WARNING: This article contains spoilers for this week's episode of The Gifted, "eXodus," which premiered Monday on Fox.


The X-Men are perhaps defined as much by their dedication to protecting a world that hates and fears them as they are by the conflicting philosophies of their founder Charles Xavier and their sometimes-enemy Erik Lehnsherr. The former envisions a future in which mutants and mankind peacefully coexist while the latter sees no reason to pacify their human persecutors or suffer a single abuse at their hand. Although it's unclear on The Gifted whether Andy Strucker is aware of either figure, let alone their warring ideologies, the angry young mutant would undoubtedly agree that ... Magneto was right.

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Played by Percy Hynes White, Andy is introduced in the premiere of Fox's X-Men drama as a sensitive loner who's perpetually bullied at a school where administrators are content to blame the victims and do nothing to address the problem. Despite his most recent troubles, and an inexplicable grounding, Andy sneaks out to tag along with his popular sister Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) to attend a school dance, thus setting the stage for the show's inciting event: Spotted by his tormentors, Andy is dragged into the locker room and forced into the communal showers, where his anger and fear combine to unleash his destructive mutant power, damaging the school and exposing to the world the secret of the Strucker children.

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"I was just so angry," Andy, still shaken, later tells his bewildered mother Caitlin (Amy Acker), mere moments before the appearance by Sentinel Services transforms the family into fugitives. That anger festers as they're pursued by the government, rescued by the Mutant Underground, separated from their father (Stephen Moyer) and forced into hiding. In this week's episode, "eXodus," it erupts into full-blown righteous rage.

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When Caitlin decides to sneak away from the Mutant Underground's hideout to travel to the affluent suburbs, in hopes of enlisting her well-connect brother to help locate her incarcerated husband, Lauren and Andy insist on tagging along, for protection. Sentinel Services, the police and vigilantes are all searching for the Struckers, so it makes sense. However, Caitlin hadn't thought through her plan; with the family's bank accounts frozen by the government, she doesn't even have enough money for a taxi to her brother's home. Without skipping a beat, Andy suggests he use his powers to simply "unfreeze" them.

Her son's pragmatic solution -- robbing a bank, or at least its ATM -- alarms Caitlin, but Andy once more has a response: "Why should we have to hold back when nobody else does?" It's a logical question, for both a young boy whose life has been turned upside down and for a mutant who's treated as a second-class citizen (at best). Indeed, why play by the rules their persecutors forced upon them? Lauren fumbles her way into something resembling a simplified version Xavier's stance, offering, "If we're ever going to have a chance at a normal life again --"

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Seemingly prepared for that argument, Andy spits back, "Normal? Lauren, you got to be kidding me. Normal is gone! Normal doesn't exist anymore, OK?" With that, he uses his power to destroy two nearby parking meters, sending their contents pouring onto the concrete. "There. Cab fare. The bank is safe," he says. "Happy?"

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But no one is happy, in no small part because Andy is right, even if his mother and sister don't yet realize it: Nothing is ever going to be "normal" for them again. Lauren, who learned in secret to control her mutant ability months before Andy's even manifested, still dreams of returning to the life she knows, as a popular girl with a boyfriend. However, Andy never had that kind of life; he was bullied and ostracized, and has little to go back to. And, as she learns at her uncle's house when she checks in on her boyfriend's social-media accounts, neither does Lauren: She discovers a photo of one of their classmates posing in front of their vandalized home, where "Beware the Muties" is spray-painted on the garage door.

"That's Lucas," Andy says. "We've been going to school with him since second grade." Anger once again triggers his abilities, mangling his cousin's football trophy, much to the delight of the teen, who previously begged for a demonstration. As in the premiere, the combination of unbridled adolescent emotion and raw mutant power results in a pivotal moment for the Struckers, and for Andy in particular: The cousin texts a photo of the damaged trophy to a friend, who immediately shares it, bringing an armed militia to the front door of the suburban home.

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As their uncle unsuccessfully attempts to diffuse the situation outside, and the newly arrived Thunderbird and Eclipse plot an escape from the inside, Andy seems to recognize his own path. "Run?" he asks incredulously. "Why should we have to run? We can take those guys." When Thunderbird concedes that, sure, they could defeat the armed mob, but people would likely die in the process, Andy replies, "Well, maybe it's time these people learned." Over Caitlin's feeble protests that he can't really mean that, her son responds, "Listen to them, Mom, they hate us!"

After one of the vigilantes strikes his uncle with the butt of a rifle, Andy unleashes his power, destroying the front door and pushing back the mob. "Leave us alone!" he yells. "Leave us alone."

That's all Andy has seemingly ever wanted, to be left alone. However, he's been pursued at every turn, by bullies, by Sentinel Services, and a suburban militia with an eye on the $300,000 bounty for the Struckers. As that online photo demonstrates, even someone he's known for most of his life now views him as the "Other," worthy of scorn. Already an outsider at school, Andy has been pushed even further to the fringes of society.

quentin quire

The Gifted is already tugging at some interesting threads with its emerging timeline of anti-mutant discrimination, but Andy's could shape up to be the most fascinating. Over the course of three episodes, we've witnessed the first steps toward the radicalization of a young man. The series flirted with the notion of terrorism, with the mention of the Mutant Liberation Front and the revelation of the 1962 incident in Rio de Janeiro, but with Andy there's an opportunity to open a window into the birth of a subversive. Not a "terrorist," necessarily, but someone like Marvel Comics' Quentin Quire, an intelligent and powerful young mutant who becomes disenfranchised by society, and its "ruling class," and rejects Xavier's idea of tolerance toward intolerant humans and embraces a far more radical ideology, and concludes that, yes, Magneto was right.


Airing Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox, The Gifted stars Stephen Moyer as Reed Strucker, Amy Acker as Caitlin Strucker, Sean Teale as Marcos Diaz/Eclipse, Coby Bell as Jace Turner, Emma Dumont cast as Lorna Dane/Polaris, Jamie Chung as Blink/Clarice Fong and Blair Redford as John Proudstar/Thunderbird, Natalie Alyn Lind as Lauren Strucker and Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker.