The Gifted S02E02 Review: LoL

The Gifted, Season 2, Episode 2: unMoored

It's another slow episode of The Gifted, although there is at least the unifying theme of feeling that their respective causes aren't performing as much as characters expect it to. Marco and Caitlin continue their tirade from the previous episode about how they want to go hunt down the Hellfire Club and recover their loved ones. Esme is slightly ostracized from the other members of the Hellfire Club for showing a softer side and asking questions about wantonly killing people they spared in the previous episode. Andy's lack of confidence and missing his family ends up causing some... performance issues in the field, which in turn causes the higher-ups of the Hellfire Club to consider disposing him. Hell, even Jace (a character I straight-up forgot existed) has trouble trying to stay out of retirement due to some doubts about the whole #LightsOutDC event.

Speaking of #LightsOutDC, the people in that city is really going to be freaked out when Marcos basically did this insane light show at the end of the episode, and it's honestly a miracle that the episode's cliffhanger is little Dawn getting a fever and not every single Sentinel Service agent in the country zeroing in on where the huge mutant strobe-light effect originated from.

The episode feels kind of unfocused other than that one theme, though, jumping from one plot thread to the next. It's watcheable, for sure, but it feels more like a chapter in a season more than an acutal standalone episode of its own. We do get some Thunderbird focus, something that's been sorely lacking despite Thunderbird technically being one of the main characters of the show, as we get to see his initial recruitment by Evangeline Whedon, the X-Men's resident dragon-mutant-lawyer, who saw potential in Thunderbird and had helped him get through his addiction problem. Evangeline admits to Thunderbird that their cause is mostly doomed at this point, and also that fighting against the Inner Circle/Hellfire Club is tantamount to suicide. Evangeline refuses to help Thunderbird basically raise an army to fight the Inner Circle, and tells Thunderbird that Polaris and Andy are basically doomed -- they're either going to be loyal to the Inner Circle, or, y'know, dead.

Meanwhile, the Strucker family drama continue to be at the forefront, which is... well-acted, but at the same time I really find it hard to care. Caitlin is just one-dimensional in wanting to get her child back, which is understandable, but at the same time I really don't want the show shoving it in my face all the time. Meanwhile, Reed is angry that Caitlin is basically being a mom-in-name-only, while Lauren is angry that everyone's only caring about Andy and not about the trauma that she felt for killing fifteen people last season. Lauren clearly have some deep-seated resentment about Andy, or at least the shared destructive power that they pack when they hold hands.

Oh, and when he's emotionally compromised, Reed apparently has corrosion powers. That's news to me.

Meanwhile, on the other mutant group, we get the aforementioned Andy-can't-perform-because-he-keeps-flashing-back-to-Lauren bit, which is... m'eh? It does allow Andy a neat bit of vulnerability as he attempts to call Lauren, only to chicken out when his dad picks up the phone instead. This is observed by Fade (who's a recurring character from the previous season), who reports it to Reeva... and it's an interesting, albeit hilarious, bit where Reeva seems ready to murder Andy for his possible doubts, even preparing her mutant power, up until Andy... gets semi-honest and talks about how he is online while playing League of Legends and Lauren knows? Or some shit? That's honestly kind of a stupid line (the mutant kids can play online games?) and Reeva is a bizarre antagonist that will kill children, but not if they're honest? I dunno, it's weird.

The episode also focuses a bit on Jace and Esme... Jace's a bit weird, because I don't think the show would bother showing this extended scene of him if he's not going to be relevant, so he's clearly going to go mutant-hunting sometime down the season. Meanwhile, Esme Frost is a pretty interesting character, because so far I don't think we've had any indication that the three Stepford sisters ever had any sort of discord among them. And while she still goes through with killing the witnesses (albeit settling for a less graphic hit-by-car instead of walk-into-jet-propeller),  it's interesting to note that when the inevitable breakout happens, Andy and Polaris might have a potential ally.

Overall, though, the episode really jumps around its massive cast too much for me to really have any sort of outright positive things to say. It's not an outright bad episode, of course, but the lack of focus or tension really hurt the pacing of this series.