Fox’s upcoming series, The Gifted, has a premise very familiar to longtime X-Men comic book readers. After two teenage siblings discover they've both developed mutant powers, they go on the run, with their parents, hiding from government agents that plan on imprisoning them. Along the way, they come across an underground group of mutants that will help them survive. Sounds like a typical X-Men story, right? One problem, there are no X-Men to be found. You see, in The Gifted, the X-Men are gone.

RELATED: Yes, Polaris Is Magneto’s Daughter on The Gifted

This, of course, has led to fans asking, what happened to the X-Men in the show? What timeline does this follow, if any? Is The Gifted truly outside of all existing X-Men franchises? These are all questions that X-Men fans are going to ask when they watch the series. And while showrunner Matt Nix recently revealed to CBR that the X-Men and their nemeses in the Brotherhood disappeared following "a cataclysmic event, a bit of a 9/11 event, that caused enormous social upheaval and a lot of hatred towards mutants," we don't know exactly how or why the X-Men are absent.

With that in mind, here's how we think things might play out as The Gifted's storyline unfolds over the course of the first season. (Or maybe not. Probably not.)

Lost in Space?

Contrary to what you might see in the live-action films and TV series to date, the X-Men like to go off into space and have adventures. In fact, some of their best storylines involve alien races and ancient otherworldly entities. So, one of the easiest explanations, albeit maybe not the most satisfying, is that the X-Men left Earth because of some battle and just haven’t returned yet. Of course, this could be seen as a cop out, but it’s not out of the question. Maybe after they finish with the Shi’ar, they’ll have a triumphant return?

XMen in space

Now, fighting alien races in deep space isn’t the only reason the X-Men, and the Brotherhood, have left Earth. In the ‘90s X-Men comics, Magneto decided that Earth was not a good place for him to plan his attack. No, he wanted to create a safe place in space, dubbed Asteroid M. As silly as it sounds, Asteroid M has been a recurring part of Magneto’s, and thus the X-Men’s, past. Our biggest clue, from the pilot episode, is when a character speaking to Blink says that the Mutant Underground was created after the anti-mutant laws went into effect, “just before the X-Men disappeared.”

The anti-mutant laws would be a great reason for Magneto to create Asteroid M, and for the most well-known mutants to hop on a rocket and leave Earth. Of course, you have to believe the X-Men wouldn’t abandon Earth so quickly, but perhaps that’s what best for the TV show?

Captured/Killed?

Unfortunately, another theory doesn’t bode as well for our favorite mutants. We already know Sentinels will probably appear in this show. As fans, we also know what happens to mutants that cross path with these robots – they get captured or killed. With that being said, it stands to reason that in the world of The Gifted, our beloved X-Men have been eliminated.

Now, of course, we’re not suggesting that it’s a done deal, and the X-Men were all slaughtered. As we’ve seen throughout the comics, the government doesn’t just automatically murder mutants en masse. They love to do their lab tests. The X-Men could just be imprisoned. The show could be setting the stage for some of the big screen X-Men making appearances as they escape prison camps. We could also get glimpses of Cyclops and the others as victims of experiments.

Or, they could be dead.

As much as it pains us to admit it, the easiest and quickest way to tell fans that they’ll never see the X-Men or Brotherhood on their TV screens is to kill them all. The only other clue we get from the pilot episode is when Marcos says, “The X-Men, the Brotherhood -- we don't even know if they exist anymore." Exist is a funny word, out of context. This might mean that Marcos and the rest of the Underground are unsure if the X-Men “exist” because maybe the news says they were captured. The X-Men might also not “exist” if they were all executed, and Marcos doesn’t know if anyone took their place.

Either way, it doesn’t look good for the X-Men, in this scenario.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='The%20Legion/Logan%20Theory']



The Legion/Logan Theory

This theory actually comes courtesy of one of the lead actors on The Gifted. Actor Stephen Moyer plays Reed Strucker, father of the show's two main teens, who goes on the run to escape the government agents. In an interview earlier this summer, Moyer said, “But in terms of timeline, because obviously we just had Logan which was a lot further forward and obviously Legion which is a lot further back. So, we definitely slot into a timeline, but as of yet, we’re not allied.”

A couple key points can be taken from this quote. First, the actor clearly states that they “definitely” fit into an existing timeline. Second, he posits that the easiest explanation is that they fit between Legion and Logan. That’s a very interesting prospect, indeed. What if The Gifted is part of a timeline that includes the critically acclaimed Legion, and the hugely popular, and also critically acclaimed, Logan?

For those who don’t watch Legion, the FX series takes place in the past, well before the “mutant problem” is a thing. The series has very loose connections to existing X-Men mythology, borrowing bits and pieces, here and there. There are hints of Charles Xavier, as well as some of the more offbeat X-characters. Fitting The Gifted into this timeline is simple, as they are spaced far enough apart that it’s entirely plausible to treat The Gifted like it was a pseudo-sequel.

Logan, on the other hand, is a wee bit trickier to make work. In the film, the mutant race is dying out due to no new mutants being born since the mid-2000s. Okay, so that can be explained by the teens in the show probably being born just prior to this time. Plus, we don’t know that no new mutants have been born yet due to the fact that the kids born after 2006 wouldn’t have developed powers at this point. The second hurdle deals with the X-Men’s disappearance. In the film, it’s hinted that Xavier, due to his rapidly deteriorating mental condition, murdered a large number of mutants, including the X-Men, sometime prior to the events of Logan. We are led to believe that it happened relatively recently.

The Gifted takes place in the modern day, well before Logan’s 2029 time-frame. If we fudge the numbers just a little, and say that Xavier killed the X-Men in 2017, instead of 2027, and has been on the run ever since, that would be a pretty neat explanation.

Of course, no one at Fox would probably agree with you because they want to have some freedom to tell whatever story they want, but X-Men fans sure do love their continuity. That’s why this theory might actually hold water, and it also adds just a little more mythology to The Gifted.

The Budget

What a killjoy!

Yes, we all know the real reason the X-Men aren’t in The Gifted. Money. You can’t have Hugh Jackman on FOX as Wolverine -- he’s way too expensive! And if they tried to make sense of what’s going on in Deadpool, X-Force, New Mutants, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, it would take hours of show just to go through. So, clearly, this is a budgetary reason, with a dash of simplification.

But you know what? That’s boring, and not much fun. So, we’ll stick to the Legion/Logan theory -- until we're proven wrong.