The Gifted season 2, episode 15 review: Monsters

The Gifted dealt with the question of who the “Monsters” really are in season 2’s penultimate episode.

“Monsters” can be hard to deal with. Especially when they’re (at times) decent people. This was the dilemma the characters of The Gifted faced on the Fox ensemble action drama in the penultimate episode of the second season, which was appropriately titled the same.

In the last episode, “calaMity,” Jace Turner (Coby Bell) led a group of Purifiers on a raid of the Morlocks’ sewers, leaving many casualties, including Clarice Fong/Blink (Jamie Chung).

At the Inner Circle, Reeva Payge (Grace Byers) and the Frost sisters (Skyler Samuels) discover a spy in their midst and execute an innocent Sage (Hayley Lovitt), much to Lorna Dane/Polaris’s (Emma Dumont) terror.

Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) and Caitlin Strucker smashed through a police barricade with a car full of mutant refugees, while Reed (Stephen Moyer) accepted his fate that his incineration powers will kill him, and therefore quit using the serum concocted in “gaMe changer” to keep them at bay. (Maybe saving it for Lauren?)

Doomed to be monsters?

After the attack, Turner is perturbed by the little girl’s teddy bear he found on the floor. Ted tries to talk him out of it, saying that the Morlocks would grow up to be monsters just the same, but Jace isn’t buying it.

When Ted ambushes Reed in an alley, the Strucker darkness takes over and Reed melts him, in what was really one of the least surprising incinerations on TV ever, given his family history. That made it no less frightening, however, to both the audience and the character – “What kind of monster did that?” he wonders for the rest of the episode.

Hideout

Lauren and Caitlin scatter their refugees and then take off on their own to hide in an abandoned building while a massive force of police and Sentinel Services agents ready to swarm them.

Caitlin is prepared to sacrifice herself until Lauren’s powers reactivate, and there is a lot of arguing over this point before Reed and Marcos Diaz/Eclipse (Sean Teale) eventually break them out. On their way home they get a phone call from Polaris.

“Take this job and shove it.”

Back at the Inner Circle, she’s finally had it now that Reeva’s announced her master plan – to swarm and overthrow various government buildings in order to terrify humans into agreeing to a mutant homeland. This includes Sentinel Services HQ, the Pentagon and the White House.

But before she leaves, she has to try to convince Andy (Percy Hynes White) to come with her, explaining Reeva’s machinations with Benedict Ryan’s (Peter Gallagher) Purifiers. He isn’t convinced, trying to process that his girlfriend Rebecca’s death was for a lie.

That’s when she has to call Reed, who then reveals he murdered someone that morning after Andy tries to explain about nearly murdering the guy in “eneMy of My eneMy.” Caitlin, Lauren and Eclipse are thoroughly and understandably shocked by Reed’s revelation.

Where things currently stand

The original gang’s back together again. It all comes down to a showdown between the Atlanta Mutant Underground against Reeva’s Inner Circle and Turner’s Purifiers. Also, Reeva’s out to kill everyone.

Mutant miscellany

• The online conspiracy theorist was legendary X-Men comics writer Chris Claremont, arguing that the Morlocks do exist.
• For how tension filled an episode this was, there were plenty of good one-liners and deep emotional statements amidst the fraught sound of helicopters.
• Some examples of well-written dialogue: “Andy…you know when we do this….it won’t be like a video game. You know that, right?” – Lorna.
• “How do you know running on foot is safer?” Lauren asks. “Cars with that many bullet holes are pretty easy to spot.” – Caitlin.
• After learning that the Frosts’ part in the master plan consists of “persuading” humans that the Inner Circle is right, Lorna asks “Personally, are you okay with this, Esme? Forcing others to believe that what we’re doing is right?” Esme sighs. “…Maybe they will someday.”
• “What are we doing here besides catching typhoid?” – Polaris asks while on a scouting mission in an abandoned train yard.
• “So….your powers are back.” – Eclipse to Reed.
• This show and this cast do a phenomenal job of acting through silence, letting gestures and expressions convey deep emotional states.

The season 2 finale, titled “oMens,” will air on Fox on Tuesday, February 26 at 9 p.m. ET.