The Mutant Ages

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...

Maddy and Ryan do a miniature listener mail that is mostly just a return to The Mutant Ages: The Comic Book, because we didn't have that many emails to read this time around. We answer questions about how to fix The Gifted (the question everybody wants to know the answer to) and how we would go about writing Bobby's coming-out story on X-Men '97 if it were up to us. Next episode: Deadpool Part 1 (...

Maddy and Ryan finally reached the season 1 finale of The Gifted, titled "X-Roads," and it's not bad. Finally, there's a plot on this show! Lorna breaks with the rest of the Mutant Underground by deciding to resort to violence in respond to Dr. Krieger's evil plan, which then leads to a larger shake-up at the episode's conclusion. Andy and Lauren also end up resorting to violence once Jace Turner...

The Gifted aired its finale in two parts, and this is the first half. Unfortunately it's also the more boring half; we'll get to the real action in the next episode. In "eXtraction," Thunderbird, Eclipse, Blink, Lorna and the Cuckoos work together to break into Humanity Today, an anti-mutant conference that Dr. Campbell (or as we always call him, Dr. Krieger) is attending alongside anti-mutant big...

With a title like "3 X 1," you'd think this episode of The Gifted would be all about the Cuckoos, but mostly this episode is about the Struckers deciding to leave the Mutant Underground only to return once again by the time the episode ends. Why does Reed Strucker love to walk in circles? We do still get to see some fun moments with Esme and her sisters, and we get a little bit of new information...

Maddy, Ryan, and Todd read the five-issue comic book series "X-Terminators" and loved it. We go over the major plot beats and outline all the reasons why it's great and everyone should read it. Namely that it's four women being hilarious hot messes who love each other and love ribbing on each other. They get into some hot water with Dazzler's shitty ex-boyfriend and then bomb their way out of it....

"eXploited" is by far the best episode of The Gifted yet, with Esme Cuckoo's machinations on full display and tons of other great scenes in the mix. Blink, Dreamer, and the Strucker kids are in captivity at Trask Laboratories, and the torture has begun. The Strucker parents track down Jace Turner and try to convince him he's doing the wrong thing, and it actually works ... but unfortunately, Esme'...

Maddy and Ryan watch one of the best episodes of The Gifted in a long time, in which Esme Cuckoo continues to keep the plot moving along and gets the Mutant Underground on board with breaking in to Dr. Campbell's lab to rescue her family members (the other Cuckoos, not that any of the characters on the show know that). We also talk about Deadpool & Wolverine quite a bit, since Maddy had seen it by...