The Mutant Ages

Maddy and Ryan travel back in time to 1981, when Iceman was still closeted and also was one of the three stars of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. This show also introduced a new mutant character named Firestar who got added to comic book canon later on; she sure does look a lot like Mary Jane, who isn't present on this show. Also, she's only here because (once again) the show creators couldn't...

Ryan, Todd, and Maddy reconvene to discuss the second half of Deadpool 2 (2018), in which Deadpool and Cable do not kiss, to the chagrin of 2018-era Maddy. In 2025, though, we can all recognize what little gayness this movie could manage, which is Cable using his last bit of time travel juice to save Deadpool's life. Of course, after that, Cable would have to fight Colossus for Deadpool's affectio...

Maddy, Ryan, and Todd discuss the first half of Deadpool 2, which is thankfully an improvement over the first Deadpool movie, but it still has a lot of Vanessa and Wade's chemistry-devoid love story that should not be in the movie. Despite that, we finally get to bring back the long-missing "Who's Gay?" section, which says a lot about how much this movie sets up Colossus/Deadpool and Cable/Deadpoo...

Maddy, Ryan, and Todd convene to answer listeners' questions, including ones about which five X-Men should go on a cross-country RV trip together, which X-Men would be able to stand eating ten hot wings in 5 minutes (without using their powers), various X-Men novelizations, and even some more discussion of what Magneto was doing in X-Men '97. In our defense, one of you wrote us an email about it,...

Having finished both seasons of The Gifted, Maddy and Ryan get together for a big reminisce about what worked, what didn't work, and the larger legacy of this show as an X-Men adaptation. The disappointing series finale cast a shadow over this recording and our feelings about the show as a whole, but we nonetheless had plenty to choose from when it came to deciding on our favorite episodes and our...

The Gifted deserved a better finale for season 2 than "oMens," and it definitely deserved a better series conclusion than this, but "oMens" is nonetheless the final episode of this show before its cancellation. Unfortunately, it's anticlimactic and clunky. We get to see all the plot points you would expect, such as the Mutant Underground finally coming together to face off against the Hellfire Clu...

The second-to-last episode of The Gifted, "Monsters," is mostly about moving chess pieces around the board. That is to say, all of the characters need to be in the correct spots before the finale. The result is kind of boring to watch, and there are a few scenes that get wrapped up in ways that don't quite make sense. Lauren and Caitlin are on the run from the cops, but their escape ends up being...

Multiple major characters die in "calaMity," the third-to-last episode of The Gifted's final season, except wait, we shouldn't call Sage a major character, should we? It's a damn shame what this show has done to her, and we can't believe how anti-climactic her death scene turns out to be. Sage takes the fall for Lorna's bad spycraft within the Hellfire Club, even though the reasons for her being t...

With only a few more episode to go before its cancellation, The Gifted is still chugging along, ramping up the stakes of the Inner Circle's motivations. In "teMpted," Lorna engages in some bad spycraft and learns that the Inner Circle's most dangerous new recruits intend to bomb the Pentagon and the White House. She loops Marcos in on the plan, which leads to a climactic murder at the end of the e...

"hoMe" may not be a five-star episode of The Gifted, but with so many bangers in season 2, we can forgive it. We learn that Evangeline co-founded the Mutant Underground with Erg, the leader of the Morlocks, but then screwed him over. Despite that, she still blackmails him into joining her (along with the rest of our Mutant Underground hold-outs) for a "last stand," although it's not entirely clear...

"meMento" is not only an all-time great episode of The Gifted, it's one of Maddy and Ryan's all-time favorite episodes of TV, period. Every single character's storyline comes to a head in some way. Lauren Strucker gets enchanted by the music box that's passed down through her family for generations, and it seems to be kicking off her villain era. Meanwhile, Lorna is questioning the Inner Circle's...

Maddy and Ryan are in full form for this week's episode of the Mutant Ages, so we hope you're ready for an ADHD roller coaster. Regardless, this week's episode of The Gifted was not exactly an A+ but it wasn't bad by any means. John has been kidnapped by the Purifiers, which means the remaining Mutant Underground members have to get Lorna and Andy's help because they need some serious firepower to...

Maddy and Ryan open the listener mailbag to answer questions about The Gifted and Lauren's coming-out story, various video games featuring the X-Men, and more. The second half of this episode is The Mutant Ages: The Comic Book episode in which the team visits the Land of Cloakys, and that's why you're really here, you just don't know it yet. Next episode: "eneMy of My eneMy," The Gifted E-mail us...

