The Gifted (American TV series)

Did You Know?

• The series was added to Disney+ on February 23, 2021.
• The show launched in more than 183 countries on Fox using a day-and-date launch format.
• The character Eclipse was created for the series, with powers compared to Sunspot and personality compared to Wolverine and Havok.

Cast and characters

Stephen Moyer portrays Reed Strucker, a father and district attorney who later discovers he is a mutant capable of generating and manipulating energy and disintegrating matter. Amy Acker plays Caitlin Strucker, a nurse and mother who evolves from a suburban mom into an underground warrior. Sean Teale appears as Marcos Diaz / Eclipse, a mutant who absorbs and manipulates photons, rejected by his human parents and formerly a drug smuggler. Natalie Alyn Lind plays Lauren Strucker, a teenage girl who creates force fields by compressing molecules. Percy Hynes White portrays Andy Strucker, a loner with telekinetic powers that pull things apart at a molecular level. Coby Bell plays Jace Turner, a Sentinel Services agent hunting the Struckers and other mutants, portrayed as more than a simple villain. Jamie Chung appears as Clarice Fong / Blink, a sarcastic mutant with teleportation abilities who uses her powers to escape unwanted situations; she wears heavy-duty contact lenses for her character's green eyes and has pink facial markings. Skyler Samuels and Grace Byers joined the cast in the second season.

Production

After a planned Hellfire Club series did not move forward at Fox in 2016, the network made a put pilot commitment for a different X-Men-based series. Matt Nix, a fan of the X-Men, wrote the pilot as an action-adventure story about ordinary parents discovering their children's mutant abilities. Nix pitched the series to executives as "Running on Empty with mutants," using a Prezi presentation with altered actor photos and graphics showing how the series fit with the X-Men films and comics; the presentation received applause. Early versions of Nix's pilot script were enthusiastically received by Fox executives, who expected a final draft in early January 2017. The series was produced by 20th Century Fox Television and Marvel Television, with Nix executive producing alongside Bryan Singer, Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg, Jeph Loeb, and Jim Chory. Fox ordered the series in May 2017.

Reception

The pilot's viewership was called a solid start, higher than the season premiere of Lucifer in the same timeslot the previous year and the debut of Inhumans. By the second season renewal, The Gifted was considered a solid ratings performer for Fox, performing 18 percent better than the same timeslot the year before and ranking as the third best new drama series of the season. For the first season, Rotten Tomatoes reported a 76% approval rating based on 54 reviews, with the consensus praising the series for focusing on grounded, topical stories over mindless action. Metacritic assigned a score of 63 out of 100, indicating generally favorable reviews. The second season received an 83% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 12 reviews.