It’s looking like a blue Christmas for the Struckers and the Underground. The junior Struckers and several key members of the Underground team are behind bars with Sentinel Services. Cory Booker’s Evil Twin and his partisans have the upper hand. Let’s hang our X-Stockings by the chimney with care, pour some X-Nog, and have some hopes that St. Nicholas won’t bring some coal in those stockings with the last episode of The Gifted for 2017, “eXploited.”
(Warning: contains spoilers.)
1. Blue Christmas
Life on the inside for the mutants isn’t any walk in the park. Lauren’s resigned herself to her fate as a terrorist, and Andy’s testing the limits of the shock collars with his restlessness. Dreamer’s interrogation takes a deeply personal turn for Jace Turner as he informs her that her memory manipulations have led him to relive his daughter’s death all over again, hoping to guilt her into a confession. Back at the Underground, things aren’t rosy either. The capture has fractured sides, with Polaris and Marcos opting for more direct actions and Reed and Caitlin wanting to work Reed’s government contacts for a nonviolent release, and neither side budging towards middle ground. They better come to some sort of resolution fast, because all four of our heroes are taking a one way trip to Dr. Campbell’s lab.
2. Do You Hear What I Hear?
Esme: “Human problems deserve a human solution.” Her visions reveal that Jace Turner has been present at many of the key Sentinel Services investigations, and that he knows more than your average Sentinel employee. If Reed and Caitlin want to get on the inside, it’s going to involve a meeting of the minds with Cory Booker’s Evil Twin, appealing to his better angels as a father. Will a man reliving his own grief from a death at the hands of a mutant, perhaps even more acutely now than when that death first happened, be able to find those better angels?
3. Bad Santa
Now wait a second, Esme. You are definitely going to get coal in your stocking this year. First you read Reed’s mind and send him off to meet with Agent Turner, then run right to Polaris and Marcos and tattle on the action you put in your heads in the first place. Your playing one against the other could be clever in any other situation, but not in this moment of crisis. And that little smirk all but confirmed it. Off to the naughty list with you.
4. Batteries Not Included
Dr. Campbell’s got the toys he wants for Christmas: Andy and Lauren Strucker. But for some reason, he can’t get them to work properly, to show their combined powers. He’s going to shove those metaphorical batteries of compliance into the kids any way possible, anything from asking nicely to psychological torture with Blink and Dreamer as bait to outright murder.
5. I’ll Be Home For Christmas
There’s not much to say here except: thank you, Jace. Thank you for doing the right thing and taking everyone at Trask back to Sentinel Services. Who knows if the detainees will even make it back there with the renewed energy of the Underground, and Esme going rogue, leading to the revelation that her “family” within Trask were the other two Stepford Cuckoos, but your wife was right: what you were allowing Dr. Campbell to do was not in your daughter’s name or memory. And a child shall lead them to justice, indeed.