Justice for Twist! Ryan and Maddy review "gaMe changer," yet another great episode for The Gifted's second season. The Hellfire Club has apprehended Rebecca and locked her up in a spinning cube, but when Andy tries to rescue her, it doesn't end well. The rest of the Strucker family figures out that the kindly doctor helping them actually has Moira/Dr. Sasaki vibes, which is never a good thing. Cla...

Magneto is the most important part of "the dreaM," despite that he never actually shows up in person on The Gifted. This is another amazing episode and this time it's focused on Lorna and her personal journey towards accepting that she's her father's daughter, and that her own daughter Dawn is not going to be safe as Lorna and the rest of the Hellfire Club continue with their violent uprising agai...

In "no Mercy," the Hellfire Club is ready to perform their bank heist, but it wouldn't be a heist episode if something didn't go wrong. Maddy and Ryan feel like Lorna could have opened this safe herself, but it's Rebecca's job, and Rebecca doesn't just want to steal money from Creed Financial. She wants to steal... human lives. Meanwhile, Reed Strucker is still suffering from mutant denialism, and...

The Gifted season two keeps on hitting home runs with "iMprint," an episode focused on the Cuckoos and their backstory. Unlike so many other X-Men adaptations, this one closely aligns with the characters' portrayal in the original comics by clarifying the girls are clones and introducing the other two of the five main Cuckoos. Their heartbreaking backstory of growing up in a lab and being tortured...

The Gifted season two continues its strong pace with "afterMath," which Maddy and Ryan end up rating 4/5 instead of a perfect score but still did enjoy quite a bit. Blink helps the newly escaped mutants who were wrongly imprisoned in a mental asylum find a new home with the Morlocks, and Marcos makes friends (kind of) with one of the escapees named Glow, who isn't from the comics and has a weirdly...

Maddy and Ryan get to watch yet another fantastic episode of The Gifted with "outMatched," in which our former Mutant Underground characters are indeed outmatched when it comes to the machinations of the Hellfire Club. Lorna, Andy, and their new friends are breaking into a mental institution that only houses mutants and has been drugging them and torturing them, and their former friends are just t...

The Gifted season 2 keeps on delivering banger episode after banger episode. In "coMplications," Reed Strucker's powers manifest in front of his daughter Lauren, who can't believe he's still keeping secrets from the rest of the family. Jace Turner is still obsessed with hunting down mutants and he's destroying every other aspect of his life in favor of continuing to chase that high. Polaris' baby...

Ryan and Maddy are still loving The Gifted, with season 2 delivering yet another great episode in "unMoored." This episode is brought to us by League of Legends, which Andy is playing every night he spends in the Hellfire Club mansion, apparently. But he's keeping his teenage angst secret when it comes to missing his family and especially his sister, and Reeva Payge isn't going to stand for that,...

Ryan and Maddy invite Todd and Ry T back on the show for another reading of a Christmas-themed X-Men comic. This time it's Uncanny X-Men #165 (2009), a surprisingly plot-heavy comic that gets into Laura Kinney's backstory and introduction to the X-Men, plus a side story about Gambit getting back his eyesight (after losing his sight in a battle that wasn't even that interesting, according to Maddy...

Ryan and Maddy watched the first episode of The Gifted's second season and immediately discover why people prefer season two. Everything is better, most importantly the writing; we already liked the actors, and now they finally have something great to work with. The Mutant Underground has become far more ragtag, working out of a secret room in a hospital and rescuing mutants from the SWAT-team lik...

Ryan, Maddy, and Todd watch the second half of Deadpool (2016) and realize they probably didn't need to divide this episode into two parts because there isn't that much to say about the second half of Deadpool (2016). Wade Wilson's arch nemesis Francis kidnaps his ex-girlfriend Vanessa for some reason. Deadpool, Colossus, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead team up to save Vanessa and destroy a helicarr...

Maddy, Ryan, and Todd convene to analyze the first half of Deadpool (2016), which we probably didn't need to divide into two parts because it turns out this movie is really simple. Also, most of these jokes do not hold up! Bounty hunter Wade Wilson meets a hottie named Vanessa, finds out he has cancer, dumps her so she doesn't have to watch him die, then participates in an experimental treatment p...