DVD Review: The Gifted: The Complete First Season

Fox; 569 mins; Amazon

Available now on DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is The Gifted: The Complete First Season, featuring all 13 episodes from the 2017-2018 series.

Created by Max Nix, The Gifted is set in the X-Men film universe, but in an an alternate timeline where the all of the X-Men have vanished. All that is left is an underground network of mutants, who are being chased down by the Sentinel Services agency.

The series stars, Stephen Moyer (True Blood), Amy Acker (Suits), Natalie Alyn Lind (The Goldbergs) and Percy Hynes White (Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb) as the Strucker family. Also featured in the series are Sean Teale (Voltron) as Eclipse/Marcos Diaz; Jamie Chung (Gotham) as Blink/Clarice Fong; Emma Dumont (Pretty Little Liars) as Polaris/ Lorna Dane; Blair Redford (CSI) as Thunderbird/John Proudstar; and Coby Bell (The Game) as Sentinel Services Agent Jace Turner.

The Gifted centers around Reed and Caitlin Strucker, a husband and wife who are trying to protect their mutant children, Lauren and Andy, from being taken by the Sentinel Services, which is lead by Jace Turner. The Strucker family takes refuge with an underground network of mutants, which consists of Sonya Simonson (Dreamer), John Proudstar (Thunderbird), Marcos Diaz (Eclipse), Lorna Dane (Polaris), and Clarice Fong (Blink).

While the mutants aren't outrunning the Sentinels and their robots, they must find a way to stop Roderick Campbell (played by Garret Dillahunt), a military researcher who is obsessed with capturing the Strucker children. To make matters even worse, the Hellfire Club is slowly rebuilding their mutant army against humanity.

Final Thoughts

I never thought bringing the X-MEN franchise to television would be a good idea, well, except for the 90s' animated series. There are way too many characters and comic storylines, so doing a proper adaptation would never be possible on network television due to budget limitations. The Gifted is more of a loose spinoff set somewhere after the ending X-MEN: Days of Future Past and before Wolverine's swan song LOGAN. The main plot of the series revolves around the Strucker parents protecting their twins from being captured by the government, as it is illegal to use your mutant powers. There are several mutant characters in the series, all of which I had never heard of before watching the first season. (Note: I've never the X-MEN comic books.) For me the standout mutants are Polaris (AKA - Magneto's daughter) and the Stepford Cuckoos (Triplets in the series, but I believe they were quintuplets in the comics.)

The DVD set only contains the 13 episodes. There are no special features or bonus extras. While the back of the DVD jacket states there are 12 episodes, there are actually 13. The 12th and 13th episodes (eXtraction and X-roads) originally aired back-to-back and the two episodes are featured as one episode on the disc three.

Overall, I enjoyed watching The Gifted: The Complete First Series. It's not perfect, but it's probably the closing thing to an X-MEN live-action series that we'll ever get.