Spoilers Ahead for “The Gifted” Season 1, Episode 9
Photo courtesy of 20th Television/FOX.
This week’s episode starts off with a flashback to about a year ago of the Strucker family at a park having a picnic. Andy tries to teach his sister Lauren how to skateboard, but she looses her footing and falls off. Andy grabs her hand to catch her and in that moment, they already sense a connection and see a aura of light around their hands. The parents don’t see it and the kids brush it off as a weird phenomenon.
We jump back to the present, where Reed is upstairs at Mutant Underground at HQ reflecting on his dad, who he lost in the last episode. Downstairs, the others are discussing going after the Trask lab that is turning mutants into weapons. The team doesn’t want to rush things and want to take it slow and make sure they have a plan before rushing in, but Esme, the team’s new telepath, is pushing the team to move now and tells them that her family is locked up inside that building. Later that night when Lorna (aka Polaris) is sleeping, Esme uses her powers to give Lorna a nightmare about Marcos (aka Eclispe) and her baby being locked up in the facility. On a side note, Esme acts really weird through this whole episode and I don’t think she has the group’s best interests in mind. At Sentinel Services, we find out that Dr. Ahab, who is also know as Dr. Campbell, is in the hospital from the blast of Otto Strucker in the last episode. Jace Turner has a strong feeling that the Mutants now know about the Hound program and might soon attack the lab. It’s pretty convenient how he now has this feeling and has no evidence to back this up, but I am pretty sure the show just put this in to help move the story along.
Photo courtesy of 20th Television and FOX.
The Mutant Underground does their research and learns that a lot of the employees of Trask hang out at a nearby bar, and Lorna and Sonya (aka Dreamer) go to the bar to see if they can pull any information out of a guard about the security the facility has. They tell the group back at HQ that they learned that the facility runs on a lot of electrical security. The building that provides them power is a few miles away and if they want to knock out the security, they are going to have to attack the power station first. Again, Esme begins pushing them to go in blind, but Johnny (aka Thunderbird) calms her down. Catlin and Reed tell Lauren and Andy about the power their grandparents possessed when they held hands and want to test it out to see if they possess the same ability. At first, when Andy and Lauren hold hands, it doesn’t work; the second time they try, their bodies start to glow slowly and they get brighter. Their parents separate their hands before they can cause any serious damage, but describe the experience like they became one and if they had continued, they would have brought down the whole building, killing everyone. Esme convinces the group to use Lauren and Andy to attack the power station while another group attacks the lab.
Photo courtesy of 20th Television and FOX.
Lorna, Esme, Marcos and Johnny go to attack the lab facility while Andy, Lauren, Sonya and Clarice (aka Blink) go to attack the power station. Jace once again magically suspects that the mutants are attacking the lab the same day they are putting together a tactical team. The operation for the Underground is going well at first, but then the team gets lost in the power station and Sentinel Services shows up. They start to run and get picked off one by one. Blink is the first to get captured, followed by Dreamer until only Lauren and Andy are left. Lauren suggests they use their combined powers to escape and Andy agrees, but he stops at the last minute, saying he doesn’t want to kill innocent people in the process by bringing down the whole building. The show ends with them getting captured by Sentinel Services.
This episode was good and ends on a big cliffhanger, but I don’t like how unrealistic it is in Jace getting lucky and just happening to know when and where the mutants were going to be. I also would have liked if we got to see how it would have looked if Andy and Lauren went through with it and used their powers combined. I now wonder what sinister plan Dr. Campbell has for the Strucker kids since he wanted them specifically. It’s a strong episode though, and we are nearing the season finale, so things are only going to get better from here!
“The Gifted” airs Monday nights at 9 p.m. on FOX.