The Gifted's two-hour season finale marks a major turning point for Fox's X-Men drama, with the deadly Hound Program poised to become a national effort, and Sentinel Services discovering the long-secret location of the Mutant Underground's Atlanta headquarters. With their backs against the wall, the Struckers and their allies -- including the manipulative telepaths the Stepford Cuckoos -- must make some difficult decisions that could save their movement even as it divides their family.

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Ahead of the Season 1 finale, which airs tonight at 8 ET/PT, CBR spoke with The Gifted executive producer Matt Nix about the Strucker family in crisis, Lorna Dane's legacy, the potential threat of the Cuckoos, and his own hopes for the show's newly ordered second season.

CBR: This show has always been about family. How do the current circumstances test the Struckers and that blood bond?

Matt Nix: Andy’s perspective is what he is doing is the best thing for his family, the best thing for the people who have taken him in. That’s the same for Polaris and even for the Cuckoos. The choice Andy is making at the end of the season is not the choice for something over family. It’s him making a choice on behalf of his family and seeing himself in the context of what his family has been trying to do for generations. It certainly tests their bond, but there is still this love underneath that, which is still really important.

Emma Dumont as Polaris and Skyler Samuels as one of the Cuckoos on The Gifted
Emma Dumont as Polaris and Skyler Samuels as one of the Cuckoos on The Gifted

Our heroes don’t trust the Cuckoos, and for good reason. Are these telepaths truly the enemy, or do their viewpoint and methods simply not mesh with the Mutant Underground?

It’s very much their viewpoint doesn’t match up. In Esme’s quest to rescue her sisters – if you go back, one of the things we really paid attention to is she was willing to manipulate the Mutant Underground to get what she needed, but she wasn’t lying exactly. Essentially, she was sincere in her aims. She wanted to rescue her family. The way I look at the Cuckoos/the Frost sisters is their feeling is that in the face of the threat, that all mutants face at this point, they can’t afford to be squeamish or have too many scruples. If a little manipulation, and a little bending of the truth or sacrificing one of their own is necessary to serve the greater good of protecting mutants, that’s what the circumstances and the times call for. They just don’t make any apologies for that. Could that throw them into conflict with the Mutant Underground? Absolutely, but they are certainly not the enemy. They would argue that ultimately the Mutant Underground would be better off if they just did what they were told.

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Lorna crosses a line in the finale. How conflicted is she over that decision?

I think very, but there’s a sort of fatalism that she has that rose from being forced to confront her parentage. In the face of that, one of the things I talked to Emma Dumont, who plays Polaris, about is that she feels she is doing this because it’s necessary and the others can’t. Polaris knows she is crossing this line and on some level, she can’t go back. There are two major factors there. She is coming to accept there are these rumors swirling that this person was her father. All of those years resisting that idea and trying to define herself as something other, maybe that was a wasted effort. Maybe she should accept who she is.

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On the other hand, looking at the essential goodness of Eclipse, who has this dark past but came to the Mutant Underground to escape it – he did a lot of bad things and he wants to be a better person and really believes in the mission of the Mutant Underground. What she loves about him is he trying to be a good person. She looks at these circumstances and realizes a good person is not going to solve this problem. Who is going to step up to the plate? Well, it’s not going to be Thunderbird. He’s too caught up in trying to live up to the legacy of the X-Men and this mantle that has been placed on his shoulders. It’s not going to be Eclipse. He’s too caught up in running away from who he was. She looks at who has the power to do something here and who is willing to do it. She says, “It might as well be me. It’s going to have to be me.” She’s willing to make that sacrifice for the people she loves. By the end, she is embracing that on some level, but that’s where it starts for her.

Sean Teale as Eclipse and Blair Redford as Thunderbird on The Gifted
Sean Teale as Eclipse and Blair Redford as Thunderbird on The Gifted

In the wake of those events, how are Thunderbird, Eclipse and Blink processing what happened?

All of them, and the Struckers, are looking at this situation through the same lens, which is, “How do I protect the people that I love? How do I protect either my literal family, or the family that has adopted me and the people that I care about?” Certainly, for Thunderbird, his perspective is, “We were given a responsibility by the X-Men.” He feels the weight of history. What I talked to Blair [Redford] a lot about is, one of the things that weighs on Thunderbird’s shoulders is the resistance of Native Americans was brave, and was noble, but, ultimately, it was a battle that was ruinous for the Native tribes in North America. He looks at that and goes, “I don’t want my actions to lead to a second trail of tears for the mutants.” Between the mantle of the X-Men he feels on his shoulders - and that is obviously related to his brother, who is off somewhere – he feels that is not a line that he could ever cross. He feels some responsibility to try to stop Polaris from crossing that line.

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Eclipse has been down that road. He started off as a bad guy. He used his powers in self-serving ways that hurt people. He knows where that leads. If you start deciding that the ends justify the means, or that evil ends justify good means, you are going to end up as a bad guy pretty quick. Maintaining that distinction is not something human beings do well. Nor, do homo superiors. He knows that down that road lies disaster. And, for Polaris, the person he loves the most in the world, maintaining that distinction is going to be especially hard for her because she’s so powerful and flirts with that side of her. That’s been a huge part of their relationship, but he wants to protect her from that. By the end of the season, his feeling is he has to get her back. He has to save her from herself.

For Blink, she also went down that road. She sees in what Polaris is doing, someone who is about to make the same mistakes as she made. And, she’s someone who always wanted a family. Over the course of the season, she lost the people that she considered to be closest to the family she ever had. Now, she is here with this new group of people and looks at the Mutant Underground, and the beginnings of this relationship with Thunderbird, as the only family she has. She is going to do anything to hold onto that. The Cuckoos are a real threat to that. It’s not like in their rebuilding of the Hellfire Club they are building a happy family. They are building a force for war, and that’s not what Blink is looking for.

Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker on The Gifted
Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker on The Gifted

As an X-Men fan, can you tease some of the mutants on your bucket list for next season? Or, is there part of the X-Men mythology you are aching to adapt?

One of the greatest things about knowing that we have a second season is I get the opportunity to geek out and go over my favorite comics. One thing I would love to do is there has been some great Morlock stuff. Obviously, we have used some characters, but, the whole mythology around the Morlocks really fits into our world. I’m really interested in that. To be honest, part of what we have to do, even with the merger, what we do is very affected by what the movies are doing. We have to stay out of their way and they have to stay out of our way.

There are other things I’m interested in and I’m looking at. So, like X-Factor. Can I do that? Probably not as such. It’s too big of a chunk of X-Men mythology, given what the features are doing. In the same way we are doing the Hellfire Club, there is no established Hellfire Club in great shape as there was in X-Men: First Class. They are rebuilding the Hellfire Club. The Hellfire Club is in no better shape than the Mutant Underground, except they have more money and cooler offices. When I think about the Morlocks, it’s more straightforward. Even though the movies have touched on them, ultimately, it’s such a flexible part of the X-Men mythology. It shows up in so many different phases and iterations, that we can explore that world without stepping on certain things.


The Gifted concludes its first season with a two-hour finale, airing tonight at 8 ET/PT on Fox. The series 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, and Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker.