The Gifted showrunner Matt Nix reveals the fate of the X-Men and The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as they relate to the new TV series. Looking to move on from the underwhelming reception of X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016, the X-Men franchise has been recalibrated and heading in a different direction, including the live-action TV series Legion and The Gifted, as well as the two upcoming films X-Men: Dark Phoenix and New Mutants – not to mention the spinoff series that will continue with Deadpool 2.
Premiering Monday night on FOX, The Gifted is set in the not-too-distant future where mutants are not only being tolerated by society, they’re being hunted by the government and other groups. Mutant children are being protected by their parents, and whatever groups of mutants that came before them – whether it be the X-Men or The Brotherhood – are nowhere to be found (even though there will be characters from the X-Men comics like Polaris, Blink, and Thunderbird).
Related: Watch the First 6 Minutes of The Gifted
In an interview with CBR, Nix gives a pretty compelling reason why the future for mutants looks so bleak. He said:
“The X-Men are gone. The Brotherhood is gone. Most of the powerful classic mutants are not around. People don’t know where they’ve gone. They are shrouded in mystery. It comes out gradually over the course of the series that there’s been a cataclysmic event, a bit of a 9/11 event, that caused enormous social upheaval and a lot of hatred towards mutants. It’s somehow related to the disappearance of the X-Men and the Brotherhood.”
The Gifted centers on the plight of a district attorney, Reed Strucker (Stephen Moyer) and his wife, Caitlin (Amy Acker), whose world is turned into a nightmare when their children (Natalie Alyn Lind and Percy Hynes White) reveal their mutant abilities. It’s particularly a big problem for Reed, whose job mainly involves prosecuting cases against mutants.
Fortunately for Reed and Caitlin’s children, and other young mutants like them, there are others around like the Mutant Underground who can protected “the gifted” youth from the U.S. Department of Defense division known as Sentinel Services that thwarts mutant activities.
With any luck, fans will embrace the exciting new direction in X-Men lore with The Gifted. And while for the time seems to be closing the door on the X-Men movies that preceded it in terms of bringing in past characters, at least one of the main narratives of the series will explain what happened to the X-Men, which will make the show all the more interesting. One thing’s for certain, Nix’s reveal about the “cataclysmic event” seems to throw water on Moyer’s idea of Rogue appearing in the series, who, of course was played by the actor’s wife and True Blood co-star Anna Paquin.
