This week the review will be a little different from all the rest. Emma is not able to work on it with me, so our comments won’t be included. She is more knowledgeable about the Marvel Universe, so I hope I don’t miss anything important. If I do, please tell me.
What an episode! It was intense, we learned a lot about the Struckers, Trask Industries, and the mutants who have been turned into weapons by Campbell. The title “threat of eXtinction” talks about the effort to eliminate the X-gene, the fact that the Strucker family is in danger, and of course all the innocent mutants who are being targeted by Sentinel Services.
It begins with a flashback to London in 1952 with the mutant siblings that Dr. Campbell was interested in and who destroyed a building in Rio De Janeiro, my first thought when I saw them was that they must be related to Reed. Their names were Andreas and Andrea, they were in an apartment, and the brother was writing a note saying they had arrived and were in hiding. Suddenly the door was broken down by Interpol, they needed to defend themselves and escape, so they held hands and there was a bright flash. Was it an explosion? What else happened? Did they also escape through this light?
Reed had something important to talk to his family about. Sentinel Services had been working with a defense contractor called Trask Industries. His father (Otto Strucker) used to work there. He hasn’t had any contact with his father for 20 years, but the fact that he had worked at Trask may be a way for them to learn more about what is happening to mutants at Trask. Reed and John planned to go to Chattanooga to see him at the antique shop he was running after Trask shut down.
Reed convinces his father to talk to him about Trask. He is shocked that the company is back in business. When Reed tells him what powers the kids have, he is horrified and says, “no no no, I failed!” He tells Reed that when they hold hands their powers become much much stronger and proceeds to tell him about Andreas (who was Otto’s father) and Andrea and how very dangerous they were. When they were together they were called Fenris which means The Wolf. (Scandinavian mythology: Fenris was a giant wolf who had the power to threaten the gods.) I had a feeling that there was a connection, and there it is!
Otto is a mutant and tells Reed that Andreas tried to raise him to be like them, but he ran away and hid his powers. In the comic versions, the twins are evil, I’d like to believe that they are not totally evil, but that they were trying to defend themselves just like all the other mutants. He was working at Trask to find a way to eliminate the X-gene and was successful with one serum that worked on only one mutant, Reed! Reed is reeling with all this new information about himself and his family. He has no time to absorb any of it because Sentinel Services shows up and they have Pulse with them.
We see how they control the mutants with the drug that makes them more powerful but that they are addicted to. This keeps them docile and willing to cooperate. John can’t do anything since his powers are being suppressed by Pulse. Otto tells him that he will go down and deal with them, letting them know that “Our family’s powers are different”. Theirs is a very powerful mutant genetic line. Otto tells Reed that he’s sorry, asks him to tell his mother that he is sorry too and gives him a big hug before he heads down to confront Campbell.
They don’t get far, Otto begins to emit a bright light from his hands while Campbell yells at Pulse to shut him down, but he can’t. They end up shooting Otto, but not before he causes an explosion. Reed and John come down to find Otto dead on the ground and Pulse dying outside. It’s a really tragic moment. Reed finally gets to know his father and begins to connect and he dies. John crouches down next to Pulse, as he is dying he apologizes to John. It’s terrible, because it looks like the mutants who Campbell is using are aware at some level that they are doing things that they don’t want to do, they are trapped.
Before John went to Chattanooga with Reed, there was a rescue mission to get survivors from a station that was attacked by Sentinel Services. There is a mutant with them who is a telepath, she tells John that there is someone in the group who is having strange thoughts. She is correct, as soon as John confronts her, she goes crazy attacking everyone. By working together creatively they are able to stop her. They have her contained, (her name is Chloe) and try to ask her questions, she is behaving very erratically and they realize that her behavior looks just like someone having drug withdrawals. They restrain her and give her a bit of the drug that they believe she is addicted to, just enough so that her withdrawals are diminished. She cannot talk, it looks like she is trying to, but she can’t. They use the telepath (Esme) to find out what happened to her. Esme senses terrible pain from her, then finds out that Sentinel Services killed her husband and took her baby. Then she shows her the lab at Trask. This too ends tragically with Chloe dying. Although, maybe it was a relief for her to end the misery that Campbell has put her in.
One of the rescued refugees is a little girl (Nora) who is very closed into herself and won’t talk to anyone. Clarice befriends and bonds with her, she really needed someone to take care of her. Clarice finds out that Nora lived at the same home she did and that she watched her foster parents being killed. Clarice feels a lot of guilt about the deaths because she thinks she lead Sentinel Services to them when she was sick and kept opening up a portal near the home. This gives Clarice a reason to accept Dreamer a little bit, by asking her if she could help by taking Nora’s memories of her foster parents death from her.
The events of this episode are reviewed at the end. It left me feeling very sad.
There’s Dreamer and Clarice with Nora, helping her.
John and Reed burying Pulse and Otto, having their last moments with them.
Marcus and Lorna together and hugging each other.
When Reed gets back to the way station, Caitlin hugs him.
Andy and Lauren watch them while they hold hands.
Does it feel ominous to you that they are holding hands? Maybe it gives you hope for the Mutant Underground that they have such powerful mutants on their side? I have a hard time believing that Andy and Lauren will go bad, they have so much good in them.
If you want to learn more about Trask Industries they have a website.
Sentinel Services on Twitter
Sentinel Services on Instagram
The Gifted airs on Monday nights on Fox at 8pm CDT.
Learn more about the show on The Gifted’s site.
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