WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for The Gifted Season 2 episode "coMplications," which debuted Tuesday on Fox.
Months after the first tease by showrunner Matt Nix, and a week after a cryptic reference to a mutant who lives in the tunnels beneath Washington, D.C., Fox's The Gifted finally introduced to the underground society of outcasts, the Morlocks. Although they appear relatively briefly in this week's episode "coMplications," they promise to play a larger role in the second season, as both a help to the Mutant Underground and a hindrance, not unlike the role the Morlocks have traditionally played in Marvel's X-Men comics. But who are the Morlocks?
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Introduced in 1983 in The Uncanny X-Men #169, they're mutants who, because of physical deformities tied to their abilities, are unable to pass as human. Rather than face fear, hatred, arrest or even death in normal society, they went, literally, underground, establishing a subterranean, initially at least, in the tunnels beneath Manhattan. Other, similar groups later appeared in London and Chicago.
The X-Men first crossed paths with the Morlocks when their leader, Callisto, kidnapped founding member Angel, intending to make him her mate. Another Morlock, Caliban (who appeared in 2017's Logan, played by Stephen Merchant), similarly sought to make Kitty Pryde is bride, while others kidnapped the children of Power Pack. However, during the 1986 crossover "Mutant Massacre," most of the Morlocks were slaughtered in their tunnels by the Marauders, mutant assassins employed by Mister Sinister to exterminate other mutants.
Ironically, perhaps, The Gifted introduced Morlocks long before Clarice (Jamie Chung) and John (Blair Redford) headed into the tunnels this week to uncover information about the Inner Circle: Shatter, Trader and Dreamer, featured in the first season, are Morlocks in the comics, if not on the television series.
But this week, viewers meet the real deal as Clarice and John head into the sewers, following up on a tip from X-Men ally Evangeline Whedon, in search of Erg. They find him of course, but only after they become lost and disoriented in the tunnels, where John's tracking abilities inexplicably fail him. With the help of Clarice's teleportation powers, they at last break free of the maze, only to be apprehended by a group of well-armed Morlocks and then taken to the mysterious Erg, played by Michael Luwoye of Hamilton fame.
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Clearly the leader of the D.C. branch of the Morlocks (which, for all we know, may be the only branch in The Gifted's universe), Erg bears little resemblance to his comic-book counterpart. Introduced in 1985 in Marvel's Power Pack #12, he's able to absorb energy, and then project it in a blast from his "electric eye" (it's his right eye in the comics, but his left on TV).
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On The Gifted, Erg welcomes Clarice, who has to hide her distinctive features in order to pass as human, to the "real underground," which he paints as a sort of utopia. "Those of us who can pass in the world above, we brand ourselves with these," he says, pointing to the "M" on his right cheek, "and choose not to look like them. We choose freedom. [...] The X-Men didn't fight for freedom; they fought for tolerance. You know what people tolerate? The things they hate." It's a philosophy that places the Morlocks between the Mutant Underground and the Inner Circle, and likely never truly allied with either.
In the central hub of Morlock life, Erg points out Mara, a young woman who used bat-like echolocation to get around, at least until members of the Purifiers, a paramilitary hate group seen briefly in Season 1, beat her and cut out her voice box. Although there are several Marvel mutants with sound-based abilities, Mara doesn't appear to have a comic book counterpart.
While Erg and Mara are the only Morlocks named in this episode, we can identify one other, simply by the glowing green goo he leaves behind. When John and Clarice are wandering, lost, through the tunnels, she notes, "I recognize that goop on the wall" as evidence they're traveling in circles. Later, after striking a deal for information with Erg, she tells John there's a mutant who watches the place through the goo, and witnesses the Frost sisters with utility workers, tapping into a data cable beneath the health department. We're left to wonder what they were doing, and how it plays into the Inner Circle's master plan, but we at least know one thing: the name of that mutant.
It's the relatively obscure Membrain (yes, that's how it's spelled), introduced in 1991 in Generation X #50 as a member of Gene Nation, a terrorist group made up of Morlocks. A low-level telepath, he possesses a body composed entirely of mucous membrane that he can re-shape into projectiles, or, as on The Gifted, leave behind in pieces that he can later tap into, to utilize as a surveillance camera.
Considering how much The Gifted spent on the Morlocks set, and how much the producers like these outcasts, this week's episode isn't the last we've seen on them -- not be a long shot. Just keep your fingers crossed that we'll eventually be introduced to Membrain in the flesh, or the goop, as the case may be.
Airing Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT, Fox’s The Gifted stars Stephen Moyer as Reed Strucker, Amy Acker as Caitlin Strucker, Sean Teale as Eclipse/Marcos Diaz, Jamie Chung as Blink/Clarice Fong, Coby Bell as Jace Turner, Emma Dumont as Polaris/Lorna Dane, Blair Redford as Thunderbird/John Proudstar, Natalie Alyn Lind as Lauren Strucker, Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker, Skyler Samuels as the Frost sisters and Grace Byers as Reeva Payge.