The first season of the American television series The Gifted is based on Marvel Comics' X-Men properties, and follows ordinary parents who take their family on the run after they discover their children's mutant abilities.
Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker star as the parents, alongside Sean Teale, Natalie Alyn Lind, Percy Hynes White, Coby Bell, Jamie Chung, Blair Redford, and Emma Dumont.
[1] Fox made a put pilot commitment in July 2016 for an X-Men based series, written by Matt Nix.
[29] The season's fourth episode was designed to launch the full story arc, reuniting the main characters following the events of the first three episodes and showing their changed mindsets—the Strucker family gains a new appreciation of the mutant struggle for them to carry forward as they join the fight, while Polaris's time in prison has changed her outlook as well.
[19] Elena Satine was revealed in August 2017 to have been cast in the series as Dreamer, a mutant who can "add or subtract" others' memories, to first appear in the second episode.
[27][46] Also appearing throughout the series are Hayley Lovitt, Jeff Daniel Phillips, and Jermaine Rivers as the mutants Sage, Fade, and Shatter, respectively;[47][23][24] and Joe Nemmers as Ed Weeks, a Sentinel Services agent.
He explained that in the series' "stream", the X-Men have disappeared,[58] due to a "bit of a 9/11 event, that caused enormous social upheaval and a lot of hatred towards mutants.
"[67] This was followed a week later by a full length trailer for Fox's May 2017 Upfront presentation, which Hoai-Tran Bui, also of /Film, said "looks like a Singer take on Heroes."
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.
[85] Giving his first impression of the series' pilot for TVLine, Matt Webb Mitovich praised the "instantly engaging premise" and visual effects.
He felt the entire cast was "solid", which he called "no easy feat with an ensemble this size", and also highlighted the clear establishment of the characters' relationships.
He concluded by noting that the series would be facing tough opposition in terms of ratings, but that there was a chance for the show to be more successful than Gotham (which it replaced in Fox's airing schedule).
[86] Also reviewing the first episode, Dominic Patten of Deadline Hollywood praised the series as being superior to Marvel's Inhumans, and particularly noted its high stakes and timely themes.
[87] Daniel Fienberg from The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "The Gifted gets points for including X-Men characters with some name recognition and for acknowledging its place within the bigger franchise.
[88] Joshua Yehl of IGN felt the pilot "delivers everything you'd expect from a show based in the world of the X-Men ...
[89] 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, feeling that giving it the initials "SS" was a reference to the Schutzstaffel, a paramilitary division of Nazi Germany.