The series stars Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker as ordinary parents who take their family on the run after they discover their children's mutant abilities.

Sean Teale, Natalie Alyn Lind, Percy Hynes White, Coby Bell, Jamie Chung, Blair Redford, and Emma Dumont also star in the show, with Skyler Samuels and Grace Byers joining them with the second season.

The new pilot, written by X-Men fan Matt Nix, was for an action-adventure series based on ordinary parents discovering their children's mutant abilities.

Fox Entertainment President David Madden said that "developing a Marvel property has been a top priority for the network—and we are so pleased with how Matt Nix has led us into this thrilling universe."

[58] Newman noted that "development across the board this year is a little slower than usual", but the network hoped to begin airing the potential series during the 2017–18 television season.

[59] Nix said that as a fan of the X-Men comics, "you don't want to be slavishly doing the same thing over and over again that everyone else has done, but at the same time, you're conscious that this is important, and that I owe something to my 10 year old self right now.

[64] That October, Nix said that he had planned "a couple of seasons, in broad strokes", and stated that he wanted "to be doing this show for a long time."

[23] By early January 2017, "exploratory casting" for the series had begun, with the process expected to "ramp up" after the official pilot pickup.

[13][6] She was followed by Amy Acker as Caitlin Strucker, a mother and the series' female lead;[8][6] Emma Dumont as mutant Lorna Dane / Polaris;[8] Percy Hynes White as Andy Strucker, another of the central children;[8][6] and Coby Bell as the morally ambiguous Jace Turner.

[16] Acker auditioned alongside the already-cast Moyer; the pair did not meet the actors playing their children, Lind and White, until the table read of the pilot episode.

[6] Moyer, Acker, Teale, Lind, White, Bell, Chung, Redford, and Dumont all return to star in the second season.

[76][62][77] The rest of the first season was not filmed in the city after a decision on tax rebates in the state to be made by the Texas Legislature took too long for the series' schedule,[78] with production moving to Atlanta, Georgia.

[83] He soon called this one of the central mysteries of the series,[84] and revealed that it is due to a "bit of a 9/11 event, that caused enormous social upheaval and a lot of hatred towards mutants.

"[85] The Gifted aired on Fox in the United States,[86] with CTV acquiring the broadcast rights for Canada.

The website's consensus states, "The Gifted's first season lays a solid foundation for an involving superhero drama that powers past the origin-story doldrums by focusing on grounded, topical stories over mindless action and special effects.

[97] Discussing the series, Drew Koch of Bustle magazine noted that it explored themes such as the persecution of minority groups, sacrificing freedom for safety, and criticizing "big government".

He highlighted the antagonistic agency Sentinel Services, guessing the initials "SS" were a reference to the Schutzstaffel, a paramilitary division of Nazi Germany.