The dark secret hidden in this commercial for The Gifted is kind of depressing really when you think about it but definitely on par with the comics. A mutant high school where the kids are taught how to live with and at times suppress their powers is something right out of the comics that has been ongoing for years. Through therapy, medication, and a careful application of subtle but useful mind control it’s been seen that the government has been doing their best to ‘control’ the mutant issue that has been a part of their world for so long. After all, mutants can’t just be allowed to run rampant throughout world can they? In order to make life safer for everyone, especially those ‘normal’ people, mutants must be taught how to suppress their abilities in order to make humans feel as though they’re well under control.
Now imagine being a mutant child and hearing this kind of tripe. The subjugation and racism that are dealt with in The Gifted are of course very real subjects that go on in our world but they’re taken to a different level in the show that has next to nothing to do with skin color or race. This is all about the fear of the unknown and the efforts that are desired to tamp it down and control it as much as possible. People want those they consider different to either be as far away from them as possible or to be contained in a way that keeps them away from the ‘normal’ population.
The X-Men have always been my favorite superheroes and by extension a lot of the other mutant comics have been on my list as well. The Gifted deals with mutants that are in some ways newer and a little less known than those that have come before, but it also incorporates a few that have been known for a while. Lorna Dane and Thunderbird have been around for a while, and if Eclipse is based off of the New Mutant member Sunspot then he’s been around for a long time as well. Blink is a one of the more popular characters that has come out but her original appearance date kind of eludes me at the moment.
The only really odd thing about this show that has a lot of people buzzing with theories, aside from the conformist streak that the commercial shows, is the absence of the X-Men. In the comics the X-Men would have already swooped in to help these kids after learning about it somehow through Cerebro or some other means. But there’s a theory on the table that this might be taking place in the same timeline as Logan, meaning that the X-Men are already gone, and there’s no one coming to rescue. While that’s kind of sad and depressing all at once it also means that mutants are constantly on the run and have no safe haven to get to since the Sentinel services have cut off any easy means of egress to any safe place they might use.
In short, The Gifted is like a worst-case scenario for mutants.
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