What I’m Watching: The Gifted

The Gifted: Season 1, Episode 10 “eXploited” (B)

I was using this fall finale as a test of whether I’d continue watching this show, and I can definitely say that I didn’t expect this episode to end this way. I thought this was going to be all about how everyone goes on the run again, with the kids escaping their confines only to stay one small step ahead of their pursuers. Dr. Campbell didn’t waste any time in forcing Agent Turner to hand Lauren and Andy over to him, and he got to work right away on testing their powers, which it turns out are quite strong. Shooting Dreamer in the head shows that characters on this show are expendable, and that he’s a villain through and through, completely unconcerned with ending lives to achieve the ends he thinks are necessary. Esme convincing Reed and Caitlin to appeal to Agent Turner’s humanity, something that worked thanks in no small part to his wife questioning the ethics of what he was doing, was clearly duplicitous when she lied to the rest of the mutants about it, but it seemed that she was a double agent working for Sentinel Services who wanted to show that mutants can be bad and shouldn’t be trusted. Instead, she was revealed to be a much more powerful mutant capable of pushing thoughts onto other people with two clones (or sisters?) with the same abilities. They were ruthless in their murder of the agents, and now they’re going to be guiding these freed mutants through the next stage of whatever their nefarious plan is. I’m intrigued enough to at least see this show through its final three episodes, airing first on January 1st and then closing out with a double-decker finale on January 15th. We’ll see beyond that.