Meet the Mutants of The Gifted

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We’re mere days away from the premiere of Fox’s The Gifted series, the second live-action X-Men show to hit the airwaves after Legion and fourth overall after Generation X and Mutant X back in the ‘90s and 2000s respectively.  It’s a pretty big event, even if the show proper looks kind of far removed from the X-Men aesthetic and mythos and more grounded in the “hated and feared” narrative.  

I don’t mind them going that route- if ever there was a time for a show about government-sponsored violence and bigotry towards the marginalized it would be now.  Even so, I am intrigued by the collection of mutants they’ve cobbled together for the series an what it suggests about where things will be headed as the main heroes struggle to escape the Sentinels and find sanctuary from humanity.  With that in mind, let’s take a look at the mutants of The Gifted.

POLARIS

The most prominent new mutant of the series is Polaris; a character I actually suggested should join the X-Men adaptations last year.   Originally named Lorna, she’s a mutant with magnetic powers who eventually turned out to be the daughter of Magneto.  I’ve never totally been clear on why Polaris needed to be Magneto’s daughter to have magnetic powers as it’s not like any of the other mutant sons and daughters have had parent contingent powers aside from Wolverine’s son Daken.  In any event, I suspect that Polaris is here largely for her parentage as it’s an easy way to tie the series to Magneto and the Brotherhood without needing their more expensive or recognizable members like Quicksilver or Mystique.  

At the same time, she eventually hooked up with Havoc, brother of Cyclops, in the comics so she has ties to both of the main mutant groups, which I doubt is a coincidence.  Most interestingly, she and Havoc eventually took over a team of outer space rogues called the Starjammers, they were basically the Guardians of the Galaxy before that team existed as we know it now.  The Starjammers were a big part of the Dark Phoenix saga that will be the plot of the next X-Men film so maybe we’ll see the strands of that start to pick-up here with Polaris. 

BLINK           

So this is a rather odd entry.  Blink isn’t necessarily a new character to the X-Men franchise as she, along with our next entry, appeared in the 2014 film Days of Future Past.  In that movie, she was part of the Mutant Resistance operating in the dark future and was one of many heroes to get killed.  

The Blink of Gifted is in the present though she has the same power of creating teleportation portals.  What’s strange about her inclusion is that in the comics the character of Blink in the comics has mostly been dead.  She appeared initially in the Phalanx-Covenant storyline where she died helping the heroes escape and then again in an event where a bunch of dead X-Men came back as zombies.  

The main reason Blink is popular at all is thanks to a comic called Exiles.  Exiles is basically a Marvel Universe version of Sliders, a book about a bunch of parallel universe heroes trucking through the Multiverse doing hero stuff.  It’s there that the version of Blink from the 1996 event Age of Apocalypse became a main character and very popular, eventually spurring Marvel to revive the main universe Blink as more in line with her Age of Apocalypse counterpart.  I don’t know what any of that could mean for The Gifted though Blink is hardly the only dead hero or alternate universe character to appear on this roster. 

THUNDERBIRD           

Thunderbird is another dead hero like Blink, only he never got the dignity of even being revived.  He was one of the founding members of the 1975 new X-Men team alongside Banshee, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, and Sunfire but he ended up getting killed early on when he broke from the team.  Rather than resurrecting him author Chris Claremont just waited a decade and introduced the character of Warpath- Thunderbird’s brother with basically the same powers of enhanced physicality.  I suspect family is going to be a major element of The Gifted based on how many of these characters have powers derived from genetic relations.  

In any event, Warpath has done very well for himself, even appearing alongside Blink in Days of Future Past while Thunderbird has remained dead so I’m not totally sure why he’s showing up here.  In fact, I actually wouldn’t be surprised if Thunderbird only showed up here to get killed off.  I mean, I wouldn’t like it but it would certainly make some sense with his track record. 

AHAB

So far Ahab is the only villain announced for The Gifted aside from the Sentinels and even then they’re not REALLY the Sentinels, just some rolling spider robots.  In any event, Ahab is another alternate universe character like the more popular version of Blink, in his case, he comes from a possible future.  Created by Walt Simonson in 1990 as part of the Days of Future Present series, he was a mutant hunter from a dystopian future come back in time hunting some refugees from his dark future.  I don’t think they’ll go that far with him in this case but he is unique in another way: the story involved Ahab hunting down an adult version of Franklin Richards, son of Reed and Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four.  

Now, I doubt the FF will actually be a part of whatever plan Fox has for their X-Men adaptations, largely because Fox seems to be working plan free for this particular venture.  However, if Fox wanted to use The Gifted as a stealth launching point for a Fantastic Four/X-Men shared universe Days of Future Present would be a good starting point.  Rachel Summers, the alternate universe daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey, was also from Ahab’s future so he does have a direct link to the X-Men’s founders. 

BEAUTIFUL DREAMER

The last couple mutants confirmed for the show come from the same team- the Morlocks, a group of sewer-dwelling Mutants in New York who were briefly led by Storm.  Beautiful Dreamer isn’t one of the better-known Morlocks but she’s endured a surprisingly long time.  Her power is the ability to edit people’s memories, which sounds incredibly useful and destructive for such an unknown character.  Most of her appearances were in the pages of Power Pack, a book about a bunch of little kid superheroes that’s not terribly rewarding.  

While I’m sure the Morlocks will be a key part of The Gifted as they’re the easiest mutant faction to do on TV, Beautiful Dreamer also kind of connects to Ahab.  She was eventually used by Bastion, ANOTHER cybernetic Sentinel type villain from a possible future, to stage a mutant terrorist attack as part of a PR war against the X-Men.  I actually wouldn’t be surprised if something akin to that went down on The Gifted only without the future robo-men character or mutant-specific techno-organic virus but who knows. 

SHATTER

Shatter is probably the strangest member of this list because there’s really nothing to him.  He’s another one of the Morlocks created in 2002, about a year or so prior to the M-Day event when 90% of the mutant population losing their powers.  Shatter was among that 90% and hasn’t been heard from since, even after M-Day got reversed.  

The only reason I can think he’s here is that he attempted suicide on the day his mutant powers activated, which is pretty harsh stuff.  The idea was that his mutation gave him a nearly invulnerable crystal body so when he tried to shoot himself it just created a fissure through his head.  

Much like Beautiful Dreamer, I’d expect them to adapt that scene almost verbatim, which honestly seems pretty likely for most of these characters in a pretty bad way.  Of this list over half of them seem to be cast in The Gifted specifically because the show wants to use their deaths in some shocking way.  I hope I’m wrong about that but only time will tell. 

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