- Title: The Gifted – eMergence
- wiki: link
Although I enjoyed The Gifted, I was feeling a bit of super-hero TV fatigue and eventually fell off from the show’s slow building First Season which was heavy on world building and weak on payoff. The Second Season premiere beings with Reeva Payge (Grace Byers) consolidating her power within the Inner Circle and preparing for an important birth. As for our heroes, they continue to save what mutants they can from the increasingly vicious and murderous Sentinel Services while Caitlin (Amy Acker) and Eclipse (Sean Teale) continue to search for answers about the whereabouts of their missing loved ones. The premiere resets the stage for the season with our heroes, what was once the Hellfire Club, and Sentinel Services all with distinct motivations and agendas. Despite Payge’s murderous spree to open the episode, she still comes off better than the human soldiers killing unarmed men, women, and children in their own homes.
Although neither the actress nor the character of Payge does anything for me, it’s obvious she’s set for a big role this season. I am more impressed with the show’s version of the Stepford Cuckoos played by Skyler Samuels. And I am curious to see where Polaris (Emma Dumont) fits into the new dawn. The show continues the dark foreshadowing of Andy (Percy Hynes White) while also giving us reason to believe the manifestation of Reed‘s (Stephen Moyer) powers are close at hand. While it still feels that the cast is a bit too large, slowing down storylines with subplots (some of which work better than others), it is good to see more movement here in the larger arcs. Hopefully we won’t have to wait several more weeks to see this trend continue.