The X-Men Live Action Series On Streaming Fans Need To Give Another Chance
After news of the cancelation of the X-Men live-action series, The Gifted, die-hard fans feel like the show deserves another shot at success. Streaming channel Hulu hosts the Fox/Marvel Television show featuring the story of a suburban couple who discover something quite extraordinary about their children.
The Gifted aired for two seasons and is now streaming on Hulu.
Anyone who knows anything about the world of X-Men knows that those who possess mutant powers are not friends of the government, and the family is forced to go on the run when they unearth their kids’ special abilities. After joining up with an underground network of mutants, the story chronicles their fight to survive.
The series stars Steven Moyer (as Reed Strucker) and Amy Acker (as Kate Strucker) as the parents of Natalie Alyn Lind (as Lauren Strucker) and Percy Hynes (as Andy Strucker). Sean Teale (Reign), Coby Bell (Burn Notice), Jamie Chung (Gotham), Blair Redford (The Young and the Restless), and Emma Dumont (Bunheads) also star in the show.
The first season of The Gifted aired in October of 2017 and was met with a strong viewership and fairly positive reviews. The second season of The Gifted dropped in September of 2018, and the viewer count of the first episode was only half of what the first season drew. Despite decent ratings on Rotten Tomatoes (76 percent positive for the first season and 83 percent positive for the second season), Fox chose not to renew the show for a third season.
Though it has been a few years since the last season aired, there is a renewed sentiment among fans of the X-Men series that The Gifted deserves another shot at revival. Here are a few reasons why.
First and foremost, the finale of season two of the show really left viewers hanging. In a quick recap of the last episode (spoilers ahead), Clarice (Jamie Chung) came through a portal in front of all of her Mutant Underground friends, and everyone was surprised to see that she was still alive.
In Season 2, Episode 14 of The Gifted, Purifiers shoot Clarice (Blink) several times in the chest while trying to evacuate the Morlocks from their tunnels. Her reemergence in the season finale shocked viewers, and her outfit raised even more questions among fans of the show.
The Gifted brings comic characters to life for the first time, including Polaris and the Stepford Cuckoos.
Clarice is wearing an X-Men outfit that suggests she may have ported in from the future. She also possesses Portal Daggers, which she is not privy to in the comics until she has mastered her abilities. Her return leaves the show unfinished and, thus, makes for a terrible time to cancel any future airing of the show.
The second reason The Gifted deserves another chance is #SaveTheGifted was a pretty popular hashtag after the show was canceled. The social media community of X-Men fans really tried to stage an uprising by adding the tag every chance they got.
You can find the hashtag being used even as recently as April of this year (via X) in a post highlighting Emma Dumont’s experience in the role of Polaris and how it affected her life. The presence of the #SaveTheGifted tag shows that the series does have a wanton following.
The third (and arguably the most important) reason why the streaming channels shouldn’t let The Gifted fall through the cracks is that no more current X-Men-based, live-action television series are currently in production. It seems that when Thanos snapped his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War, the live-action television shows Legion and The Gifted were wiped out alongside half the universe.
Fans started a campaign on social media to save The Gifted, but demand for more adventures fell on deaf ears.
Some have suggested that the premature ending of The Gifted left an opportunity for Hulu to pick up the show for future episodes. One of the most viable suggestions on deck would be for Hulu to put together a two-hour finale episode to present a close to the incomplete storyline of the show.
Regardless of the decision, all episodes of the first and second seasons of The Gifted are now streaming on Hulu. Newcomers to the series can soak in the excellence of this short-lived series, and faithful fans still have a chance to replay the story … for now. Grab a fellow “nester”, and step into the X-Men universe today.
