Welcome my fellow children of the atom to another Marvelous Mutant Monday here on the Marvel Report. You know what that means right? It’s time for us to once again dive deep into the adventures of the Strucker family and the mutant underground. This week I’ll be reviewing episode 3 of The Gifted Season 1 entitled eXodus. Better strap in bub, because this episode was one hell of a ride.
The Gifted Episode 3: “eXodus”
Just when I thought The Gifted couldn’t get any more interesting they decided to surprise me and turn it up to eleven. I know there are some people out there who think that The Gifted is too much of a slow burn. Well, I think it’s safe to say that this episode will help change your mind about that. The biggest theme of this episode is just how far are you will go for the people you care about? The episode opens with a flashback to 3 years ago. Lorna and Marcos are outside having a conversation. Marcos asks Lorna a question that I’m sure a lot of mutants have asked themselves at some point. “Do you ever wonder what was it that you did in a past life to deserve this?” Lorna’s response continues to help solidify her spot as my current favorite character on this show. She takes pride in her gifts and embraces them. In her display of her powers to Marcos, you can see shades of her father in her. I’m not just talking about her abilities. Lorna gives off a strong sense of pride and confidence in who she is. She also has a natural charisma that draws Marcos to her. This causes him to show off his powers more comfortably. This leads to an extremely sweet moment where the two of them share a passionate kiss. This moment is juxtaposed with Lorna’s misery in the prison. Unfortunately, we don’t get much of her this episode, but we do get an awesome moment where agent Turner threatens Marcos and their unborn child. This causes Lorna to fly into a rage knocking the heavy metal door of her cell loose. Unfortunately, after that awesome show of force, she is violently zapped rendering her unconscious while one of the guards taunts her. The more I see of Lorna the more I’m impressed with her. She is willing to push her body to its absolute limit if means getting back to her family, and I really respect that. I’m team Polaris all the way baby!!!
Next up let’s talk about Blink. As we know from the previous episodes of The Gifted, she is relatively new when it comes to using her powers but since her powers are so useful many members of the mutant underground especially Marcos want to rush her into using them, so it’s up to James Proudstar aka Thunderbird to help train Blink. I’m a huge fan of the X-Men comics and one of my favorite aspects is seeing young mutants train and learn to control their abilities. Obviously, the mutant underground doesn’t have their own danger room, but I was looking forward to seeing Thunderbird train Blink nevertheless. Honestly, I will admit that I was a little let down with that sequence being so short but Thunderbird does teach Blink an important lesson that comes back later. He tells her that she needs an anchor, something to focus on to help control her powers. She begins to grasp the concept but isn’t quite there yet.
Thunderbird and Blink’s story gets even more interesting once Dreamer comes in. Dreamer is a mutant with the ability to alter and or implant memories into people’s minds. It’s clear that she and Thunderbird have a history. She suggests that if having an anchor is the key to Blink control she could give her a memory to help her. Thunderbird is strongly against tampering with Blink’s mind and tells Dreamer not to do it. However later in the episode when Thunderbird and Eclipse (Marcos) are surrounded by a group of mutant hater during their attempt to retrieve the Struckers Dream alters a memory of her and Thunderbird and gives it to Blink in order to motivate her to save him and steady her abilities. Thankfully it worked, but now the real question is what are the consequences of Dreamer’s actions. Did she go too far? Or was she justified? Personally, I believe she crossed a line. Sure Blink was able to save the day because of it, but now she believes that she is in love with a man who doesn’t really love her. This could shatter poor Blink if she finds out and causes some major friction among the team. Even though I didn’t agree with Dreamer’s decision I did really like how it went along with the theme of sacrificing everything for the ones you care about. In a way, Dreamer gave up her memory and relationship with Thunderbird to save him. When you think about it like that it’s heartbreaking.
I had to shake my head at Caitlin Strucker this episode. She seemed like she took a step back here after having such a great eye-opening journey with Eclipse last week. When the others suggest using Blink to help Lorna get out of jail Caitlin objects saying that there have to be other ways within the system that they can fight and help her. This part really frustrated me. Caitlin already went through this last week. She saw just how broken the system is and seemed to finally understand why the mutant underground operates the way that they do, but that was not the case here, Caitlin and the kids go to visit her brother Danny. He is an influential lawyer who Caitlin believes can help them get Reed back. She quickly realizes that there isn’t much her brother can do for them. He lets them stay the night, but after Danny’s son shares a picture of a trophy Andy dented with his powers several of their neighbors come armed and surround the house asking Danny to turn in the Struckers Andy gets to flex his powers to try and scare off the neighbors before the mutant underground comes to their rescue. This shows a really interesting development for Andy’s character. Ever since he unlocked his abilities he has seen nothing but fear from humans. It causes him to start to form the beginnings of a Magneto-like attitude of if they fear us already then why not take advantage of it? Meanwhile, Lauren seems to take the more Xavier like the stance of we should encourage peaceful coexistence, not fear. I’m really interested in seeing how this experience shapes the ideologies of the two Strucker kids going forward.
My MVP for this episode of The Gifted has to be Reed Strucker. It was clear from the first episode that Reed fought for the system and truly believed in it. What he went through here was the stone that finally shattered the world he knew. This is a great turning point for his character. I don’t think any of us really believed that Reed was going to turn on the mutant underground. Agent Turner convinces him to participate in a set up for the mutant underground in exchange for his family. He puts on a tracker and attempts to meet with the underground. While in transit he meets a mutant family similar to his own. The wife says her husband was captured by Sentinel Services. Reed begins to see his own family in them and when she shows him the kindness by taking away his pain Reed’s guilt finally overwhelms him causing him to leap from the truck sacrificing himself so that the mutants could escape. Reed’s story was the tensest for me. In this short time, I grew to really care about these mutants and was genuinely scared for their safety. I felt so proud of Reed when he came clean and jumped. That one moment really turned him into a character I can root for. Which will make next week’s episode that much more fun. Overall this was another great episode. It had a lot of heart, great action, and interesting moral questions. Be sure to tell us what you thought about the episode in the comments. See you next week The Gifted fans.