It's a great time to be an X-Men fan with a television set. FOX is about to premiere The Gifted, a new drama following a group of mutant runaways as they fight to stay alive in a world where the X-Men and Brotherhood of Mutants have vanished.
Like with FX's Legion, The Gifted isn't necessarily drawing from the most iconic and well-known X-Men players. To help get you up to speed on this new mutant drama, we're breaking down the main characters and how they compare to the comic book source material.
The Struckers are an interesting case. As far as we can tell from the trailers, none of these characters are directly based on any preexisting Marvel characters. However, the Strucker family as a whole plays a very prominent role in the Marvel Universe. The most famous Strucker in the comics is Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. Baron Strucker is a former Nazi and one of the founders of the modern incarnation of Hydra. MCU fans will no doubt remember the character from 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, where he was played by Thomas Kretschmann.
Baron Strucker also has three children - twins Andrea and Andreas and their older half-brother, Werner. Werner is the heir apparent to his father and appeared regularly in Agents of SHIELD Season 3 (played by Spencer Treat Clark). Andrea and Andreas' relationship could politely be described as creepy, with plenty of incestuous and white supremacist overtones. Thanks to genetic tampering, the two have a variety of superhuman powers, but they can only channel those powers while maintaining skin-to-skin contact. The twins often refer to themselves by the collective supervillain name Fenris (the Fenris Twins) and have a habit of battling both the X-Men and Avengers.
With The Gifted portraying the Struckers as an ordinary suburban family torn apart by anti-mutant hysteria, it doesn't appear that the show is drawing much from the comics beyond the name itself. If anything, the family reminds us more of the Guthrie clan from the comics, whose members include popular X-Men like Cannonball and Skin. However, it's possible that the series will delve into the darker side of the Strucker legacy and introduce its own versions of Baron Strucker or the Fenris Twins.
Blink is a mutant teleporter, not unlike Nightcrawler. Her powers are a bit more versatile, however. She fires energy bolts that open up tears in space, not unlike a living version of the portal gun from the Portal games. She can use this ability to transport entire groups of people. It can also be used offensively, as Blink can teleport parts of a person or object and slice them apart as cleanly as if using Wolverine's claws.
It's tough to say exactly how much about Blink's personality and background will change in The Gifted, but it does appear that Marvel is taking a more grounded approach with this character. For one thing, her fantastical appearance has been significantly toned down. Gone are the bright green tunic, pink skin and elfin ears. Jamie Chung's Blink only features a few nods to the comic book version, such as the purple hair, unusual colored irises and lone facial tattoo.
The grounded approach seems to be more than superficial. In the comics, Blink tends to become involved only when the franchise dabbles in alternate timelines and parallel universes. She made her debut during the Age of Apocalypse crossover, which introduced an alternate timeline where Professor Xavier was murdered and Apocalypse rose to power uncontested. Blink also played a prominent role in Exiles, a series where a team of mutants from different realities fights to protect the Marvel multiverse. This version of Blink seems to be more grounded in reality - a person more concerned with the day-to-day challenges of survival than her comic book self.
In the comics, Polaris is the daughter of Magneto and the half-sister of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (usually). She takes after her father in many ways, including her magnetic powers and her penchant for wearing billowing capes and elaborate headdresses. Polaris has generally been an ally to the X-Men, not an enemy, though she's dealt with her share of mental problems and family struggles over the years.
It's not clear yet whether Emma Dumont's Polaris in The Gifted will also be portrayed as being the child of Magneto, though we wouldn't be surprised for that plot point to become a major focus over time. The trailers have established that both the X-Men and Magneto's Brotherhood have mysteriously vanished in this world. Polaris' discovery of her family heritage could give her an added incentive to track down her wayward father and understand why he abandoned her.
It'll also be interestign to see if either of her half-siblings eventually appear in the show. Marvel recently retconned Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch's past in the comics so that they aren't actually mutants or Magneto's children. The Gifted's writers may just as soon choose to sidestep that confusion.
Whether by choice or necessity, The Gifted has avoided choosing the most obvious or popular X-Men characters to focus on. That's certainly true for Thunderbird, a character who's played a pretty minimal role in the comics over the years. That's mostly because John Proudstar died in his third appearance, the first casualty in writer Chris Claremont's long X-Men saga. And unlike nearly every other Marvel hero, Thunderbird has stayed dead ever since. Mostly.
We'll see if The Gifted winds up killing off Thunderbird as quickly and abruptly as the comics did. If so, don't be surprised if his younger brother James is brought in as a replacement. In the comics, James took the codename Warpath and, following a brief flirtation with villainy, has served on a number of incarnations of the X-Men and X-Force.
Whatever the case, look for Blair Redford's Thunderbird to be the Wolverine-type figure of this ragtag team. The trailers suggest that the show will be toying with his powers a bit, downplaying Thunderbird's superhuman strength in favor of his tracking abilities. And while this Thunderbird is skipping the ostentatious red and blue costume, his glowing tattoo does pay tribute to his comic book origins.
We know from recent casting announcements that at least two members of the Morlocks will appear in The Gifted. The Morlocks are a group of mutants who hide in the sewers of New York City and seek safety in numbers. They tend to be those mutants too unusual in appearance to hide among humans. It makes sense to include this group in The Gifted, seeing as how our heroes are themselves constantly on the run from humanity.
Dreamer (Elena Satine) is a mutant who can alter or remove the memories of others through their dreams. In the comics, she's known as Beautiful Dreamer and tends to dress in very 1920's-inspired fashion. Shatter (Jermaine Rivers) is an outcast who attempted suicide as a young man but was unable to pierce his own unbreakable, crystalline skin. Instead, he found a new home among the Morlocks.
News recently came that Garrett Dillahunt has been cast as a character called Roderick Campbell. X-Men fans will better know Campbell by his codename, Ahab. In the comics, Ahab is introduced as a major villain in the post-apocalyptic future universe that is Days of Future Past. This cybernetic villain lives up to his namesake, as he relentlessly hunts down escaped mutants with the help of his army of enhanced mutants called Hounds. Ahab has a particular obsession with his prized Hound, Rachel Summers. Is this a sign that Rachel could be due for an appearance on the show at some point?
It's probably a safe bet that The Gifted will take its time exploring Campbell's evolution from ordinary man to cyborg hunter, however. It seems that Campbell will be introduced as a mutant researcher hired by Sentinel Services to assist in the hunt for wayward mutants. Over time, we expect Campbell will upgrade his body with Sentinel tech and eventually become Ahab.
The Sentinels are one of the greatest threats to mutantkind. These cold, merciless machines are programmed to hunt and subdue mutantkind, and they carry enough firepower to present a challenge to all but the most powerful mutants.
Traditionally, Sentinels are depicted as giant, humanoid robots who can fire energy blasts and fly for long distances. That said, there have been other variations on that standard design, and it appears that the show will be going in a different route. The Sentinels seen in the trailers are smaller, spider-like robots designed to infiltrate and subdue. That said, we expect to see different breeds of Sentinel as the hunt for these wayward mutants grows more intense. Read more about the history of the X-Men's Sentinels.
The fact that the series will be including both Roderick Campbell and the Sentinels as antagonists leads us to wonder if The Gifted will be offering its own take on Days of Future Past. Will we see glimpses of a future world where the Sentinels have overrun civilization and Ahab is the most feared mutant hunter in the land? It's an intriguing possibility.
The Gifted premieres October 2 on FOX.
Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
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