell is, we also saw Jace finally cross the line to full on bad guy too. Finally having enough of doing things by the book it appears that there will be no grey area for him, he wants to end the mutants and may be taking the place of Dr. Campbell in the second season. This of course is unless Campbell makes a return, in a show like The Gifted, this is a possibility.

With the events around Andy, one thing the show is doing is pulling away from the family focus which was important at the beginning. It may still be there, but with his actions at the end of this season, he has made a choice that pulls him away from the Struckers (and maybe puts him more in line with the Von Struckers). While it will be interesting to see how the shows handles the brother and sister relationship changing, it does weaken the roles of Reed (Stephen Moyer) and Kate (Amy Acker).

The Gifted is a super hero show that has definitely cemented itself into the world of the X-Men, but it is also a show that needs them more than ever. The Mutant Underground aren’t the X-Men just yet, if anything they need an Xavier like character to bring them all together and strengthen them. What they are right now is a group that tries their best, but are stuck between the battle between the humans and the Hellfire Club, and right now the club arguably have the edge.

It will be interesting to see where The Gifted goes from here, but there is definitely a lot of promise for the second season. Now we just need an X-Men connected character to give the Mutant Underground some cohesion, because that is one thing lacking from the group right now.

The Gifted will return in Season 2 later in 2018.

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