Fox's The Gifted Is Establishing Its Own Mutant Timeline

Despite assurances that The Gifted exists in its own "stream," separate from the X-Men film franchise, it's difficult for continuity-conscious comics fans to resist the urge to search for connections between the new Fox drama and the dystopian future of 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past or the bleak setting of this year's Logan. But with this week's episode, the series begins flesh out its fictional universe and place markers along a timeline that's different from the movies.

As we learn in the second episode, "rX," mutants aren't a "new" phenomenon; their existence has been publicly known for decades. Although the crackdown by the U.S. government on their activities is a recent development, mutants have long struggled for acceptance, their efforts becoming entwined with other civil-rights movements. There's enough of a history that they're not just the targets of Sentinel Services but, more far commonly, of subtler forms of discrimination, from strangers, from medical professionals and from family members.

Here are the ways The Gifted has stared to lay out a timeline distinct from the rest of the X-Men movie universe.

The July 15th Incident

Discussed previously by creator Matt Nix, and vaguely referenced in the series premiere, the cataclysmic event tied to the disappearance of the X-Men and Magneto's Brotherhood and to the restrictions on mutant activities is given a name in "rX": the July 15th incident. It's The Gifted's version of 9/11 or 7/7, only involving a battle between rival groups of mutants.

Separated from his family and taken into custody by Sentinel Services, federal prosecutor Reed Strucker (Stephen Moyer) is interrogated by Agent Jace Turner (Coby Bell), who's willing to use whatever leverage he can to learn the whereabouts of the Mutant Underground, whom he views as a terrorist group. When Reed protests that they're not like the Mutant Liberation Front, Agent Turner replies, "I lost my daughter in the July 15th incident. She was 7 years old. Her name was Grace. People talk about the X-Men, they talk about the Brotherhood. Here's the thing: I'm never gonna know if the blast of energy that killed my kid came from a good mutant or a bad mutant. And guess what? I don't care."

Those comments don't pin down a year for the July 15th incident -- there's a sense, though, that a little time has passed -- but there's an implication that the X-Men and the Brotherhood were directly involved in whatever happened. We can probably safely assume that not all of the members of those two groups died in the incident, which suggests they're either in hiding or incarcerated in some kind of government black site.

South African Apartheid

To help tighten the screws on Reed Strucker, Sentinel Services brings in his mother Ellen (guest star Sharon Gless) for questioning as a potential co-conspirator. Agent Weeks asks about her ex-husband, who apparently lives alone in Chattanooga, Tennessee, before diving deep into her history of civil disobedience: "You supported the mutant-rights movement. You protested the South African government."

"I marched against apartheid in 1984," Ellen clarifies. "They were oppressing all kinds of people -- not just the mutants!"

It's a brief exchange in a scene that's more about how far Agent Turner is willing to go to wrest information from Reed. Nevertheless, it reveals much about the setting of The Gifted, in which South Africa's four-decade institutionalized system of segregation apparently wasn't aimed only at separating blacks from whites (and, in the process, ensuring rule of the white minority), but also at isolating mutants from humans.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='%22Mutant%20Terror%20in%20Rio%20de%20Janeiro%22']

Second-Class Citizens

We're introduced to the daily life of an "average" mutant in the opening moments Episode 2, a flashback in which the Strucker family's bowling night is interrupted by three teens mocking a girl for her vibrating body. She becomes so upset that she accidentally releases a wave of concussive energy that does only minor damage but in the process draws even more attention to her. Reed, a federal prosecutor, approaches the distraught girl and her father and cautions them, not the bullies, to leave, because the girl committed a criminal act by using her mutant abilities in public.

Different forms of discrimination are depicted later as nurse Caitlin Strucker (Amy Acker) goes with Eclipse (Sean Teale) to steal medicine for Blink (Jamie Chung), who in a semiconscious state is opening random portals that risk revealing the Mutant Underground to police. Horrified at the state of an emergency room that's overflowing with patients, Caitlin is told by Eclipse, "They're talking about closing even this place to mutant patients. Turns out one of best superpowers is bankrupting hospitals." Inside, Caitlin pretends Eclipse is her wounded mutant boyfriend, so she can get closer to the medicine they need. When the doctor notes she has a minor facial injury herself (a result of Blink's randomly opening portals), he pulls her aside to make sure she's not the victim of domestic violence. "Some people think it's exciting to date a mutant," he says, "but it's no secret there can be incidents of domestic violence."

Neither of those instances necessarily extend the timeline, but they illustrate that the world of The Gifted ant-mutant discrimination is pervasive, and that the prejudices have existed long enough to be entrenched in society, from bowling alleys to hospitals to law enforcement. "You thought that was bad?" Eclipse tells Caitlin after they're forced to flee the hospital. "That doc actually stitched me up before he called the cops. That's top-flight mutant healthcare right there."

'Mutant Terror in Rio de Janeiro'

One of the key moments of this week's episode came in the closing moments, as Dr. Roderick Campbell (Garret Dillahunt) recognized a potential connection between the fugitive Strucker children and mutant twins sought in a terrorist attack in Rio de Janeiro some 55 years earlier. We've already noted this may mean The Gifted will indeed reveal a link between Andrea and Andreas von Strucker, better known as Fenris from Marvel comics, and young Lauren and Andy Strucker. But perhaps almost as any links to Marvel Comics history is that the reference to the Rio attack expand the show's timeline.

Dated "May 21st 1962," the newspaper front page pulled from the computer files of Campbell's lab blares "MUTANT TERROR IN RIO DE JANEIRO," which means not only were mutants active in the early 1960s but they've been active enough for "mutant" to be recognizable term. The date also pushes the known public history of mutants on The Gifted back earlier than in 2011's X-Men: First Class, which unfold months later, around the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Oct. 16-28, 1962).

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.