This season’s one new television show for me has been The Gifted on Fox.  I’ve not followed my Marvel television, really only Agents of SHIELD.  The show takes place in a world where the X-Men and the Hellfire Club are nowhere to be found.  There are hints all around of their existence, just as the names and powers of some of the show’s main characters are rooted in the long narrative of Marvel’s Merry Mutants.  It’s that distance from the source material, though, that has kept the show fresh and interesting.  That and putting a family of humans with mutant kids at the heart of the show.  And so even though the show has really been one search-and-rescue after another, there’s been a good growing tension in the show as philosophies have collided with one another (a hallmark of all things X-Men).

That philosophical discussion has been percolating on two levels throughout the season.  The first is with the adults, primarily Lorna and Marcos as leaders of the Mutant Underground.  As more about Lorna has come to light (which fans of the comics already knew), she has slowly moved to the side opposite of Marcos’s more “Professor X” approach.  At the same time, a deepening rift between the Strucker kids has also brought the philosophical schism to a head.  Here’s a conversational clip from the season finale, right before everything fell apart.

The season, of course, is done now.  Luckily, the show has done well enough to warrant a second season (and that with a number of different characters moved to different sides of the playing board).  Hopefully the second season won’t wait long.